The task of creating sounds for this project was laid at my feet. I'd never really thought a huge amount about the process of creating music for a game as it always seemed auxiliary to the main process. However, since starting I've really enjoyed it. Being a drummer for 12+ years, I've always thought I understood music on a pretty high level but this experience has shown me different ways of making music that I'd not even be aware of up to this point.
Programs
Let's be straight, you and me are not going to invest in a hugely expensive music composition program like ProTools or CueBase, at least for a project of this size. So I searched for simple, easy to use, easy to understand and lightweight programs that would create the kind of chip-tune or 8 to 16-bit sounds and whole songs.
It turns out there are actually two VERY powerful yet very easy to use programs that made my life a lot easier than I expected.
Bfxr
Bfxr is a a lightweight program that will help you create a 8/16-bit sound effects. This is a program that seems very simple to use straight off the bat. There are only two modes available being Synth and Mixer.
Click image to play with Bfxr yourself.
The synth is a simple tool that has plenty of sliders for different values relating to the wave algorithm that you also choose to modulate the certain effects. This even has a random button that will create random sounds, if you have no idea what you want. There are also more specific random sounds such as a 'Pickup' sound or a 'Shoot' sound.
The other is a simple mix mode that allows you to take any of the samples you've created in the Synth mode and create more interesting sounds by merging them together.
This helped me create some really cool sounds that I otherwise wouldn't have been able to create on my own.
Sunvox
This program is something I will be using for a lot of projects in the future as it's basically a fully featured synth creation tool.
While it took me a while to get to grips with the more complex processes involved in creating sound, it was mainly used for creating actual songs and not just sound effects. The tool consists of several modules that you can move into the main area and then play them and combine them to create instruments.
Click image to go to find out more about Sunvox and download it yourself.
Sunvox allowed me to use my computer keyboard as a musical one and gave me some interesting times while sitting messing with it.
While it looks confusing a little YouTube search will help with pretty much all of the possible questions you could have. I felt really creative once I had the ability to quickly change between instruments and alter the different tracks with speed.
It would take me too long to explain all the different parts of this particular program, but I can most certainly say i was a beginner and I managed to create some really interesting and fulfilling music with it very quickly.
I would recommend it highly. You can listen to the fruits of my labour by checking the Work page.