I have started looking into adding sound effects to my game and been wondering how you get all the sounds you need for a game.

For example, I have muskets in my game, so I need musket shots and musket reloading sound effects. I started looking on free sound effects libraries, and I find it very hard to find what I need that way because many libraries do not have any such sound effects, and when they do, it's very limited in choice.

Do sound effect artists make those kind of sounds? I imagine the best and most accurate way of having gun sound, is simply recording of the real thing, but I doubt many sound effect artist keeps a collection of firearms for such use case.

So where do I get such sound effects? Is my only choice having to buy specialised sound effects libraries? With a quick search, I found a old firearm sound effect library that goes for a bit more than a hundred dollars. I do think having access to a collection of high quality sound effects for a specific use case is worth that kind of money, but, that's only for musket sound effects. If I have to buy a hundred dollar sound library for every sound 'domain' in my game, that's probably well over 2 or 3 thousand dollars for a zero budget game in the first place (other than my hours spent on it).

Any hints?

It's helpful to have a synth or two around, where you can control oscillators, LFO, filters and such, in case you need to produce unique sounds you cannot find in a library. You could also use the synth to augment sounds you find online.

I buy them.  There is a huge selection of reasonably-priced high-quality royalty-free sound effects available if you look around.

1 hour ago, a light breeze said:

I buy them.  There is a huge selection of reasonably-priced high-quality royalty-free sound effects available if you look around.

What do you buy most of the time, libraries or singles? What are your favorite sfx stores?

A Sound Effect has an extensive library of sounds.  If you sign up for their newsletter they offer free sound effects with each one.  You have to dig into the newsletter to find them, but they're there.

I create my own source recordings, purchase royalty free source libraries and/or create samples using various synths. 

18 hours ago, aganm said:

What do you buy most of the time, libraries or singles? What are your favorite sfx stores?

When I need a specific sound effect, I tend to buy a small, focused library from https://sonniss.com/.

I also have a few more general sound libraries, like the ones from https://www.gamemasteraudio.com/ and https://www.soundeffectpack.com/.  I think about 10% of the sound effects I use are from general libraries, which makes the general libraries worth having but not good to depend on.

https://www.soundsnap.com/ is good as well.

I like to make non-realistic games, future/space, there it wont have to sound exact as a musket.

If i have to make musket sound i go listen youtube different sources, then create a sound based on that and record it at the required samplerate.