Version

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Wwise SDK 2021.1.14
macOS Plug-in Considerations

The Wwise Authoring application is made available on macOS by means of an adaptation layer that allows Windows binaries to be executed on Mac systems. Because of this, the Authoring plug-in binaries must be Windows DLLs. There is therefore no native way to build the Authoring part of a plug-in on a Mac machine: you will need to use a Windows machine or a virtual machine running Windows with the appropriate Visual Studio build tools.

This limitation is specific to the Authoring part of the plug-in. In other words, the Sound Engine part targeting Apple platforms has to be built on a Mac machine running macOS. This native Sound Engine plug-in library has to be in Apple's library format (.dylib or .a) and distributed with the game or linked into it.

However, as outlined above, because the Wwise Authoring application uses Windows binaries even on macOS, the Sound Engine portion of the plug-in that is linked into the Authoring plug-in to allow auditioning must be a Windows library.

Location of Authoring Plug-ins on macOS

The Wwise Authoring application on macOS, as installed by the Audiokinetic Launcher, provides a set of files in different locations. The main application package, Wwise.app, is installed in the installation directory chosen at installation time, and contains the necessary adaptation files to run Wwise. However, the actual Wwise Authoring binaries are installed in a global location: /Library/Application Support/Audiokinetic. This is necessary so that plug-in files can be added without modifying Wwise.app, which must remain read-only for security purposes.

To test a plug-in, you can always add a packaged plug-in from the Launcher. Alternatively, you can manually copy the DLL and XML files to the Authoring plug-in's directory:

/Library/Application Support/Audiokinetic/Wwise <Version>/Authoring/x64/Release/bin/Plugins

Note: Wwise Authoring must be relaunched for the new plug-in to be used.

Debugging Authoring Plug-ins on macOS

Because the debug symbols of your plug-in will be in the Microsoft PDB format, there is no easy way to attach a debugger to the process and step through your code. However, it is possible to read the console output by launching the Wwise Authoring application through a launch script.

The launch script is located in <Install Location>/Wwise.app/Contents/Tools/WwiseOpenProject.sh and can be launched from the Terminal application by its full absolute path, surrounded by quotes (or by manually escaping spaces).

This script takes a single optional argument: the path of the Wwise project to be opened. If none is given, Wwise opens normally. Once launched, the standard output will be displayed in the console. You can log this output by adding printf calls in your plug-in's code.


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