How to install a custom Wwise plug-in?

Question

I'm having trouble writing my own Wwise plug-in.  My plug-in builds fine in Visual Studio, but when I open the plug-in in Wwise, it says "Note: The selected plug-in is not installed".  I have tried installing the plug-in from the Wwise launcher by browsing to the file location that Visual Studio exports to, but nothing inside that folder shows up in the window as a valid plugin to install.  I used to see the default 'duration' parameter with a slider inside Wwise for the plug-in, but since I added my own custom parameters, it is saying that the plug-in is not installed, and I can't see any slider parameters.  

Can anyone help?

Comments

I've made a little progress with this issue, although my solution is quite strange.  

Basically when I create a plugin it shows up in Wwise as installed.  Then though if I change some of the plugin C++ code, the plugin then shows up as not installed.

I found a work around for this problem, although I really have no idea why it works.  I have to create a new empty plugin with the same name as my original plugin.  Then I have to upgrade the new plugins VS project to the latest SDK and toolset versions.  Lastly I build the new empty plugin, but then delete the outputted files from the build.  Then I copy the newly created plugin ID number from the XML file into my original plugins XML file and finally build the original plugin (with changes to the c++ code).  Then the original plugin shows up as installed in Wwise again.  As I say I have no idea why this works, but it does.  I also found that it doesn't work if I don't upgrade the new plugins SDK and toolset versions (the original plugin VS project is also upgraded).

So now I'm automating this process from a .bat script that creates, upgrades, and builds the new plugin, then calls a C++ program to copy the plugin ID from one XML file to the other.  I'm nearly finished setting this up and I plan to add the .bat file to my pre-build processes in my original plugin VS project, so that it basically does all this every time I build it.  All in all, essentially this process is just updating the plugin ID on every build with an ID that is somehow valid after creating a new empty plugin to get it.  Very strange work around but hey it works.

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The plug-in ID needs to be unique to your plug-in. Sounds like there's a mismatch between your XML file and the built plug-in: make sure they match in Authoring/x64/release/bin/Plugins.

Setting the ID is a one-time operation, you shouldn't change it after it has been done. A plug-in created in a project with a given ID will be expected to have the same ID the next time the project is loaded as it's saved in the workunit file.

Details of Plug-in Ids can be found in the documentation here: https://www.audiokinetic.com/library/edge/?source=SDK&id=plugin_ids.html

Answer 1

The plug-in installation feature in the Audiokinetic Launcher works for packaged plug-in: there needs to a set of .tar.xz archives (produced by "wp.py package") and a bundle.json file (produced by "wp.py generate-bundle").

If the plug-in used to work prior to your changes, inspect the Log view to see if there are errors related to your plug-in library. If not, the issue is likely an initialization one.
You can debug your plug-in by attaching to a Wwise process and step through the initialization of your plug-in. I recommend you disable optimization in your release build to ease that process.