Game Audio Programming: Principles and Practices Paperback – 30 September 2020

I feel like more books on game audio programming are going to be especially useful in the coming years, especially with spatial audio engines (Google Resonance, Steam Audio, etc) becoming more and more widely used. Unfortunately, this book doesn't quite serve the function I needed it for.I'm a (more-or-less) technical audio designer, meaning I know enough code and game engine scripting (Unreal and Unity) to work with programmers, but not so much that I fully understand audio engines. I watched the editor's GDC talk, and was hoping this book would help me bridge that gap in my knowledge. Instead, there are a number of code examples which assume:- you know C++ (or enough of a C-derivative to get the gist)- you know the FMOD APIand (this is the big sticking point for me)- you know how to connect external C++ scripts to an existing game engineIf you're using a custom game engine, or your game engine is written in C++, I'm guessing the last point is trivial. But for the generation of developers raised on Unity, this presents a bit of a black box. A future edition would be best served with some online repo of example code, connected to an existing game engine, so readers could see how it works.Additionally, there's critical information missing on how audio is encoded and decoded (for example - how does FMOD turn a compressed file into PCM?). The introductory chapter touches on the nature of sound - this is a useful primer/refresher - but then it jumps straight into a state machine, without any discussion of how audio buffers are being written and read by the computer. In short, it omits a lot of basic information about how digital games treat audio - information that I've had to look up elsewhere.I can't tell who this book is intended for. If it's intended for programmers learning audio, there are a number of gaps. For audio designers learning programming, there's too much assumed knowledge. It honestly feels like a water cooler book, written for audio programmers to trade information with each other. If you're "in the know" enough, you'll probably get something out of it.

Excellent resource on common audio programming problems. Well-organized, very useful stuff. Because it's a collection, the depth and approach varies, but most chapters included some actual, usable code and deep enough coverage of the concept to go forth and apply it.