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Understanding the different types of profiling in Wwise

In Wwise, there are different types of profiling, which cover broad and specific scopes:

  • Game profiling: Focuses on performance requirements and demands from the point of view of the sound engine and the various components that make up your project. It demonstrates in real time the cumulative effect the sound in your project has on platform performance and allows you to examine the impact of individual voices.

  • Voice profiling: Monitors the output from the point of view of individual voices. Voice profiling details the variable settings of different objects that make up the real time output of voices in a game.

  • Game object profiling: Analyzes the output of the sound engine from the point of view of individual game objects. Game object profiling tracks game objects so that you can observe their movements and behavior in real time. In this way, you can find out if certain game objects are problematic.

    Game objects are discrete entities that exist within a game. They are registered or created by the audio programmer for all elements within your game that can be an emitter or a listener. These include player characters, non-player characters (NPCs), weapons, vehicles, monsters, ambient objects such as torches, and so on. Game objects, which may be programmed to move independently, can have sound, music, motion, or positioned bus objects associated with them. The game object profiling tools (the Game Object Explorer, 3D Game Object Viewer, and Game Sync Monitor) work together to examine game objects in a game or simulation.

Profiling the sound in your game - example

Let's say you are making a fighting game in which your players control giant monsters that engage in combat in the middle of a huge city. You can use both game profiling and game object profiling tools to analyze the performance of sound in your game.

You can use game profiling tools to analyze the following:

  • How the many sounds associated with monsters, police, and bystanders use the platform's streaming capabilities.

  • How and when background noises such as collapsing buildings fall into virtual voice.

  • Which Effect plug-ins are applied to the different monster growls and how these affect CPU usage.

  • Which API functions were called at particular moments in the timeline.

You can use voice profiling tools to analyze the following:

  • Why the police sirens are inaudible.

  • How the Reverb Effect impacts the screams of bystanders in a particular location.

  • How does an API call affect a particular voice at a certain moment in the timeline.

You can use game object profiling tools to analyze the following:

  • How the attenuation radius of the sounds for each monster in your game interacts with that of each other monster.

  • Where game objects such as police helicopters move relative to one another and to the monsters.

  • How an RTPC such as “Panic” affects the playback of sounds associated with bystander game objects.

In this way, the game profiling and game object profiling tools can give you a complete view of your game's soundscape in action.


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