Hey Grace, while I understand the want for only receiving feedback on the Audio Device at the start of Public Beta, and this is fine, I don’t think blocking the ability to use it in the world if it’s already there is a good idea.
For example a map we’re working on has most likely hundreds, if not thousands of Audio Cue actors in the world, and if we have to replace them all with Audio Devices to publish, which will be, first off a really slow and painful process because some of these Audio Cues have been added as Components inside some of our Building Props, it will also introduce a huge cost in memory which we had not taken into consideration.
Regarding the “little control” players will have, which is true and certainly hard to tackle, most of us playing with audio have already found many workarounds to this, such as moving Audio Cues high into the sky through Sequencer. And I’m sure most players who try to use these will either: 1, find another trick like the one I mentioned before and use that, or 2, give up with Audio Cues and instead use the Audio Device.
I also much more prefer using Audio Cues in the world for Audio that I know will always be there, I’ve already done my settings in the Audio Cue itself and I’d rather not have to put down a device to play this.
Speaking about the Device itself, in its current state, it is not ready to be replacing Audio Cues, and neither is the Radio Device for example, during my testing with both of these, the “Unregister Player” and “Deactivate” option for neither of them worked.
The Radio had even worse problems, with Audio not playing, it defaulting to the “Fortnite” track, etc.
I personally don’t think these 2 are any better than Cues, at least in our current version of the Engine (23.40), if these fixes were to come into place in a later version, that would be a little better, but still not preferrable than using Cues, for my use cases.
If this is confirmed for an upcoming patch and cannot be changed at this time, I understand, but if you could still bring this up as feedback for this decision to be reconsidered at a later date, I, and I think many others, would greatly appreciate it.
Thank you!