Since I've finished the art end of my mod (specifically the models), I've moved onto other aspects, and the first I've decided to tackle was the sound effects side.
Now, I am very much a visuals-oriented person. My brain has a very easy time comprehending visual art, coming up with designs from nothing, and then translating that into a physical form. It's natural to me! I am the complete opposite when it comes to sounds and music. I can recall sounds or music from my memory with ease, but when it comes to conceptualizing a sound or melody from nothing, I really struggle. Never mind then translating anything I have managed to come up with from imagination into physicality. It's very far from my wheel house!
For the most part, for my mod, I have simply used sounds I have obtained from free sources with little or any processing at all. I mean, it's just a mod so I'm not really stressing out over having totally original content in it. However, I did hit a bump in the road and that bump's name is: energy beam loops. My beloathed.
When it comes to energy beam sounds, the vast majority of what you will find online in the free category will be single shot sounds. Many of them sound really good, too! However, if you want a loop that can be used for a gun that produces a lasting beam, your options are INCREDIBLY slim, and most of what you WILL find are really not good.
This, of course, triggered my hyper focus and I spent way too much time trying to find something good that really fitted the weapon I had made. Eventually I gave up on trying to find one that had already been made and focused on making one myself-- learning Audacity and figuring out what the different filters and effects all did.
I had almost no success. My first attempt, made using what was kind of a jet thruster loop sound, ended up still sounding like a sort of ship's jet engine by the end of it. So I tried with a different sound sample, this time I took a laser cannon sound from an HD sounds pack made for another larger mod of the game Command and Conquer: Renegade. I took that sound and made a continuous loop beam sound from it with some splicing and editing, and the end result is something I will definitely use, but it sounded too... powerful, and laser-like for what I was trying to find a sound for.
I then watched a few videos from professional audio engineers and what they did to make the sounds that are used for video games. Very fascinating stuff! So I tried doing what they did, and taking more real-life sounds and processing them to make the effect I wanted. Again, a combination of having such little experience in the sound design field coupled with how my brain is really not comfortable with working in the audio field had this lead to failure as well.
So, I hit the brick wall and was talking in a small modding community discord for the game I'm making my mod for. I spent a LOT of time trying to make what I wanted to make with such little success, and to make matters worse it was triggering my hyperfocus something fierce and I absolutely could not mentally let go of it. It's agonizing! One of the community members, bless them, helped by providing a few samples to work with: a couple ship engine loop sounds from Freelancer, and a Tractor Beam loop from the same game. I layered with a few samples of my own that I had collected from a couple sources, applied some EQ and post-processing to really get the feel I wanted, made a beginning sound, a loop sound, and an end sound and this was the end result:
The third sound I layered into the loop is an electrical buzz loop from a Generals: Zero Hour HD sounds pack I kinda swiped-- to give it depth and the feel of raw power coursing through it. The firing sound is an electrical explosion from the same pack, where I had the beam loop fade in simultaneously to avoid the weirdness of the beam sound going on underneath the explosion right at the beginning, and there's a final electrical sound at the ending clip that is part of an electrical gun's firing sound from a Command and Conquer: Renegade HD sound pack. The gun is an accelerated ion cannon weapon, so I added the electrical sounds to give it a charged feel and influence the feel of what kind of energy is coursing through its beam.
Overall, this was a LOT of work and I'm really happy with what I ended up with, but if I didn't have to do it ever again I can't say I would be disappointed 😅