Impossible to generate sound data for MacOS on Windows after upgrading to UE5

Question

Hello!

Our project is being developed for Windows and macOS and we use EBP system.
On Unreal Engine 4, we used to generate sound data for both platforms at once.
But after moving to Unreal Engine 5.0.2 we are unable to generate sound data for macOS from Windows.
That's very inconvenient because now people who make Mac builds are forced to use generate sound data as a mandatory part of packaging process.

It appears that Wwise gets a list of platforms for generating sound data by finding entries that are shared by both Wwise project supported platforms and UE project supported platforms.
But since UE5, they excluded Mac from supported platforms on Windows. So now Mac is not shown in available platforms list when we generate. 

Is there a way to get this feature back without modifying Wwise integration code?

Comments

It appears that Unreal Engine 5 changes have impacted cross-platform sound data generation.

Answer 1

Without modifying Wwise Integrations, it will be a little bit complex.

Totally beyond the scope, and never tried it (it might even be a simple switch to enable), but you can set up your server/dev machine with everything ready to cross-build Apple platforms on Windows. Unreal has this possibility, although the documentation and online help is very sparse. That will make the Mac platform reappear in Windows Unreal 5, which will in turn allow you to Generate SoundBanks. There's no need to fully cross-build, but the system must just have enough for Unreal Editor to believe it's actually possible.

With Wwise 2021.1, we are storing the Generated SoundBanks inside the UAssets themselves, so we must have some Unreal participation, hence Wwise Integrations trying to connect the dots between the two target names.

I know it's early yet and depending on your product's launch date, if you are truly interested in doing the switch to Unreal Engine 5, may I suggest you eventually consider switching over the new Wwise 2022.1 when it officially launches. Although we support UE5 as much as we can without breaking compatibility in Wwise 21.1, there are many features and functionalities that will simply never be supported with UE5 and 21.1. We are fully committed on having a full feature set for Wwise 2022.1.

And coincidentally, this becomes a non-issue since audio designers can merely Generate SoundBanks directly through Wwise Authoring without having Unreal interfering in the process.

Comments

Thank you for the answer, Michel!
If I understand you correctly, for now our only options are cross-build on server (potentially) and modifying the integration?

I also tried using a commandlet (running it as administrator as well), but I get errors:
LogSavePackage: Error: Cannot remove <uasset path> as it is read only!
And Wwise console wants to rewrite all the uassets regardless if they were actually modified. Not sure if we would see it in version control though

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Any update????