Music, sound effects, and the data-driven game-audio engine.
Sound Studio & Audio
The Sound Studio covers everything your game hears — from composing music in a full in-browser DAW, to binding sound effects to engine slots, to a data-driven audio engine that behaves like a lightweight Wwise/FMOD.
There are four distinct surfaces, each doing a different job:
| Surface | Where | Job |
|---|---|---|
| Sound Studio (DAW) | Asset Manager → Sound Studio | Compose music and sound — multitrack timeline, instruments, effects, export |
| Sounds page | Database → Sounds | Rebind every engine sound slot to your own audio |
| Audio Engine | Database → Audio Engine | Wire audio as data — buses, events, music sets (the "middleware") |
| In-game runtime | The client | Plays it all with proper mixing |
The DAW — composing in the browser
The Sound Studio's main tab is a real digital audio workstation. Use it to make music beds, stingers, and layered sound without leaving the Studio.
Transport bar: Play / Pause / Stop, record-arm, loop, rewind, BPM, time signature, zoom, Mixer and Effects toggles, Save, Export, Undo/Redo.
Tracks come in two kinds:
- Audio tracks — drop an audio clip from the media library. Per track: volume, pan, mute (M), solo (S), color, record-arm.
- Instrument (MIDI) tracks — play a built-in instrument. Presets: Synth Lead, Warm Pad, Sub Bass, Pluck, and Sampler (which pitches one of your media clips across the keyboard). Edit notes in the Piano Roll. You can also Import MIDI (.mid / .midi).
Mixer gives a master fader plus per-track fader, pan, mute/solo, and live level meters.
Effects rack — 11 DSP effects you can insert per track, each with real knobs:
| Effect | Notable controls |
|---|---|
| EQ | Low / Mid / High gain, low & high frequency |
| Compressor | Threshold, ratio, attack, release, knee, makeup |
| Reverb | Decay, mix, pre-delay, damping |
| Delay | Time, feedback, mix |
| Chorus | Rate, depth, mix |
| Distortion | Amount, tone, mix |
| Limiter | Threshold, release |
| Gate | Threshold, attack, release |
| Filter | Type (LP/HP/BP/Notch), frequency, Q |
| Gain / Panner | Level, pan |
Save stores the project (it appears under Database → Audio as an "Audio Composition"). Export bounces the mix to WAV or OGG, downloads it, and can save the render straight back into your media library so you can bind it to an event.
Audio Middleware
When the Audio Middleware engine is on (Database → Audio Engine), audio is authored as data rather than hard-coded playback. It has seven tabs, each with full CRUD and a Validate button:
| Tab | What you author |
|---|---|
| Buses | The mixing graph — name, parent bus (empty = Master), volume, mute, and insert effects (gain, filters, compressor, limiter) |
| Events | Named audio events (e.g. "ability.fireball.cast") with an output bus, a container mode (single / random / sequence / blend / round-robin), polyphony, pitch & volume randomization, cooldown, loop, spatial attenuation (min/max distance, rolloff), and the actual media entries with per-clip weight/volume/pitch |
| Snapshots | Mixer states to blend to (per-bus volume/mute), with transition time and priority — e.g. duck everything during a cutscene |
| Parameters (RTPCs) | Real-time parameters (key, min/max/default, smoothing) that drive audio — tension rising as enemies approach |
| Music Sets | Interactive music: BPM, quantize (immediate / beat / bar), segments, stingers, and layers (vertical stems driven by a parameter) |
| Sound Banks | Groups of events + media that preload together, optionally auto-loaded per zone or kept resident |
| Triggers | Bind a game event to an audio event (and optional snapshot) |
Game events you can trigger on: ability cast, ability hit, combat enter/leave, zone enter, entity death, item pickup, level up, world event, movement step, weather change, time change — each with optional filters (specific ability, zone, or mob).
The game server fires these events authoritatively, so what players hear stays in sync with the real game state. In-game, players get master / music / SFX / ambient volume sliders that mix on top of your authored buses.
Authoring Sounds
Import or record clips into the media library, wire them to events and buses, and preview the mix in the editor. Because playback is event-driven, you can re-skin your game's entire soundscape by swapping the sounds behind existing events — no content changes required.
Cinematics & Triggers
The audio engine ties into the Cinematic Sequencer (music/SFX tracks on the timeline) and event-command audio (Play BGM/BGS/SE) so scripted moments and cutscenes can drive the mix.
The Sounds Page — Replace Every Engine Sound
Database → Sounds lists every sound the engine plays as a named slot you can rebind to your own audio. There are 115 slots across 10 categories:
| Category | Examples |
|---|---|
| Interface | Click, hover, panel open/close, error, success, notification, level up, quest complete |
| Combat | Swings, impacts, crits, blocks, deaths, ability casts |
| Gathering & Crafting | Chopping, mining, crafting success and failure |
| Movement | Footsteps by surface, jumps, mounting |
| Loot & Items | Pickups, equip, drops, coin sounds |
| Social | Chat, invites, trades |
| Environment | Doors, chests, world interactions |
| Pets | Summon, dismiss, pet actions |
| Ambience — Weather & Time | Rain, storm, wind, dawn/dusk beds |
| Ambience — Biome | Per-biome ambient loops |
Leave a slot empty and the engine's default plays. Assign a media file and your sound plays everywhere that slot is triggered — no content edits, no code. Weather and time of day are also audio trigger points, so ambient beds can change with the sky.