3 ms·

Steam Audio SDK and all included plugins now available under Apache-2.0 license

96 points by jrepinc 3y ago

reactordev 3y ago
Audio is an often overlooked part of game dev. Other than sound effects and music, how that audio plays is important. Spatial audio is a must for FPS games. Less so for The Sims. Most engine devs (myself included) just stuck with 2-chan spatial (as in, the pan L/R is the angle to you from your facing direction) with just simpleton software estimation of 3d space. No doppler effect, no reverb, just barely EQ. Kudos to Valve for giving us something other than XAudio and FMOD!
iAMkenough 3y ago
I applaud decisions like this that give developers and tinkerers an easier path to innovate and integrate. I seem to remember they promised the arch build of SteamOS would be made available after the launch of the Steam Deck, but maybe my shoddy memory just made that up. I hope we eventually get an official build that reinvigorates the concept of a desktop Steam Machine, giving us a console-like experience on more powerful hardware than the Steam Deck offers.
LorenDB 3y ago
I am impressed at just how amazingly great Valve is at being a responsible tech company. They eschew DRM for most or all of their games. They have gone out of their way to support Linux gamers with Proton. They used Linux as the base of SteamOS for their Steam Machines and then again with the Steam Deck. Now they're open-sourcing their audio SDK. They've even publicly stated that they if they ever go out of business, they will make sure you get to keep all your Steam games[0]. I feel a lot better about Steam as a dominant player than I would if pretty much any other company were the dominant player (Tim Sweeney, I'm looking at your and your anti-Linux diatribes). [0] https://i.imgur.com/4sa1Ln6.jpg https://i.imgur.com/4sa1Ln6.jpg (sourced from https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/18mzcn/i_asked_steam_support_what_happens_to_my_games_if/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/18mzcn/i_asked_steam...)
- jauntywundrkind 3y ago
  Gotta love a company who is existentially staked on healthy open platforms. Steam existed adversarial against so many other players: against closed controlled consoles, latter against Microsoft app stores. The best way to compete against Nintendo and Microsoft? Make sure that all games can run well & easily anywhere. Create affordable hardware atop the ecosystems you want to see win. It reminds me of Google really. Google exists because the web. Google's existentially staked to keeping the web alive & healthy: if the web rots, Google rots. We can argue about other perverse incentives & drives, but personally I think Chrome is overwhelmingly an act of preserving & growing the web ecosystem. Amazing things happen when great companies work for ecosystems. Rather than typical corporate shit of just trying to own & run everything yourself.
  - beagle3 3y ago
    Chrome is an act of “Embrace & Extend” the web. It may have started as a “preserve the web” against IE in the IE 5.5 / 6 days. But once that war was won, it became an act of Embrace & Extend.
    - jauntywundrkind 3y ago
      Therea an extremely strong loud section of people who declare this to be true, but I don't see that. I don't see how they see that. I read blink-dev a couple times a year pretty closely. This does not look like the destruction of the web. It looks like a team collaborating well with standards bodies, experimenting responsibly with origin trials, and pouring in huge effort to this engine.
      - beagle3 3y ago
        It doesn't at all matter how it looks on the mailing list; What matters is the web. The reality is, that with every passing day, there are more websites that break on anything that isn't Chrome, despite Firefox (last independent man standing) supporting all the latest things, and Safari (which has a monopoly on iPhone) supporting recent though not latest standards. As a firefox user, I now find myself having to resort to Chrome two times a week on average to use websites I must use (banks, government, insurance companies, etc...). It used to be once a month about a year ago, and once a year after IE6 died.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
brylie 3y ago
Very cool! I hope they add support for Godot Engine soon.
- ramon156 3y ago
  Support for what? If you mean the SDK, then it's up to the godot devs right?

96 points by jrepinc 3y ago

Audio is an often overlooked part of game dev. Other than sound effects and music, how that audio plays is important. Spatial audio is a must for FPS games. Less so for The Sims. Most engine devs (myself included) just stuck with 2-chan spatial (as in, the pan L/R is the angle to you from your facing direction) with just simpleton software estimation of 3d space. No doppler effect, no reverb, just barely EQ. Kudos to Valve for giving us something other than XAudio and FMOD!

iAMkenough 3y ago

I applaud decisions like this that give developers and tinkerers an easier path to innovate and integrate. I seem to remember they promised the arch build of SteamOS would be made available after the launch of the Steam Deck, but maybe my shoddy memory just made that up. I hope we eventually get an official build that reinvigorates the concept of a desktop Steam Machine, giving us a console-like experience on more powerful hardware than the Steam Deck offers.

LorenDB 3y ago

I am impressed at just how amazingly great Valve is at being a responsible tech company. They eschew DRM for most or all of their games. They have gone out of their way to support Linux gamers with Proton. They used Linux as the base of SteamOS for their Steam Machines and then again with the Steam Deck. Now they're open-sourcing their audio SDK. They've even publicly stated that they if they ever go out of business, they will make sure you get to keep all your Steam games[0]. I feel a lot better about Steam as a dominant player than I would if pretty much any other company were the dominant player (Tim Sweeney, I'm looking at your and your anti-Linux diatribes). [0] https://i.imgur.com/4sa1Ln6.jpg https://i.imgur.com/4sa1Ln6.jpg (sourced from https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/18mzcn/i_asked_steam_support_what_happens_to_my_games_if/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/18mzcn/i_asked_steam...)

jauntywundrkind 3y ago
Gotta love a company who is existentially staked on healthy open platforms. Steam existed adversarial against so many other players: against closed controlled consoles, latter against Microsoft app stores. The best way to compete against Nintendo and Microsoft? Make sure that all games can run well & easily anywhere. Create affordable hardware atop the ecosystems you want to see win. It reminds me of Google really. Google exists because the web. Google's existentially staked to keeping the web alive & healthy: if the web rots, Google rots. We can argue about other perverse incentives & drives, but personally I think Chrome is overwhelmingly an act of preserving & growing the web ecosystem. Amazing things happen when great companies work for ecosystems. Rather than typical corporate shit of just trying to own & run everything yourself.
- beagle3 3y ago
  Chrome is an act of “Embrace & Extend” the web. It may have started as a “preserve the web” against IE in the IE 5.5 / 6 days. But once that war was won, it became an act of Embrace & Extend.
  - jauntywundrkind 3y ago
    Therea an extremely strong loud section of people who declare this to be true, but I don't see that. I don't see how they see that. I read blink-dev a couple times a year pretty closely. This does not look like the destruction of the web. It looks like a team collaborating well with standards bodies, experimenting responsibly with origin trials, and pouring in huge effort to this engine.
    - beagle3 3y ago
      It doesn't at all matter how it looks on the mailing list; What matters is the web. The reality is, that with every passing day, there are more websites that break on anything that isn't Chrome, despite Firefox (last independent man standing) supporting all the latest things, and Safari (which has a monopoly on iPhone) supporting recent though not latest standards. As a firefox user, I now find myself having to resort to Chrome two times a week on average to use websites I must use (banks, government, insurance companies, etc...). It used to be once a month about a year ago, and once a year after IE6 died.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

brylie 3y ago

Very cool! I hope they add support for Godot Engine soon.

ramon156 3y ago
Support for what? If you mean the SDK, then it's up to the godot devs right?