My very first post on this forum when I first joined was a question about how helpful to know C#... Bryan Schmidt wrote an interesting response (and I think Nate did too) about how some of the more ambitious designers typically develop a working knowledge of the language.

A year later into Unity, I'm realizing that writing code and being able to read it are two different things. Sort of how writing books vs reading/understanding a competently book one aren't the same skill set. Its obviously to necessary to understand the language a movie script is written in to know how to write a score for the movie, but a music composer will almost never be tasked with writing parts of a script.

I confess I still have a long ways to go before I can follow along with the code in a game. Do you guys who are doing this for a living get to the point where you're able to turn assets into a playable game? Or do you get to a place where you're comfortable navigating a game then leave the rest to the professional programmers?  

I've had the privilege of working on several very interesting games, but not as the guy who implemented audio, which is my goal. I don't have much of a desire to write music, its really not my strength. I'm a musician and mix engineer, but not a composer.

On 11/19/2018 at 8:48 PM, jkuehlin said:

My very first post on this forum when I first joined was a question about how helpful to know C#... Bryan Schmidt wrote an interesting response (and I think Nate did too) about how some of the more ambitious designers typically develop a working knowledge of the language.

A year later into Unity, I'm realizing that writing code and being able to read it are two different things. Sort of how writing books vs reading/understanding a competently book one aren't the same skill set. Its obviously to necessary to understand the language a movie script is written in to know how to write a score for the movie, but a music composer will almost never be tasked with writing parts of a script.

I confess I still have a long ways to go before I can follow along with the code in a game. Do you guys who are doing this for a living get to the point where you're able to turn assets into a playable game? Or do you get to a place where you're comfortable navigating a game then leave the rest to the professional programmers?  

I've had the privilege of working on several very interesting games, but not as the guy who implemented audio, which is my goal. I don't have much of a desire to write music, its really not my strength. I'm a musician and mix engineer, but not a composer.

I find this question interesting as an electronic musician interested in working with game audio in sound design, audio engineering, and scoring. Things like adaptive soundtracks are fascinating to me, but I am simply not a programmer - and I know a lot of those things (as well as engines I hope to work with in the future like KYMA, but I digress) require at least a fair bit of scripting knowledge. Like right now I use Cubase, which is a great DAW, can sync to video, but then there's Nuendo which has all kinds of other scripting options and integration with video game engines. I'm really interested in the process by which sound is incorporated into games, so I guess I'm kind of piggy-backing this thread for replies which I'd find relevant too. I know a lot can be done in terms of scoring and sound design just in a DAW or modular environment, and sent off to the programmers as raw audio, but I know that especially nowadays that has limitations. I still want to learn more about programming, as well, but am mostly curious how much a "serious" freelance sound designer "ought" to know, before one can consider oneself remotely serious.