Discussion: Audio system overhaul

[stickgrinder]

Topic

We feel that the audio tab and in general the audio functions in Popochiu got less love compared to other section.

Godot 4.3 will also bring a load of new features on that side, that we could leverage to achieve iMuse/FMOD-like dynamic background music, or more advanced audio effects.

We can discuss the topic here with the community, and decide on a roadmap for the new features.

Goals

The goals of this discussion is, in order:

1. Identify the real use cases that we must, should, could and won't address
2. Define the overall architectural direction of this effort
3. Spawn a set of issues that will make their way to the product roadmap in the future

Your proposal, in detail

We have no clear ideas but we know that we want our audio section to be a user-friendly gateway to the complex but awesome set of nodes in Godot 4.3.

The concept of AudioCues that @mapedorr inherited from other engines my (or not) become obsolete, but we'll probably have a set of PopochiuObjects that will allow the game designer to easily and quickly configure things like:

• Dynamic background music that can fade to and from different versions of the same piece, FMOD style, with the help of engine functions.
• A set of variations for SFX that can be executed randomly or round-robin, to be more believable (say: footsteps, birds chirping, drops, etc)
• A set of samples to be played at random time (in a range) like wind stirring treetops, or whatever.
• A way to create loop sections in the same music so that one can start the music playing an intro, then the music gets into a loop until a specific function is called, and the loop will end into an outro.

More use cases must be identified, the UX has to be imagined and priorities have to be defined. That's what this discussion is about :)

Record of decisions taken

To be discussed

[mapedorr]

I'll try to bring a friend who is an audio designer to this discussion so he can give us ideas of what kind of tools might be helpful for someone in that role.

[grahfmusic]

Hi all, this is something that is key for me in projects using this framework. I studied audio engineering at university as well as music performance so I'm glad to be of service to get this fully robust.