Preface

From those exotic sound effects that improve game fun and playability to that dark musical score that sets the entire atmosphere of a scene or game audio is essential to any great game. Yet it is perhaps one of the most often overlooked assets in the development of a game by new or indie developers. Instead, they dedicate the bulk of their effort to graphics and other visuals, often deferring the audio portion until the later stages of production. They do this not because good audio is not a critical aspect to any good game, but as a single or indie developer they feel AAA game quality audio is out of reach. Of course, that is far from the truth, especially with the great audio system built into Unity and the many freely available commercials plugins and tools.

This book was written? to introduce the reader to the extensive audio framework built within Unity and other freely available commercials tools and plugins. Often, audio development tools expect a certain level of knowledge in sound, mixing and music. By following through the books material and exercises a reader should be able to master all the essentials of audio development. From the basics of implementing an audio source; to spatial sound, mixing, effects and dynamic and adaptive audio system. As well there will be time spent learning professionals like FMOD Studio for game audio and Reaper for music composition. While the book assumes no prior knowledge of working with Unity or audio, there will be enough new and interesting content that even the more advanced developer will find useful.