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Started December 4th, 2012 · 15 replies · Latest reply by Karai17 11 years, 4 months ago
Hello!
I am looking for some sound effects for a game I am working on. What I need is the sound of a tank engine (or, more easily available I'm sure, a heavy truck engine).
Ideally, the audio clip would contain the following, with minimal noise:
There are a few diesel engine sounds on this website, but none of them are quite as complete as I need them to be so that my game sounds fairly realistic. If you are the proud owner of a beastly pickup, an 18 wheeler, or a Panzerkompfwagen, I'd love to hear her purr!
Any assistance is greatly appreciated! <3
Hello,
There is not a lot of tank and other armoured vehicle traffic where I live, so I can't help with an actual recording.
Just wanted to suggest the following:
The typical sound of a tank moving comes from the engine and the fact it is a tracked vehicle (tracks instead of wheels with tyres).
Try searching for other tracked vehicles: "digger" and "construction site" are probably usefull searches for this.
Good luck.
Thanks for the advice! I actually thought about that after I posted this. A heavy cat bulldozer would probably sound more authentic than an 18 wheeler. I live quite close to a tractor/cat dealership but I don't have any decent recording equipment :\
Karai17 wrote:
Thanks for the advice! I actually thought about that after I posted this. A heavy cat bulldozer would probably sound more authentic than an 18 wheeler. I live quite close to a tractor/cat dealership but I don't have any decent recording equipment :\
Remember a video camera also has a microphone. And so do many modern photo cameras. Some of them are pretty decent, and since what you are reying to record is not musical in nature it is probably less problematic.
Make sure you set the camera for maximum sound quality (if thta option exists).
Be very careful with 'handling noise' i.e., noise from you holding the camera (the tiniest hand movement will often create a fairly strong and up-close noise, whish is difficult to mask or remove and can spoil an otherwise good recording). A tripod is good, but any stable surface to place the camera on will produce far bette results than holding the camera.
Sound is far more forgiving than image in this regard: the digger does not need to be centered on the picure (or on the picture at all!) for the sound to be perfectly recorded.
All that I said above can allso apply to modern mobile phones. I have heard good quality recordings made with iphone (no extra equipment, just the built in mics) and made a few myself.
I've spent time on YouTube trying to find some decent videos to strip sound from and, generally, most recordings sound very washed out. I know that YouTube tends to re-encode the audio so it won't sound as crisp as the original recording, but you can generally get an idea of how it was supposed to sound. I doubt a cheap camera or phone could really produce high enough quality sfx for a video game, even if it is indie.
I'm going to contact my local college and see if I can either borrow equipment or get a student to do some recordings for me. The art department at my college is surprisingly decent, so hopefully Lady Luck is on my side.
Karai17 wrote:
I've spent time on YouTube trying to find some decent videos to strip sound from.
What kind of videos do you use for that purpose? I think most countries but the US don't have such regulations and that full copyright of the authors/owners applies.
I'm not saying the videos aren't there, they just don't have high quality sound. There are tonnes of tank video son YouTube but most of them are recorded with handy cams which have terrible sound quality. They work fine for the video itself, but to want to strip the audio out to be used for something else makes it difficult.
Oh, well, depending on the circumstances really. If the video was a privately recorded video (some guy/gal at a WWII tank show) then it would be copyrighted and I'd have to send them a message requesting to use their video for my purposes.
If it were a national video, it would be public domain.
Karai17 wrote:
If it were a national video, it would be public domain.
I'm fairly certain that intangible assets owned by national bodies are not recognized. I could be wrong, but I don't really care if Saudi Arabia tries to sue me for copyright infringement. It would be quite a negative PR move on their part.
That being said, I would care if a Saudi Arabian got mad at me for stealing from their private copyrights, but not the country itself.
Consider that Saudi Arabia is a party to most international copyright agreements (source) and "9. It’s hard to prove copyright infringement" of Top 10 copyright myths.
That being said, I'll try to find the time to rip some sounds from US Military public domain videos in the near future, including a tank loop sound for an open source WebGL game: http://github.com/lazd/TankGame and I'll let you know in this thread when I'm done. Perhaps the quality will be good enough for your purposes.
Cheers