I’m looking into the possibility of converting a game deep in development to FMOD Studio, and naturally I have Questions.
Is it possible to programmatically create events into FMOD Studio, to avoid having our sound designers having to create a few thousands existing events by hand?
It seems it is possible to go around the entire bank/building for different platforms thing by using programmer sounds, leaving the FMOD banks holding only the metadata. Is this a bad idea? What would break? We have our build/packaging system and don’t really see the added value of converting to FMOD’s preferred way of handling the raw sounds.
Our game needs to be fully moddable, and this includes sounds. I understand from the “DLC and UGC” chapter in the documentation that this is theoretically possible. Can anyone recommend me a popular game using FMOD and with a modding community - I want to look at how they handle it in practice?
I reviewed the top downloaded mods for Subnautica on Nexus Mods. Most of them are UI quality of life improvements; I couldn’t find a “new content” type of mod that has audio.
Yes. FMOD Studio supports using scripts to procedurally generate large numbers of events. This feature is commonly used in large projects.
Nothing would break, as such, but you’d lose out on the various advantages of keeping your sample data in banks. Our bank format is designed to minimize overhead and features built-in (optional) encryption. More importantly, importing your assets into FMOD Studio means that a sound designer can more easily use and audition those assets in FMOD Studio, making it easier for them to design and iterate on your game’s sound.
X-Plane 12 Flight Simulator has a substantial modding community and player-facing guides on designing sound in FMOD for use in mods.