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Game Sound Lab — audio overrides + audition

A toolchain for replacing the game's own audio: silence vanilla Wwise events you don't want, and (in-game) audition any event by name so you can hear it first. Aimed at total-overhaul mods that want to reshape the soundscape; for ENC itself it's mostly a diagnostic/authoring aid. Operates at the event level (see Limitations).

Parts

Part Where What
Game Sound Lab window ENCReload editor, Tools/HAF/Game Sound Lab authors haf_sounds.json — a list of overrides; has a searchable catalog pick list with category tabs
haf_sounds.json BepInEx/config/ { "overrides": [ { "silence": "<event-substring>", "replaceWith": "" } ] } — the registry (via SoundOverrideRegistry)
Plugin read UniversalInject.ShouldSilenceEvent / EnsureSoundOverrides drops any Wwise event whose name contains a silence substring, at the AudioManager.PostEvent service sink (Hk_SilenceEvents)
Audio/SilenceAudioEvents config BepInEx/config/community.humankind.haf.cfg the same silence mechanism as a hand-edit escape hatch (comma-separated substrings)
F8 audition plugin F8 window — Play Event / Stop post any event by name on live emitters so you can HEAR it; Stop halts a looping audition
Catalog Dump Sound Catalog (F8) → haf_sound_catalog.txt the game's full list of Wwise event names; feeds the Lab's pick list

Workflow

  1. In-game: F8 → Dump Sound Catalog (in a loaded save, so the catalog is full) → writes haf_sound_catalog.txt.
  2. Audition (optional): F8 → Play Event, type/paste an event name, hear it. Stop ends loops. This is how you identify which event is the one you want.
  3. Author: open the Game Sound Lab, Browse sound catalog → search (filter by category tab) → click an event to add it as an override → optionally trim to a substring (drop _Start/_Stop to catch a whole family) → Save.
  4. Apply: relaunch. The load log shows [Audio] sound overrides: N silence rule(s) from haf_sounds.json.

How the audition works (hard-won)

Playing a Wwise event is nothing like playing a WAV (the Play Sound Test (WAV) button is a Unity AudioSource). An event needs the Wwise runtime + a registered game object. What actually works:

  • Look up the AudioEventHandle object by name (Resources.FindObjectsOfTypeAll) and post it via the emitter's own PostEvent(AudioEventHandle) — NOT AkSoundEngine.PostEvent(string, gid), which posts silently.
  • Post on all AudioEmitter components (units and cities/districts). Camera.main is null in-game so distance heuristics don't work, and a city-ambience event needs the city's emitter, not a unit's.
  • A _Start event begins a loop until its _Stop; the Stop button StopAlls every emitter to cut it.

Limitations (the granularity ceiling)

  • Event-level only. Everything here addresses Wwise events (Play_HG_ENV_City_BaseLayer). The individual samples inside an event (the actual .wem files) are hashed, unnamed on disk — there is no "cart" or "birds" to list or silence. You can mute/audition a whole event, never one sample within it.
  • Era/context-switched content. One event can play different audio by a Wwise switch. E.g. Play_HG_ENV_City_BaseLayer plays modern city noise for a modern empire and ancient village/cart ambience for a frozen ancient city-state — the game already does era-appropriate ambience natively, from one event, via the switch. Silencing the event hits all eras/empires; you can't target one switch branch by name.
  • Sample-level control ("show me the cart, let me replace just it") would require decoding the Wwise banks — a large reverse-engineering effort, deliberately not attempted.

The city-ambience investigation (shelved, low priority)

A recurring "cart sound near a modern-era map" was chased at length. Findings: it is not a mod leak (verified by an A/B against a pre-audio-override plugin build — identical behaviour — and it plays across saves independent of our units). Best-fitting explanation: a vanilla ambient enrichment pool — occasional, timer-driven background flavor one-shots, context-gated by era — of which the cart is one sample inside the city-ambience event. Not confirmed to a single named event (the definitive test, an Audio Trace parked on the ancient city-state, was not run). Shelved as low priority. If revisited: trace the ancient settlement directly for the event that fires with the cart.

Future

replaceWith is authored + stored but not yet consumed — the reserved hook for silence-then-substitute (drop the vanilla event, post a better one). That's the natural next step for a soundscape-overhaul mod.