Post by DarkTonic Dev on Nov 9, 2014 19:54:50 GMT
We've already downloaded Unity 5 beta and made sure there are no problems using Master Audio with it.
There are a ton of features that MA will give you over native Unity 5 audio. Such as:
There are a lot of other small and useful features as well. The list goes on and on and requires zero coding on your end usually, although you can use the API if you prefer to.
-Brian
There are a ton of features that MA will give you over native Unity 5 audio. Such as:
- The ability to use Addressables, Asset Bundles or Resource Files for sound effects or music without writing code, which are automatically loaded into memory when you request to play them, then automatically unloaded from memory when done playing. This is necessary to not take up too much audio memory all the time.
- The bulk clip manager - lets you edit import settings in bulk with full visibility of each clip's settings.
- Use our Ambient Sound script that will play ambient sounds only while they are in audible range (based on the Audio Listener distance from it and the Audio Source's Max distance property. This saves tons of resources and performance! It also can use the collider of the Game Object to create audio splines and mesh audio, for rivers and other single Audio Source needs on large objects.
- Audio occlusion! We have set up a flexible optional solution for audio occlusion. It does Raycasts at the interval you specify and modifies the sound accordingly if blocked. Set up in seconds, then tweak to your liking.
- Setting up weighted no-repeat variations for sounds (i.e. 3 variations where one is randomly played each time and variation A should be played twice as often as variation B). Variations can also be set to be non-random and play variations top-to-bottom.
- Ability to set voice limits for buses and option to kill the oldest playing voice when limit is reached and you tell it to play another.
- Scene tools to locate all uses of a particular sound effect in the Scene, even inside Mechanim events!
- The ability to specify a URL to download sound effects from. Good for content that changes like seasonal sound effects!
- Resource files also have an easy to use localization feature to support multiple languages.
- Playlist functionality for music, including cross-fading, auto-advance, shuffle mode, multiple synchronized playlists for layered music, and much more.
- The ability to set up per-Scene sound effects and music without any code, even if your Master Audio prefab is shared between many Scenes.
- The ability to control volume of Unity Mixer Groups without stepping on your snapshots.
- Unity only allows 32 Audio Sources to play at once. To help focus things and control which are heard, we have included voice limits controls for each Sound Group and Master Audio bus you create. When a voice limit is reached, new audio cannot be played on that bus until one of the clips finishes playing or is stopped. There's also a special "Dialog" mode that stops or fades currently playing sounds in the same Group before playing a new one, as well as the "stop oldest" option mentioned above.
- An auto-prioritization feature that controls the priority field of all Master Audio audio clips based on distance from the Audio Listener. Since Unity uses the priority field to decide which clips to mute (lower priority) when more than 32 Audio Sources are playing, this can solve a lot of problems in a very busy game.
- A "no coding" script called Event Sounds that can trigger sounds, playlist, bus and other Master Audio functions from a few dozen common events, including uGUI, NGUI, Pool Manager, Pool Boss and MonoBehavior events, as well as transitioning to Snapshots (Unity 5 Mixer function). Extremely powerful and can do multiple actions from one event, in order. Can also be used from a Timeline.
- A Footstep Sounds script that requires no coding to use.
- A nice pro mixer view that sits self-contained in the Inspector and has preview, stop, and other buttons for each Sound Group you define, as well as showing you the number of actively playing voices (our buses also show this info). Yes Unity 5 has a mixer view but it's mainly for FX and level adjustment.
- Normal Unity problems like having an AudioSource play a clip on one of your enemy game objects, and when that game object despawns, the clip will instantly be cut off. If you used no plugin for this and tried to get around by the playing the audio at a Vector 3 location, you also won't be able to stop or fade that sound once you start it playing. Master Audio avoids this by having all the Audio Clips in a central prefab that never despawns and so doesn't have this problem.
- Full support for Master Audio actions from Playmaker, Behavior Designer, NodeCanvas, ICode, Dialogue System and other plugins for "no coding needed" sound power!
- Custom Events let you set up complex audio behavior with multiple listeners. The custom events can optionally only inform listeners within a certain distance. This speeds up workflow for sound designers by making them not rely on programmers at all.
There are a lot of other small and useful features as well. The list goes on and on and requires zero coding on your end usually, although you can use the API if you prefer to.
-Brian