Integrating Codec Plug-Ins

Introduction

Codec plug-ins are used to provide the opportunity to leave out some audio file formats (such as ADPCM, PCM, Vorbis, and so on) at compilation time to reduce the memory footprint of the sound engine. This document contains the necessary information to allow developers to use a given codec format in their game.

Note: The Vorbis format is the only codec that currently supports pluggable behavior.

Integrating Plug-Ins in Your Game

If a sound designer decides to use a codec format in the Wwise project for your game, its decompression plug-in needs to be integrated into your code to be available to the sound engine at runtime. Registration is done automatically if you include the corresponding factory file from SDK/include/AK/Plugin. For example, the factory file for Vorbis is:

#include <AK/Plugin/AkVorbisDecoderFactory.h>

Using Static Libraries

Each codec plug-in is provided as an individual library (.lib file) that must be linked into your game. For example the Vorbis format decoder library is AkVorbisDecoder.lib. You will also need to register the codec format using the AK::SoundEngine::RegisterCodec() SDK function.

Using Dynamic Link Libraries

For platforms supporting dynamic libraries (such as the PC), the AkSoundEngineDLL project allows you to compile a bundle of all sound engine modules. By default, this project registers the Vorbis codec and links with its static library. If you do not wish to use the Vorbis codec in your game, you may simply remove the link dependency on AkVorbisDecoder.lib from the project and comment out the registration of the codec plug-in in the sound engine initialization function.

Note: It is necessary to install the Visual Studio 2013 package in order to use AkSoundEngineDLL on Windows.

A codec plug-in must be registered by your game code before it can be used.