I used FMOD Studio for my last project and am considering using it for my new one as well.
One thing I’m really missing is a marketplace for parametric sounds. Sounds often have to be parametric to react convincingly to in-game events and conditions. Sometimes adjusting volume is enough, but often not.
An impact sound sounds qualitatively different based on the force level of the impact. Water running in a stream or river sounds different based on the size of the stream/river and how turbulent the water is (slowly/flat > down a slope > waterfall).
Many types of sounds are needed over and over across many different games, yet every game seemingly have to recreate parametric solutions from scratch from the most basic building blocks (individual sound files).
I’ve been using FMOD.io a lot to buy sound clips, but there is so much untapped potential in offering better ready-made solutions. Hell, in FMOD.io, you can’t even specify search criteria that sounds must be seamlessly looping, or set min/max duration. Most other sound marketplaces are similarly primitive. And indeed I haven’t been able to find looping water sounds I liked, or the few I found were needlessly long (over 30 seconds when 5-10 seconds would have been fine). So I have to loop them myself, and also often adjust volumes and equalizing in order for different sounds to just approximately fit together coherently.
The industry of sound engines would do well to:
- Come up with an open format for specifying parametric sounds that multiple software solutions (FMOD and others) could import / export.
- Establish marketplaces for such parametric sounds so every developer doesn’t have to reinvent the wheel for basic types of sounds that lots of games need.
- And as always, take a cut of revenue.
Are there any significant reasons why this hasn’t been attempted yet? Or if it has, where can I see it?
Second best would be if I could just buy sets of audio files that are properly prepared to work out of the box, to fit together coherently, and where each file has numeric annotations about its properties.
So instead of a set of files called “Water01” to “water25” with properties that seem completely random from one to the next, I’d want “Water_size1_turbulence1” to “Water_size1_turbulence5”, “Water_size2, turbulence1” to “Water_size2_turbulence5” etc. This way, even if I had to still make my own parametric sound events, at least I would have straightforward, ready-made assets to base it on.
Is there any resource for sound effect audio files that is already sells well-structured sets of audio files like this? Fmod.io certainly isn’t.