I’ve finished reading through the manual and watching the tutorial vids, and will be posting some questions/suggestions, but I just wanted to check if it’s advisable to start building a new project in Studio yet? I need to deliver an fev/fsb to the programmer for integration this week, but it appears that things like: setting banks to streaming or load-in-memory are not yet available, and, more importantly, I’m not even sure if building works yet (it doesn’t appear to). I take it that the release is called a ‘preview’ for a reason, and that I should just keep working with Designer until Studio is further along? At which point I can use the importer to bring my Designer files into Studio, and not have to rebuild too much?
Either way, I’m rather excited about digging deeper into Studio.
As you’ve guessed, Studio is a ‘developer preview’ because there are some features that we have yet to implement. If your project needs these features, then yes, you should continue to use Designer 2010 for now.
As for whether migrating your project from Designer to Studio is a good idea, we leave that decision up to you. We would, of course, like everyone to start using Studio as soon as possible, but we recommend that you don’t do so part-way through a project. We’ve tried to make migration painless, but every game is different, so we can’t guarantee the process will be entirely trouble-free. On the other hand, if you think that the benefits of using Studio outweigh the effort potentially involved… Well, we’ll take that as a compliment.
Thanks, Joseph. I see Q1 2013 as being the estimate for all major features to be in. Would this also include all remaining minor features that are currently in Designer 2010, but are not yet in Studio?
The main feature that I’d really like to make use of is the volume ducking (either via side-chain compressor or mixer snap-shots). I’d consider a late switch-over to Studio to get access to that feature, especially if the importer is even further along at that point.
We are planning to achieve “full Designer 2010 feature parity,” but what that really means is “If you could do it in Designer, you will be able to do it in Studio.” How you’ll do it may change considerably. You’ve probably noticed, for example, that Studio doesn’t have the same concept of sound defs that Designer had; It has sound modules and nested events, instead. Similarly, it doesn’t have velocity parameters; it has the timeline. Studio has routing in place of categories, signal chains, banks full of events instead of audio files, events with multiple primary parameters, a music system that’s merged with the event system… There’s a lot of changes, and they’re all made with the intent of making Studio a more powerful and intuitive tool. So, when you ask whether Studio will include all the same features as Designer 2010, my answer will be “No, we’ve improved them.”
Oh, and Volume ducking by means of a sidechain compressor is already in Studio. We’re working on Mixer Snapshots.
Thanks, Joseph. That’s great to hear regarding the feature parity. What you described is what I had imagined you guys would be doing, so I’m not caught by surprise here. I take it that it may be difficult to make any promises about the timeline for what we can call ‘full Designer 2010 feature parity’? I’m mostly trying to figure out if I should consider leaving the door open for me to switch over to Studio in 4 months or so, specifically for the project I’m starting work on now.
I don’t believe I can technically give the programmer the Studio equivalent of an FSB/FEV right now (correct me if I’m wrong), and I believe there are Designer 2010 features that are forthcoming in Studio that I’m likely to need soon, so I think it may be best if I start with Designer 2010. If it sounds like I will be able to switch over to Studio within 4 months or so, then I’ll probably implement certain events in a more basic manner and leave the more elaborate implementations for when I bring them over to Studio (so as to minimize re-work if the importer can’t capture a number of Designer’s features in a 1-to-1 manner).
I was really happy to hear that the side-chain compressor feature was in. I had previously thought that mixer snap-shots was going to be the way for doing ducking (which is a great feature too), but side-chain compression seems more ideal to me. So I’m very excited about that.