Sound effect of pistols

[Henry Swanson]

The game is AWESOME. My only one pet peeve is that the sound effect of the pistols is too light. It could be deeper, louder, more bass. They sound a little like pea shooters now.

But whatever, it won't stop me from enjoying the game.

[MuscularMelvin]

I actually made a whole, in-depth topic about this subject in the Yell At The Devs forum with suggestions on how to make each sound effect stronger. I even included some links to royalty-free sounds from Sound Ideas and The Hollywood Edge for inspiration or to replace their own with.

The problem with the pistol sound in particular is that it's incomplete in terms of sound design. A good gun sound effect has at least three separate elements in play: an initial attack sound (POW, BANG, THWACK etc.), a low-end thump at around 25 to 300Hz, and a midrange tail-off that suggests the bullet ripping through the wind towards its eventual target. There are some good, short videos on Youtube that explain this process. Ignore the ignorance of the second guy who clearly has never been within 100ft of a firearm IRL, though.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m1Nkx6q-5ew
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6dqU6JbubJQ
DUSK's pistol is just the initial attack and a very unsatisfying one at that. I think the standard for good "Hollywood" gun sounds was set by Dirty Harry back in 1971. You can hear all 3 elements I mentioned in that sound even though it was recorded over 45 years ago.

[Henry Swanson]

I appreciate your in depth explanation, it goes way beyond my knowledge about such things but OMG yes, that Dirty Harry sound sample has always been one of my absolute favorite gun sounds!

[MuscularMelvin]

Opprinnelig skrevet av Henry Swanson:

I appreciate your in depth explanation, it goes way beyond my knowledge about such things but OMG yes, that Dirty Harry sound sample has always been one of my absolute favorite gun sounds!

Yeah, I actually found a few copies of it in the "Soundelux" library on Sounddogs.com (I linked to one in my topic). Xatrix used that sound in both Redneck Rampage and Kingpin: Life of Crime. I wish modern AAA FPS games still had over-the-top sounds like that. Call of Duty's guns sound like staplers, now. Which is funny, because the very first COD actually won awards for its massive sound design in 2003.

My real problem with DUSK's sound is that a lot of the environment sounds are empty and hollow. Hopefully it's just because of alpha builds, but there's a speedrun of Episode 1 where the player only uses physics objects and there's absolutely no impacts when the boxes and crates kill the enemies. I can't find it on Youtube, but it's defnitely here in the "Videos" section.

[MuscularMelvin]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJK-ibS0uSc
Here it is. It's a 10-month old build, though. The latest one has a better gib sound from what I've heard, but it still feels hollow.

EDIT: Good example of the hollow and empty environment sounds.