Programmer Sounds - how do they work?

The tool documentation has very little to say on the subject; words to the effect of “these are special sounds that can be triggered by a programmer - see API documentation for more info”.

The API documentation appears to have an example on how to handle programmer sounds that have already been set up, but nothing on how they can be set up.

So my question is, how do these things work? I’m used to Designer, where a programmer event is more or less the same as a “multi sound” event in Studio, except you’d have “programmer select” as a playback option (in addition to the current ‘random’ and ‘sequential’ toggle). Programmer Sound events in the Studio tool however only let you assign a signle sound file. Clearly I’m missing some vital understanding on how these things work (and possibly even what their intended purpose is).

So as a very simple example, say I have a couple of VO sound files, one saying “red player!” and one saying “blue player!”. Using Programmer Sounds specifically, how would I go about setting these two sounds up in the FMOD Studio tool so that they are ready for playback selection to take place code-side?

Thanks in advance!

Hi James,

Programmer sounds in studio allow for an application to play any sound, rather than simple selecting from a pre-determined list. The downside is the code is also responsible for loading and unloading of audio data. The single sound you can set in the tool is a placeholder for preview only, it’s not exported in the bank.

You probably want to look at trigger conditions on sounds or multi-sounds, and have the code set a parameter on the event to control playback selection. See the “Character/Hand Foley/Doorknob” event in the example project that comes with Studio.