Is there a way to play an Fmod Event backwards, ie. reverse the audio playback?
In Unity it is possible to do this on an AudioSource by setting the AudioSource’s pitch to -1f, see this code:
// Reverses playback of the audiosource we send in.
// Manually play the AudioSource after calling this method to hear it
// play the audio in reverse from the end of the AudioClip
public static void ReversePlaybackFromEnd(AudioSource audioSource)
{
audioSource.timeSamples = audioSource.clip.samples - 1;
audioSource.pitch *= -1f;
}
How would I go about doing this with an Fmod Studio event?
Use cases where I’d like to use this:
“Timescroll”-effects where the player can manipulate time and make the game simulate backwards/forwards.
An easy way of getting more variation out of some types of sound assets, since with this you can basically “duplicate” the amount of sound variations you have in the game, without using actual reversed versions of your pre-existing sound files.
FMOD Studio does not currently support playing sound files backwards. This feature is already on our feature/improvement tracker, but has not yet been scheduled for development.
Other games that feature “timescroll” play a generic rewind sound effect, or pitch down all diagetic sound (or apply some other effect to make the audio sound distorted).
Alright, so it’s safe to say that that feature will not be available for quite some time?
Yeah, those are all valid “timescroll”-techniques, but I’m mostly interested in the possibilities that (dynamically) reversed audio can bring to a game, especially how that could allow a Sound Designer to create even more interesting sound events, without adding any extra files to the game. Also how it could be used for music (eg. as heard in the video I shared above).
Speaking creating interesting events:
Are there any plans for Studio to add a “Reverse”-functionality to Instruments within an Fmod Event? Or at least something akin to the “Replace Audio with Trimmed Copy”-command, but replace it with a reversed copy instead (even though we’d lose getting “free” sound assets with this approach)?
We generally do not implement features that allow editing of audio files, as FMOD Studio is not a tool for editing audio files, but rather a tool for defining adaptive audio behavior in games. Our intent is that FMOD Studio be used in conjunction with linear audio editing software such as Ableton Live, Logic Pro, or Reaper; the expected workflow is that a sound designer makes their source assets in their linear audio editing tool, then gives them adaptive behavior in FMOD Studio.
Still, we do occasionally add features that allow editing of source audio files in simple ways, if a particular kind of file edit comes up frequently while using FMOD Studio or solves a common adaptive audio problem. “Replace Audio with Trimmed Copy” was one of these. Accordingly, I’ve submitted “Create reversed asset context menu item” to our feature/improvement tracker, and our developers will consider implementing it.
Ultimately we have decided not to go ahead with reverse playback as a feature in Studio. I’d recommend using a placeholder reverse-like sound or creating reversed assets in your editor of choice and importing them to Studio.
We have kept the task for a “create reversed” context menu item on sounds, but so far it has not been scheduled for development.
