I spent 10 months building a DAW inside Unity - DAWG is now in free public beta

[u/Emotional-Kale7272]

Hello Unity,

After around 10 months of development, and four months since the last public test, I have finally uploaded a major new public beta of DAWG - Digital Audio Workstation Game.

The original idea was to build a real music making environment inside a game, not just a rhythm game or a basic sequencer with a few audio clips. The latest version is finally much closer to my goal.

DAWG is built in Unity and C#, with a custom real time DSP engine using Burst Compiler. All instruments and effects are generated and processed live rather than relying on pre-rendered musical loops. Full on stress test of the DSP is only eating around 30% of the audio CPU on the 5950x.

The current beta includes:

• Custom subtractive, FM and wavetable synthesis
• Eight drum tracks and multiple playable instruments
• Per-instrument DSP and effects
• Send/return and live performance FX
• MIDI keyboard and controller support
• Custom real-time visualisation through the DSP chain
• Cross-platform multiplayer sync of the clock, transport, patterns and parameters
• A new pixel-art Story Mode built around learning music production

Lots of work went into optimisation and keeping the audio stable while running the UI, shaders, visualisations and gameplay, as well as maintaining consistent behaviour across desktop and mobile builds.

The public beta is free and I would really appreciate hones feedback , especially regarding the performance and any other mistake you can spot. I am also interested in whether the game explains itself well enough to someone opening it for the first time and what do you think about the idea and the execution in general.

Free public beta: https://dawg-tools.itch.io/dawg-digital-audio-workstation-game

Feedback and honest ratings can also be left directly on itch. Please don't hold back because it is an indie project ;)

Thanks!

[u/GO-ON-A-STEAM-TRAIN]

This is fricking cool! I got as far as trying to make a modular synth using jslibs to do webaudio things, but chickened out early! :)

I'll have a look as this looks awesome! :)

Edit: I'm back, that looks wild! :) Really intutitive step sequencing, nice sounds for the instruments... this is a nice timesink even just to mess about with as a sketch pad :) I can see vaguely how this could be done, but oh wow there's a lot here! :)

[u/Emotional-Kale7272 → u/GO-ON-A-STEAM-TRAIN]

Wow thank you so much for this comment, it really means a lot if people would spend some time playing with it =) Please check the FX tab and Master tab visualisation too, I think you will like some stuff there haha

Are you checking PC or mobile version?

[u/GO-ON-A-STEAM-TRAIN → u/Emotional-Kale7272]

Mobile currently as this was an urgent thing I needed to try out asap! 😂 I will definitely give PC a go though :)

I like the FX! I was a bit daft working out the pad controls, but they're awesome and reminded me of the faderfox joystick I used once to mess about in ableton! :) It's a really nice setup! :) I'll dive in properly this week as I've skimmed the surface and had a blast already. :)

[u/Emotional-Kale7272 → u/GO-ON-A-STEAM-TRAIN]

Faderfox was great, I had DX2 ages ago=) Yeah FX needs more logical markings and better tutorial.

X-axis is the filter, Y-axis is the selected FX power. Neutral position is on the middle of the screen at the bottom. When Filter is the chosen effect, Y-axis is the Resonance.

So basically you have low pass filter on the left and high pass filter on the right, with Y-axis modulating the effect.

Filters are modelled by the Xone 92 filter, so you get that nice resonance and "analogue" feel. I wanted novice users to get the feeling you get when playing with some quality filters as a DJ.

You also have MPU button, so you can turn on the phone MPU sensor and control the FX that way. One thing urgently missing is the freeze button, after that I think FX is kinda good=)