# Report — full-game audio, subtitles and menu text (mission 3)

Brief: `docs/history/mission3_audio_text_prompt.md`. Earlier missions: the WAD/WEM toolkit (mission 1) and the
editor Unheard City (mission 2).

## What works (verified)
- **Every sound of the game is cataloged and editable**: the speech WADs (5 languages x 10,816), the SFX WAD (651)
  and, new, the **15,404 in-memory sounds** stored inside soundbanks (archive `BANK`: footsteps, foley, combat,
  weapons, UI, efforts; 8,098 shared by all languages + ~1,460 localized speech lines per voice language) in loose `.bnk` files and in 1,499 `.upk` packages. ackit reads and patches the
  LZO-compressed UE3 packages itself (`ackit/upk.py`, `lzo.py`; no external tools). A replacement goes into every
  copy (93,910 copies); 396 speech lines with prefetch heads in banks get their heads rewritten too.
  Names: 6,456 BANK sounds are named after their Wwise event (`Play_...`), the rest after their bank.
- **Catalog check**: `ackit verify --catalog` compares the catalog with a fresh scan of the game (missing, extra,
  duplicate, size/checksum, category, character, language, bank copies, subtitle copies/texts): **catalog OK**
  on the full game. It found and fixed 2 duplicate names per language (variation shown as `NAME#i`).
- **Subtitles**: found in `RDialogueEvent` objects inside the packages (9,016 speech lines x 11 languages,
  168,122 stored copies), parsed, cataloged (`SUB_<LANG>.csv`) and linked to their speech sound through the
  soundbanks (~99 % of the strings, e.g. INT 9,265 / 9,379; the rest are unused/placeholder lines). Edited in
  place in every copy.
- **Menu text**: the localization files (`BmGame\Localization\<LANG>\*.int`, ~7,000 strings per language),
  edited value by value; everything else in the files stays byte-identical.
- **Editor**: one *Language* setting (default: the game's language) for voices, subtitles and menu text
  (languages without voices use the INT ones, like the game); tabs *Sounds* / *Subtitles* / *Menu text*. The sound editor shows and edits the selected speech
  line's subtitle side by side; the subtitle list links back to the sound. Search, filters (character,
  category, file, modified), room counter, apply/revert/revert all, find & replace on the filtered rows, mod
  export/import with texts, changed-outside banner for sounds and texts.
- **Safety**: every changed file (WAD, bank, package, localization file) is rebuilt from a verified original copy
  in the store + the edits applied now; reverting the last edit restores it byte-for-byte; files changed by
  another tool or Steam are detected (whole-file SHA-1) and not overwritten without confirmation.
- **Tests**: 121 automated tests (unit, synthetic game with packages/banks/dialogues/localization, real-game
  read-only, offscreen GUI) pass. `ackit verify` PASS (incl. 300/300 in-memory WEMs rebuilt byte-identically).
- **Real game** (2026-10-09), all reverting and checking byte-identity themselves:
  `ackit verify --ingame` PASS (music heard, ncc 1.0); `--banks` PASS (77 in-memory sounds of the front-end
  packages replaced in 54 files: the game loads them, no crash); `--texts` PASS (12 menu texts found in the
  game's memory, 12 subtitles patched in packages, no crash); `tools/e2e_editor.py` PASS. Game files original
  at the end (`ackit status`).
- **Package**: `dist/UnheardCity-3.0.0-windows-amd64.zip` (86 MB, catalogs included). With `PATH` reduced to
  the Windows folders the packaged exe passes its smoke test (26,871 sounds loaded, encode + inject, 9,352
  subtitles and 7,020 menu texts loaded, an in-memory sound decoded from a package) and the GUI starts and
  quits cleanly. The installer is unchanged since mission 2 (install/upgrade/uninstall verified then).

## Unresolved / limitations
- **Heard in game, not proven automatically**: in-memory sounds and subtitles. The game loads the patched
  packages (probe data and texts found in its memory, no crash), but nothing of this plays/shows on the title
  screen without input, and keys posted to the game window do not reach the menu (findings 18). Speech lines
  were already in this situation; the decoder path is the same one proven for music.
- **Size limits**: in-memory sounds and speech must fit their original size; subtitles must fit the original
  text's length ("room"); cp1252 subtitles accept cp1252 characters only. Lifting these limits means moving
  objects inside the packages (new export offsets/sizes, added chunks): designed but not done, because it could
  not be verified automatically in the game (decisions 4c).
- **Unlinked subtitles**: ~1 % of the subtitle strings have no event path to a sound (unused or placeholder
  lines); they are listed and editable but not linked.
- **Unnamed sounds**: ~9,000 BANK sounds have no event name and are named `<Bank>_<n>`.
- Two copies of media `1C898731` differ; its checksum is left empty. Channel order for 4-6 channel sounds is
  unverified. M4A/AAC/WMA input needs an ffmpeg on the system.
- Another game build is scanned at first start (WADs: seconds; banks and subtitles: a few minutes, cached).

## Next steps
1. Gameplay check (a person): a replaced footstep/foley sound and an edited subtitle in a mission.
2. Optional: lift the subtitle length limit by relocating dialogue objects (needs that gameplay check).
3. Extend the curated speaker lists (`data/catalog/source/<lang>/*.txt`) and rebuild the catalog.