How to become a "sound programmer"? (in video games or other industries)

Question

Question:
What languages ​​/ platforms / technologies will need to be studied in order to be qualified to apply for various "sound" or "audio" positions of programmers available in video games and other industry companies? Is this position a lower-level programmer in which you implement concepts completely developed by the developer, or does you need a deeper knowledge of audio production / music?

Explanation
Obviously, you need to know what systems the company uses (they make flash games, use XNA, write machine code at the console level, do they record audio tools for Mac / PC, etc.), but it is expected that there are standard which should you learn so that various integration programmers can bind your code to the application? Are there specific things you should know?

Additional information:
I have a degree in musical composition because I wanted to write music for video games. I tried to get various jobs in the production of audio and sound engineering in video game companies, but they told me that I did not have enough experience in the field of technology. Therefore, along the way, I received various tasks as a programmer in web languages ​​(PHP / Perl / Python, ActionScript / Flex, HTML / JavaScript / CSS, etc.). I have experience developing VST plugins and writing to CSound. I am currently working on developing web applications in the above languages. Now they say that at my age I should have experience in the video game industry, but trick-22, obviously, I can’t get a job in a video game company if I didn’t have a job with a video game company, Considering the companies that are developing audio tools (Digital Audio Workstations, developer tools, etc.), they say the same thing. At the same time, these places almost ALWAYS have at least 3 vacant “sound programmers”.

Answer 1

Be persistent. Do not turn away at the first refusal, ask them if you can somehow demonstrate yourself. For example. if they have a discovery, tell me that you know you can do it, could they not try you as a contractor or something like three months? ("It might be better for someone to do something in this role than nobody, right?")

You probably already know that “sound design” and “sound programming” often represent two different roles; the person making the sounds is not the person who writes the code for mixing and playing.

To a large extent, the only technological requirement for sound programming (in games, at least) is the ability to program in C or C ++ (in fact, C ++ is more common in my experience). Then, if you know the sound terminology and what decisions need to be made when you suddenly need to play three explosions, ten gun shots and fifty people screaming on a two-channel audio device.

Unfortunately, the industry is certainly facing age, but I think this stems from the implicit assumption that “old people” want “a lot of money” and a “big title”. If your expectations about salary and roles correspond to your experience (i.e. very little in the industry), then a company that does not look at you (especially with the experience of VST and CSound) is idiotic.

Answer 2

I have a degree in musical composition because I wanted to write music for video games.

If this is your goal, I don’t think that a “sound programmer” is the work that you really want. In fact, I would be surprised if more than 1 out of 10 sound programmers ever made a creative contribution to the project. It will be a very technical role, a graphic analogy is a rendering programmer who writes code to make things appear on the screen, but who does not do any modeling, animation or texturing of himself.

Answer 3

Well, I know more about the pro-sound side of things (where I worked as a programmer for 10 years) than in games, but I offer everything I can.

Try flipping the tables here. Look at it from the point of view of employers. Company games and pro audio companies get absolutely application stacks for programmers. They often advertise positions that are available on an ongoing basis, because difficulty finds people good enough anytime, not to mention when you need them.

In terms of skills, most audio programs in C / C ++ with DSP are often in assembler. This is not very difficult in itself, but the difficulty lies in finding people who understand acoustics and sound at a deep enough level to be able to apply these skills.

The best you can do is get some relevant experience, not necessarily paid. If this is really what you want to do, you will have to sweat a bit to get there. The CSound and VST plugins are great, but both are pretty simple compared to what you need to do for games or pro-audio programs, and a potential employer wants to see that you are well versed in audio and software aspects.

Try contributing to some open source audio projects or making some demos. Honestly, I'm not sure if your experience in web programming is really appropriate. More attractive to the employer will be the experience of embedded programming in real-time systems (which is closer to the fact that there are many audio programs).

Hope this helps a bit. Good luck.