Sound designer

[Iceman]

Hi,
I'm making a 3-D space fighter game and I need a sound designer to make sounds for my game. I'm thinking I'll probably need 1 Game Song, 1 Bonus Level Song, 1 Win Song, 1 Main Menu Song, 1 Short Lose Song, and 20-30 sound effects. How long would this take to make and how much should it cost? Also are there any nice simple freeware(the game will be shareware though) Cocoa frameworks that I can use to do 3-D sound effects and volume adjusting.

Thanks,
Iceman

[macboy]

I haven't actually used it myself, but from what other people are saying OpenAL would be perfect for that job.

BTW, If you want more eyes to see this (who will actually do it) it should probably be in the Help Wanted/Offered section.

[DaFalcon]

Also, I'm sure sound designers will want a more specific list of sound effects rather than "20-30". Sit down and make a list:

Light explosion
Medium explosion
Large explosion
Massive World-Sized explosion
Laser shot
Turret gun fire
Missile fired
etc.

[Iceman]

Thanks DaFalcon, I'm planning on making a large sounds list but unfortunately my game isn't in the stages where I've got all the power-ups implemented. Also the reason I didn't want to use OpenAL was becuase I heard it had a GNU Public License and it didn't have any documentation.

Thanks,
Iceman

[OneSadCookie]

OpenAL is LGPL (so no problems there), and I don't know about docs but the examples are pretty simple.

[Iceman]

Cool. Thanks I found some really nice documentation that must've been added after my last visit.

Thanks so much,
Iceman

[Iceman]

I was reading through one of those GNU licenses and I was wondering if I use OpenAL am I required to release the source code to my game or is that just if I modify the source code of OpenAL?

Thanks,
Iceman

[OneSadCookie]

OpenAL is LGPL, so you don't have to release the source to your game as long as your users can replace OpenAL with a new version. Frameworks are dynamic linking, so no problem there.

You do have to provide somewhere a link to somewhere they can get the OpenAL source code, and say something about NO WARRANTY -- see the LGPL for details...

[Iceman]

Fantastic!:D I was beginning to panic about that.

Thanks so much for the help,
Iceman

[Iceman]

Originally posted by OneSadCookie
Frameworks are dynamic linking, so no problem there.

Sorry for all the questions but I want to make sure I'm not going to get sued or anything. What is dynamic linking? Does that mean anyone who uses my game has to install OpenAL on their computer?

Thanks,
Iceman

[jSTIN]

Hi,

I know of one sound designer you can check out. I don't know how much he charges. his website is http://www.sonic-alchemy.com/


-Justin

[OneSadCookie]

Originally posted by Iceman
Sorry for all the questions but I want to make sure I'm not going to get sued or anything. What is dynamic linking? Does that mean anyone who uses my game has to install OpenAL on their computer?

Dynamic linking is when the application is linked to the library at run-time, rather than at compile-time. This means that the application can work with different versions of the library without being recompiled.

Mac OS X has the ideal solution to the LGPL's restrictions — frameworks within the application bundle. If you put a framework inside your application bundle, it's still dynamically linked, the user doesn't have any extra installation to do, the user can replace the framework if they so wish without affecting the application. It would probably be good spirit to include a readme somewhere about how to do that, though :)

See the tutorial on cocoadevcentral.com on putting frameworks within the app bundle.

[Iceman]

That's a great tutorial. Thanks so much.

Iceman