Umbrella Adventure

David Smithson from Hive writes to tell me about the usage of freesound sounds in Umbrella Adventure

Umbrella Adventure is an entirely hand-drawn exploration adventure game, which takes place in a huge forest full of platforming challenges, enemies and puzzles. The main character, Gopher, wakes up to find his collection of cakes stolen in the night, and it’s up to you to arm yourself with an umbrella and head out into the world to bring them all back, by using the umbrella to overcome the obstacles in your way, meeting new friends, and opening new doorways and paths through the forest.

One of the game’s biggest focal points is immersion – creating the feeling that the world you’re exploring is solid, consistent and real, and this, from our side, involves making sure the entire world feels right, moves right, and sounds right. For a game like this to work, we needed a huge range of different sounds which could be combined to create a rich, realistic soundscape for players to explore through. In the three or four years since the development of the game began, we’ve used a ton of material from Freesound contributors, mostly ambient, nature and weather effects, although there are some bizarre sounds in there too; it’s pretty neat to think that, for example, the sound of someone scratching their beard has contributed to our work like that. A lot of care was taken to make sure everything in the game, from the player character to moving enemies and scenery, sounds the way it should, so players can really get inside the game and believe what they’re hearing, and in this respect Freesound has been absolutely essential to us. Visiting and being part of Freesound is something really integral to the ‘indie spirit’ of game development for us; the community there is really dedicated to promoting the creative output of all its members, and it’s great to see so many people united by their common love of finding and making great sounds. It’s something we’re all really thankful is still there, and very proud to be working with.

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6 Responses to Umbrella Adventure

  1. alex says:

    I’ve played this game, and it’s incredibly immersive. The gameplay is enjoyable, but this game’s strong point is definitely its sounds and sights. Very inspirational!

  2. sanus_excipio says:

    All the fluff about “… so many people united by their common love of finding and making great sounds”. yet, only freesound, as an entity is credited (correct me if I’m wrong?)

    From the legal section of freesound: “… if you use the files you need to attribute the creator of the file (i.e. say who made it).” I would remind David Smithson that freesound.org was not the creator of the sounds; rather, it is the distribution mechanism.

    I’d prefer less flag waving for people – or entities – who do not attribute properly. perhaps, more strongly, freesound should chastise those who use but do not dredit. crediting (providing attribution to the sound creator) is the least they should do for using sounds freely. otherwise, what’s the point of the “legal” section?

  3. srinin says:

    I entirely agree with sanus_excipio. Free sharing is promoted by making sure the creators AND the distributor are both credited.

    However the other side of teh coin is not many who use the resources may have even acknowledged the source site. To that extent Davod Smithson deserves credit too.

    I am not a techie. But whenever I use free resources, almost always for non commercial use, I try to give credit to the creators. Is there a way you guys can find to make this attribution easy – say a one click stuff? That wd encourage more users to link the resource to its creator.

  4. NectarJunkie says:

    Actually there is a file in the download, in the /audio/ folder called sound_attributions.txt. It sounds like this is what you’re looking for?

  5. CGEffex says:

    I absolutely love this game! The graphics are incredible, the gameplay is very well made, and, of course, the sounds provide even more depth to all the wonderful stages and characters. Oh, and the music tracks are great too!

  6. sanus_excipio says:

    If there’s a sound attributions file in the download then I stand corrected.

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