A developer within the Audius community has created an Unreal Engine project that utilizes the Audius API to allow for the Audius catalog to be used within games/scenes created within the Unreal Engine client. As of today indie game developers can make the connection to Audius within their creations via the brand new Audius Unreal Engine plugin. This is all made possible due to the decentralized and distributed network that Audius runs on.
The plug-in itself comes with a couple things. Number one will be the main function of the project, the connection to the Audius network. Utilizing the blueprints of this project developers will be able to seamlessly make the connection between the game and Audius to facilitate music streaming for users. While the Audius API is easy to use it can get complicated within other software. A community member realized this while creating their own indie game within Unreal Engine. This is where the realization arose that there needs to be a standard for connecting to the Audius network inside of Unreal Engine. The second thing the plug-in will have on day one is an example user interface structure. The included UI is only meant to serve as an example for developers to understand what data is being returned from the Audius network and help them better understand how they can format it within their own UI. Understandably this UI can be used within builds but we expect developers will want to build their own UI to best fit their game style.
So how does it work? Luckily it is really simple to understand the functions going on behind the scenes. The main function the plug-in is using behind the scenes is getting the track metadata and getting the mp3 file for streaming access. The plug-in comes with a couple default playlists that are regularly curated on the Audius platform that developers can have their users listen to without any input from the user. If the developer wants to allow the user to curate their own experience they can absolutely do so. Once you are able to test out the plug-in you will realize that within the example UI there is a search bar. The search feature allows users to find their favorite artists or tracks on Audius to then playback within their gaming experience. Within the search bar users can also paste links from Audius such as playlists they enjoy or curated themselves.
Audius is always excited to see what the community is building on top of Audius. If you are a developer looking to add some music to whatever you are building take a gander at the API/SDK documentation and reach out to the Audius team at api@audius.co. We can’t wait to see what folks build on top of the Unreal Engine plug-in, make sure to send us your creations!
