The Technical Composer - Middleware as an Instrument, Adaptive Music and VR - Part 3 - Adaptive Music in WWISE and FMODThe Technical Composer - Middleware as an Instrument, Adaptive Music and VR - Part 3 - Adaptive Music in WWISE and FMOD

This article was originally published on Designing Music NOW on November 30, 2015.

In Part 3 of my Presentation from GameSoundCon, I continue the experiment of implementing my adaptive score, Blade Revisited, into both WWISE and FMOD for comparison.  Both WWISE and FMOD have invested a tremendous amount of time and technical expertise in creating systems that allow games and composers to create complex musical interactions with events in the game world. They both approach it with the "blank slate" method, which means that you have to do all the work yourself when it comes to designing a system for your music.  This offers the most flexibility and allows for a great deal of creativity when designing an adaptive music system.  However, as we will see in more detail in Part 4 where I compare the three systems, it means you have to do a lot more work to get the same result as Elias can give you out of the box.  In my experiments, I also found some limitations with each system that you may want to consider before choosing one over the other as well, though in the end, they can all pretty much accomplish the same thing if you are willing to work hard enough.

WWISE

Here is the video walk through for setting up Blade Revisited in WWISE:

The above video contains a fast motion version of a much longer (30 minute) tutorial video that I did showing a step by step process for setting up an adaptive music system in WWISE.  I will post that video in a future article for those interested in learning how to set up a complex adaptive system in WWISE.

FMOD

Here is the video walk through of setting up Blade Revisited in FMOD:

Links and Further Reading

Middleware Downloads and Tutorials:

Previous articles in this series:

Tutorials about Elias on Designing Music NOW:

Composing Adaptive Music with Elias - Part 1 - Introduction

Composing Adaptive Music with Elias - Part 2 - Advanced Features

About the Author

Dale Crowley is a Technical Composer at Gryphondale Studios and the founder and co-managing editor at Designing Music NOW.