Audio Engine System Week1 Check-in

This week was spent doing a lot of reading/research. I whipped out my copy of Game Engine Architecture by Jason Gregory and read all about the audio processing pipeline and whatnot. Conclusion: I have no idea what I'm doing.

But we all need to start somewhere so here goes nothing.

I tend to prefer to build my systems top-down, to I started off by defining my interface. Obviously, it'll change a bit as I learn more about how XAudio2 works, but this really gives me a sense of direction in my work, and also works as a bit of a checklist.

The first screenshot is a look at that interface. Yeah, it's pretty generic. The second screenshot is the interface for an audio source. I haven't quite decided how I'll handle 2D and 3D audio sources in code just yet, but at the very least they'll have some functions in common so I started there.

And then came the setup with XAudio2. I was a bit nervous about how to go about it, and then I saw this line: "XAudio2 version 2.9 ships as part of Windows 10, XAUDIO2_9.DLL"

So I guess I don't need to do anything?? I literally just added the "#include<xaudio2.h> line into my code and voila!

This does have me a little stumped about how to make this system "multi-platform" in a way, since we're kind of assuming that the underlying files exist by doing this. Or wait, is that the exact reason doing this? I've suddenly found myself a little bit confused about the meaning behind "platform-specific code".

Working with XAudio2 has been going suspiciously smoothly. Admittedly, I haven't actually played any sounds yet, but I expected more initial roadblocks than the... none, that I've dealt with so far.

Or maybe this is my initial time spent reading paying off? I'd be rather happy if it was.

Stay tuned for my next update, where I will certainly run into those roadblocks I have now jinxed myself into. Until then!