Audiokinetic | Wwise® | Wwise Programmers

“I like working in audio, but I don’t like doing boring work, and, thankfully, Wwise takes care of all of that for me.”
—Scott Bilas, Senior Engineer, Loose Cannon Studios.

True Programming Freedom

Programming for next-generation game consoles is becoming increasingly complex. Where today you have to manage thousands of game assets, next year it will be hundreds of thousands, and then millions of assets. If sound production for games does not advance, soon your time will be divided between trying to manage an ever increasing number of assets and performing repetitive programming tasks. Audiokinetic is changing all that.

Wwise helps you work more efficiently and creatively. With Wwise, you can avoid redoing basic implementation because all behaviors are handled right out-of-the-box. Programming cross fades, fade in/out, and other complex behaviors is over. And, because Wwise tells you the performance, memory footprint, and platform supported upfront, there will no longer be any surprises at the final mix.

By reducing repetitive programming and managing sound assets more effectively, Wwise allows you to focus on creating customized plug-ins that add real value to your game title. Using the plug-in mechanism in Wwise, you will be able to implement next-generation features like physical modeling and text-to-speech that will heighten the immersive gaming experience.

You can achieve programming freedom with Wwise because:

Programmers no longer need to be involved in the time-consuming re-routing management process of assigning sound objects to specific buses. Sound designers can change everything, regenerate a SoundBank, run the game without recompiling, and test the new routing in the Wwise UI.
Using Wwise, once the programmer has triggered an event, the sound designer has the freedom to change behaviors and enrich the sound experience independently.
Fades and cross fades are handled by the sound engine in Wwise out-of-the-box and are fine tuned and activated at the UI level by the sound designer.
Programmers no longer have to build common behaviors. The sound engine in Wwise allows you to use the UI to build container behaviors, like random, sequence, or switch with or without sample accuracy. These behaviors are then automatically handled by the sound engine.
The prioritization system in Wwise frees up the audio programmer by allowing the sound designer to quickly and efficiently perfect sound quality and experience. The required steps are performed in real-time without the need to recompile the game.
The sound engine automatically supports an unlimited number of environmental buses out-of-the-box through a simple API. And, because the sound engine creates and destroys the environmental routing dynamically, it ensures a consistent experience on all platforms and reduces the memory footprint and CPU workload.
Troubleshooting, Profiling, and Integrity Reporting in Wwise reduce programmer involvement because the sound engine contains debugging instrumentation code that is exposed visually in real-time. As a result, the sound designer can analyze the profiling output and take proper action in real-time while the game is running.

The Wwise Approach to Integrating Audio

Wwise is a complete audio pipeline solution that is changing the way audio designers, integrators, and programmers are creating and integrating audio for video games. It represents a paradigm shift and requires game designers and developers to approach their work in a completely new and efficient way.

Before jumping in and getting started, it is important that you understand this new approach as well as some basic concepts; otherwise you may not be in a position take full advantage of all Wwise has to offer.

The following document presents a brief overview of the basic concepts in Wwise and how they all fit together creating a new and exciting way to build game audio. Click here to download it.

“Integrating the engine was completely transparent. In fact, the rest of the team outside audio didn’t even notice that one sound engine had been removed and completely replaced.”
—Chip Bell, Audio Programmer, Pandemic Studios in Brisbane.