Can I trigger seperate music events mid-sequence according to a master count?

Question

I am currently building the sound for a game that contains a lot of diegetic layers which combine with the non-diegetic score to complete the music. Right now I am handling this by triggering all elements that need to sync in a particular scene or set of scenes on start and then raising the volume of the various diegetic layers as I need them. This seems unnecessarily heavy on the CPU, however, and I’m thinking there must be a better way to approach this.

Ideally, Some central value would be counting and the various events would be able to jump in on the right measure whenever they are triggered. The composition is such that this isn’t just about coming in on the right beat or at the start of any bar or set of bars - its about actually coming in on, say, measure 32, because that’s where the non-diegetic music happens to be when X is triggered. To further complicate things, The non-diegetic core music that needs to be synced to is a looping sequence of 6 segments which each have their own length. “Bar 32” could be 3 bars into segment 4, for example. I have some solid programmers behind me so if the solution is on that end I’m all ears - perhaps some kind of master count? Is it possible to trigger the music from a specific point in a sequence from the code side of things? That combined with some kind of master bpm count sent to code could work… I’m at a loss how to approach this as my current method seems process intensive and prone to errors, particularly when a large number of assets is involved. Any advice is most welcome!

Answer 1

Have you looked into using Virtual Voices?  That might be able to work with your current system and optimize performance.

https://www.audiokinetic.com/library/2015.1.6_5553/?source=WwiseProjectAdventure&id=understanding_virtual_voice_behavior

 

Also, think about how you could potentially use Custom Cue (markers) within the music segments to specify sync points.  I believe programmers can do a callback on these Custom Cues as well if you needed to communicate some data or have them return some data via a switch group or something to drive the behavior that you want.