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 |
| Game Sounds | Asset Manager → Game Sounds | Rebind every engine sound slot to your own audio |
| Audio Engine | Asset Manager → 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).
Regions / clips on the timeline can be moved, trimmed, duplicated, and split with the razor.
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 (Tools → Asset Manager → 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). Weather change and time change can also play only for a particular new weather or time of day (rain starting, night falling).
State enter / State exit play when the player's own state starts or stops matching a condition — the same condition builder as shader triggers (health below 25%, in combat, a status effect, the weather…). State enter with Health % below 25 is a heartbeat; State exit is the relief sting. Only that player hears it, and logging in already hurt does not count as entering.
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 Cinematics (Sound beats in the Story view) and event-command audio (Play BGM/BGS/SE) so scripted moments and cutscenes can drive the mix.
The Sounds Page — Replace Every Engine Sound#
Tools → Asset Manager → Game 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 sound empty and it stays silent — the engine ships no audio of its own. Assign a clip and it plays everywhere that sound is used, with no content edits. Weather and time of day are also audio trigger points, so ambient beds can change with the sky.
When each sound plays#
| Sound | Plays when |
|---|---|
| Panel open / Panel close | Any window opens or shuts — by key, button, quick ring or Escape. An NPC's shop counts. |
| Inventory open | You open your bag. If it has no clip, Bag open plays instead; if neither has one, Panel open. |
| Map open | You open the world map. Falls back to Panel open. |
| Notification | A notification card appears. A card with its own Sound plays that instead. Cards for quests, achievements, level-ups and loot stay quiet, because those have sounds of their own. |
| Quest accepted / Quest complete | You take a quest; you turn one in. Abandoning a quest plays nothing. |
| Equip / Unequip | You put an item on or take one off. |
| Buy / Sell | A purchase or a sale at a shop goes through. |
| Chat message | Another player's line arrives — at most once a second. Your own lines and NPC chatter are silent. |
| Melee swing / Ranged shot / Spell cast | An attack leaves the attacker. Everyone nearby hears it. |
| Buff applied / Debuff applied | An effect lands on you. |
| Block | A raised shield takes a hit. |
| Dodge | A dodge roll. |
| Fish caught | A fishing catch. |
| Skin | Each cut while skinning a carcass. Until you assign it, skinning uses Harvest. |
| Craft start / Craft complete | A craft begins; it finishes. |
| Anvil / Furnace / Loom | You open a forge, a smelter or a loom. |
| Jump / Land | A leap ability takes off; it lands. |
| Mount gallop | In place of your footsteps while you ride — once you assign it. |
| Mount summon | You are in the saddle. |
| Door open / Door close | A door moves. Everyone nearby hears it at the door. |
| Portal | You change maps from beside a portal. |
| Coin pickup | You pick coins up off the ground. |
| Rare / Epic / Legendary item | You pick up an item that rolled that rarity. |
| Chest open | A chest lid opens. Everyone nearby hears it. |
| Party joined / left, Guild joined | Someone joins or leaves your party; you join a guild. |
| Trade request, Duel challenge, Friend request, Mail received | The request or the letter arrives. |
| Pet summon / dismiss, Pet battle cry, Egg hatch | You call or dismiss a pet; a pet battle starts; an egg hatches. |
Sounds that are about you stay quiet for a few seconds after you log in and while a map is loading, so catching up does not ring.
Swim and the one-shot world sounds — Wind gust, Water splash, Campfire, Explosion, Earthquake, Bird call, Wolf howl, Crow caw, Bell toll — have nothing in the game to trigger them. Play them from an event with Play SE.
Ambience — Biome#
The bed for the biome you are standing in plays outdoors, and changes a couple of seconds after you walk into a different biome. A biome's own Ambient sound (Biome editor) replaces the built-in bed for that biome — and gives a biome you made yourself a bed at all. A map's own Ambient Sound Layer replaces both. Rain, storm and night beds play on top. Interior maps play no biome bed. A player already standing in the biome hears a newly published sound once they step into another biome and back.
Combat Music#
A map's Combat Music (Map Properties → Audio) starts when you deal or take a hit and stops about six seconds after the last one, at the map's Combat music volume. The map's ordinary music fades out while it plays.