I dipped my toes in game audio for the first time about ten years ago. I had a moment with an audio director of a AAA studio here in Seattle and asked him what I needed to do to put myself in a position where I’d be considered for a job. He told me very directly, go learn Wwise.
So I did. There was only the old set of Wwise videos online and one course curriculum – so I invested in the course. While I already had an understanding of how to put sounds together and make a good soundscape on a video timeline, interactive audio opened up a whole new world for me. I realized that I knew very little about handling user interactions and how that would work in listening environments.
But most of all, while I learned how lots of Wwise concepts worked – inheritence, game parameters, events, RTPCs, and soundbanks – I couldn’t accomplish what seemed like should be a very simple thing.
I couldn’t play back a single sound in any demo.
I could replace existing sounds, the the vast majority of games were hooked up in weird ways that I didn’t understand or weren’t using Wwise at all. There wasn’t a Wwise adventure project that I knew of, and I never wanted to limit my creativity to existing in-game triggers.
I wanted to makes something different, new, and exciting to me.
I ended up sending my poor instructor email after email, in increasing frustration, because I didn’t know how to tell Unity to just play back a one-shot sound. Nothing I tried worked. Eventually, when I did get a sound to play back, it wouldn’t play back where or when I wanted to. I was so mentally exhausted that I could see how just about anyone would quit trying to persue a game audio career before it even got started.
I don’t ever want anyone else to feel the way that I did back then.
At the time, what I was trying to do was mostly unheard of – especially in the AAA space. Sound designers rarely programmatically hook up their own sounds. Often, engineers create utilities that make things easier (yes, even in Unity). But, that wasn’t good enough for me. I wanted to understand the inner-workings of my games, triggers, and be able to fully utilitze my creative tool set.
So, I dug in and learned. Now, I really enjoy sharing that knowledge with you.
If you’ve ever found yourself in a similar headspace and you really want to dive into the code part of game audio with Wwise and Unity, I’ve built a course that distills all of the information I sifted through into the absolute most important concepts. No going through excessive C# tutorials that are unrelated to audio, no deep dive into how Wwise or Unity work on their own.
Just:
- C# in useful – not generic – ways
- Integrate Wwise into Unity – both for personal use and how to do it with a professional studio
- Create custom triggers in Unity
- Control Wwise events in-game using C#
- Control Wwise RTPCs with in-game data
- Setting Wwise states with in-game data
- Affecting the Wwise music system through code
- Sending custom messages and debug information to the Wwise Profiler
- Manipulate the Wwise Authoring Tool using WAAPI (with the included bonus)
If you’re excited about this, the course is onsale today: C# Implementation with Wwise and Unity.
There’s a limited amount of spots available – it will continue to be onsale through October 2nd or when all the spots are sold out.
Take a look, and as always, shoot me a message immediately if you have any questions. I read and answer all of them directly.
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