Audio

WagSettings drives an AudioMixer from your settings, converting each linear volume slider into the decibels a mixer actually expects. Volume applies live as the player drags — the only sensible way to choose a level.

Why the conversion matters

Mixers work in decibels, which are logarithmic. Sliders are linear. Feed a slider value straight into AudioMixer.SetFloat and you get the classic bug: the bottom half of the slider sounds identical and every audible change crowds into the top tenth.

AudioVolume does the mapping, 20·log₁₀(x), with a floor at −80 dB:

float decibels = AudioVolume.LinearToDecibels(0.5f);   // -6.0206
float slider   = AudioVolume.DecibelsToLinear(-6.02f); //  0.5

It lives in Runtime/Core with no UnityEngine dependency, so it is usable and testable on its own.

The quick way

Run Tools → WaggleBum → WagSettings → Setup with Audio ticked. It generates the four audio settings, clones a mixer with Master, Music and SFX groups and their volumes already exposed, and the applier's defaults match both. Add an Audio Mixer Applier under the manager and assign WagSettingsMixer. See Setup.

The rest of this page is what that does for you, for when you want to do it differently.

Setting it up by hand

1. Expose the mixer parameters. In your AudioMixer, select a group, right-click its Volume field in the Inspector and choose Expose 'Volume (of Group)' to script. Then in the Audio Mixer window's Exposed Parameters dropdown, rename it to something stable — MasterVolume, MusicVolume, and so on.

This step is the one people miss. An unexposed parameter means the player's slider silently does nothing, so WagSettings throws with the parameter name rather than failing quietly.

2. Create the settings. A FloatSetting per bus, and optionally a BoolSetting per mute toggle:

Add them to your SettingsProfile.

3. Add the applier. Add Component → WaggleBum → WagSettings → Audio Mixer Applier. It seeds three buses when first added — master with a mute, music and SFX without — which are exactly the settings above and the groups the packaged mixer template exposes, so nothing needs filling in for the common case. Assign your mixer, then for each bus:

Blank the volume key of a bus you don't use and it is skipped. Want voice or UI buses? Add a bus, give it a setting and expose the parameter — the applier does not seed buses whose settings do not exist, because Attach throws on a missing key and a fresh component that throws until pruned is a bad default.

4. Put it under the WagSettings Manager. The manager attaches every applier under it when it starts; there is nothing to call. An applier that has to live elsewhere: WagSettings.Manager.Attach(applier).

Mute

Mute drives the bus to −80 dB without touching the stored volume, so unmuting restores exactly the level the player chose. The mute setting persists like any other, so a player who quits muted starts muted.

What throws, and why

Audio misconfiguration is silent by nature — a slider that does nothing looks like a broken game rather than a broken setup. So these are loud:

Apply mode

Audio defaults to Immediate, so the player hears the change while dragging. There is no good reason to defer a volume change to an Apply button — see Extensibility for the modes.

Adding your own bus

Buses are just configuration. Add an entry, point it at a float setting and an exposed parameter, and it works — no code. To drive something that isn't an AudioMixer parameter, write an applier: see Extensibility.