(Updated on 2024-11-28)
I will be updating this tutorial to include a few plugins that are being worked on, so stay tuned!
Overview
Sound and audio is one of the most overlooked items in the Roblox game development cycle, yet itâs one of the most important factors for creating a cohesive and immersive experience.
The objective of this guide is to walk you through a step-by-step process for planning, selecting, and setting up audio for your experience!
So, what will we be discussing? First,
- Why is audio important?
- SFX versus Ambient tracks
- Creating a sound production spreadsheet
- Identify what audio we need
- Searching for audio
- Set up your base track
- Set up environmental ambient sounds across the map
- Tuning your audio
Why is audio important?
- Sound effects and ambience immersify and help to convince the player that your virtual world is real
- Provides the player with appropriate feedback (i.e. let the player know if the door is locked, that their purchase was successful, or what direction theyâre being shot at)
- Ambience and music set the emotional tone (for the entire game, for that moment in the game â whether high intensity, or low intensity)
Sound Effects (SFX) versus Ambient Tracks
Sound effects and ambient tracks are both types of audio used to aid in storytelling, but they have different purposes and characteristics.
Sound effects: These are short, specific audio clips that are associated with a particular action or item. For example, a sound effect might be a gunshot, fluorescent lights buzzing, or an AC unit humming.
Ambient tracks: These create the realism and tone of your scene and help establish the mood. For example, the track may be the sound of wind blowing and leaves rustling in a forest in an outdoor scene. Usually Ambient tracks are not created with instruments, but instead capture the sounds that are normally heard in a specific location.
Step 1: Creating a sound production spreadsheet
Something that I find a lot of value in is spending a few minutes setting up an excel spreadsheet or document so I can keep track of all of my needed sounds and their IDs which will be helpful for us later when we begin incorporating them into our game. When filled up, it looks like the image in Figure 1.1.
Figure 1.1: Sound Production Sheet example
Step 2: Identify what audio we need
Now with our spreadsheet ready, we can begin to go through our gameâs map and mark down all of the sounds that we think would fit the environment into our excel sheet.
Some games and maps will need more sounds than others, for example an immersive roleplay experience may choose to fill the world with region-based sounds to enhance the users roleplay experience, or a racing game which will focus on the vehicle sounds with a high-tempo music playlist for the background track.
In other games, such as fast-paced FPS games, players are moving too fast to care about most region-based SFX; Too much audio in an FPS may also distract or drown out the sound cues that the player relies on to hear enemies.
Ask yourself, what sound cues are important for your game? What mood are you trying to set? Is it dark and grimy atmosphere, a beach, or a cityscape? Does the scene take place indoors or outdoors? Do I need ambient tracks, or should you just have background music? I like to look at the scene and picture in my brain what it would sound like if I was standing there in person.
Figure 1.2: Filling out a Sound Production Sheet with the sounds we need
Step 3: Searching for audio
A common issue players have is actually finding appropriate audio to use for their game. Audioscape made a really amazing search tool which I utilize, you can try it HERE.
To use the search tool:
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Log in to AudioScape Portal
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Select the âSound Effectsâ search option:
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Enter a sound effect that you would like to search for, in this case âFire Loopâ. Loopable means that we can repeat the track to create a continued and seamless musical texture.
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To help us find a more relevant search, we can also click the Filters button:
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This opens up the menu where Iâm going to select the âNature & Environmentâ option.
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Once we have found an audio that we like, you can copy the name and ID and insert it into your spreadsheet that we made in Step 1. You can also click âSearch for more like thisâ which will provide you with other options of similar sounding tracks.
Step 4: Set up your Base Track
This is essentially a background track or surrounding noise soundtrack that plays in a loop. In a nature scene, this base track may sound like wind blowing and the occasional gentle rustles of leaves blowing, or it may be the sound of the ocean waves and seagulls for a beach scene.
The base track shouldnât be too loud or drown out the feature sounds, and should always be loopable so that it remains seamless and doesnât break the immersion. HERE is a playlist that has a wide variety of great base tracks that you can use for your game.
To set up a very simple ambient track, you can:
- Insert a Sound object into the Workspace
- Insert your SoundID into the property field:
- Enabled Looped:
- Enable Playing:
- Set your Volume:
Step 5: Set up environmental ambient sounds across the map
These are sounds that will be emitted from certain objects or props, such as our flaming barrels, buzzing fluorescent lights or the drip of a leaky pipe. These sounds are meant to enhance the environment and compliment the visuals.
We picked our sounds out in Step 2, so now we can set them up to emit from objects. I will be providing a plugin to do this in the near future, but for now a simple way to do this is:
- Insert a Part into your experience and then Anchor it
- Name the part SFX_NameOfYourSound
- Right-click and click Insert Object, and then select Sound to insert it into the part:
- In your sound production sheet, copy one of your audio AssetID
- Back in studio, select the part and then paste the ID into SoundID field:
- Enabled the Looped property checkbox:
- Enable the Playing property checkbox:
- Change the RollOffMaxDistance from 10000 to about 75. This will be how far away the sound will be audible from:
- Robloxâs default volume almost is always way too loud, so I usually change the Volume to 0.1:
- Move the SFX part into the model or object that you want to emit from
Step 6: Tuning your audio
Now that all of our audio has been implemented, letâs take a listen. Walk around and listen closely for sounds that may be too loud or too quiet. If youâre unsure, play a comparable game title and listen closely how they highlight and feature sounds, and use it as a reference for your own game.
As a general rule of thumb, the ambient track should always be quieter than sound effects. For example:
- In a racing game the sounds your car creates while driving should be louder than your base music tracks.
- For combat games, the sounds of the weapons and footstep/player cues should be louder than the base track.
I usually keep my ambient track set to 0.1 Volume and my SFX to 0.3 Volume.
Conclusion
To wrap up, letâs take a listen to how much of an impact just a bit of audio can add to your scenes:
As Roblox continues to evolve, so will the player expectation, and quality audio is a great way to meet those expectations.
Audio is a massive topic that can easily become complicated so I tried to keep this post limited to the basics, but if you have any questions or want me to dive more in-depth about this or any other topic please let me know in the comments!
See my other guides here:
How to Design an PvP Map
How to Design a Simple House
