Book Image

Getting Started with C++ Audio Programming for Game Development

By : David da L Gouveia
Book Image

Getting Started with C++ Audio Programming for Game Development

By: David da L Gouveia

Overview of this book

Audio plays a fundamental role in video games. From music to sound effects or dialogue, it helps to reinforce the experience, convey the mood, and give feedback to the player. Presently, many games have achieved commercial success by incorporating game sounds that have enhanced the user experience. You can achieve this in your games with the help of the FMOD library. This book provides you with a practical guide to implementing the FMOD toolkit in your games. Getting Started with C++ Audio Programming for Game Developers is a quick and practical introduction to the most important audio programming topics that any game developer is expected to know. Whether you need to play only a few audio files or you intend to design a complex audio simulation, this book will help you get started enhancing your game with audio programs. Getting Started with C++ Audio Programming for Game Developers covers a broad range of topics – from loading and playing audio files to simulating sounds within a virtual environment and implementing interactive sounds that react to events in the game. The book starts off with an explanation of the fundamental audio concepts, after which it proceeds to explain how to use the FMOD Ex library, how to implement a 3D audio simulation, how to use the FMOD Designer toolkit, and how best to work with multi-layered sounds with complex behaviors attached to them. The final part of the book deals with working with audio at a much lower level by manipulating audio data directly. This book will provide you with a good foundation so that you can successfully implement audio into your games and begin pursuing other advanced topics in audio programming with confidence.
Table of Contents (13 chapters)
Getting Started with C++ Audio Programming for Game Development
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Obstruction and occlusion


Obstacles in the environment, such as large objects, or walls, also alter the way we perceive sound. We can often hear a person speaking in an adjacent room, but the sound is not as clear as if they were standing next to us. The reason for this is that although sound can pass through several types of materials, it loses energy and several of its higher frequencies during the process. This results in a quieter, muffled sound. There are two techniques used to simulate obstacles in 3D audio: obstruction and occlusion.

Obstruction occurs when the source and the listener are in the same environment, and there is an obstacle in the way, but there is still enough space around the obstacle for the sound waves to flow. In this situation, sound waves passing directly through the obstacle are attenuated and filtered, but reflected sound waves are not affected.

Occlusion occurs when the source and listener are in different environments, and all the sound needs to go through...