60 lines
5.1 KiB
Markdown
60 lines
5.1 KiB
Markdown
# Report — full-game audio, subtitles and menu text (mission 3)
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Brief: `docs/history/mission3_audio_text_prompt.md`. Earlier missions: the WAD/WEM toolkit (mission 1) and the
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editor Unheard City (mission 2).
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## What works (verified)
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- **Every sound of the game is cataloged and editable**: the speech WADs (5 languages x 10,816), the SFX WAD (651)
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and, new, the **15,404 in-memory sounds** stored inside soundbanks (archive `BANK`: footsteps, foley, combat,
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weapons, UI, efforts) in loose `.bnk` files and in 1,499 `.upk` packages. ackit reads and patches the
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LZO-compressed UE3 packages itself (`ackit/upk.py`, `lzo.py`; no external tools). A replacement goes into every
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copy (93,910 copies); 396 speech lines with prefetch heads in banks get their heads rewritten too.
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Names: 6,456 BANK sounds are named after their Wwise event (`Play_...`), the rest after their bank.
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- **Catalog check**: `ackit verify --catalog` compares the catalog with a fresh scan of the game (missing, extra,
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duplicate, size/checksum, category, character, language, bank copies, subtitle copies/texts): **catalog OK**
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on the full game. It found and fixed 2 duplicate names per language (variation shown as `NAME#i`).
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- **Subtitles**: found in `RDialogueEvent` objects inside the packages (9,016 speech lines x 11 languages,
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168,122 stored copies), parsed, cataloged (`SUB_<LANG>.csv`) and linked to their speech sound through the
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soundbanks (92 % of the strings; the rest are unused/placeholder lines). Edited in place in every copy.
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- **Menu text**: the localization files (`BmGame\Localization\<LANG>\*.int`, ~7,000 strings per language),
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edited value by value; everything else in the files stays byte-identical.
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- **Editor**: tabs *Sounds* / *Subtitles* / *Menu text*. The sound editor shows and edits the selected speech
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line's subtitle side by side; the subtitle list links back to the sound. Search, filters (character,
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category, file, modified), room counter, apply/revert/revert all, find & replace on the filtered rows, mod
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export/import with texts, changed-outside banner for sounds and texts.
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- **Safety**: every changed file (WAD, bank, package, localization file) is rebuilt from a verified original copy
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in the store + the edits applied now; reverting the last edit restores it byte-for-byte; files changed by
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another tool or Steam are detected (whole-file SHA-1) and not overwritten without confirmation.
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- **Tests**: 121 automated tests (unit, synthetic game with packages/banks/dialogues/localization, real-game
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read-only, offscreen GUI) pass. `ackit verify` PASS (incl. 300/300 in-memory WEMs rebuilt byte-identically).
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- **Real game** (2026-10-09), all reverting and checking byte-identity themselves:
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`ackit verify --ingame` PASS (music heard, ncc 1.0); `--banks` PASS (77 in-memory sounds of the front-end
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packages replaced in 54 files: the game loads them, no crash); `--texts` PASS (12 menu texts found in the
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game's memory, 12 subtitles patched in packages, no crash); `tools/e2e_editor.py` PASS. Game files original
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at the end (`ackit status`).
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- **Package**: `dist/UnheardCity-3.0.0-windows-amd64.zip` (86 MB, catalogs included). With `PATH` reduced to
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the Windows folders the packaged exe passes its smoke test (26,871 sounds loaded, encode + inject, 9,352
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subtitles and 7,020 menu texts loaded, an in-memory sound decoded from a package) and the GUI starts and
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quits cleanly. The installer is unchanged since mission 2 (install/upgrade/uninstall verified then).
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## Unresolved / limitations
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- **Heard in game, not proven automatically**: in-memory sounds and subtitles. The game loads the patched
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packages (probe data and texts found in its memory, no crash), but nothing of this plays/shows on the title
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screen without input, and keys posted to the game window do not reach the menu (findings 18). Speech lines
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were already in this situation; the decoder path is the same one proven for music.
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- **Size limits**: in-memory sounds and speech must fit their original size; subtitles must fit the original
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text's length ("room"); cp1252 subtitles accept cp1252 characters only. Lifting these limits means moving
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objects inside the packages (new export offsets/sizes, added chunks): designed but not done, because it could
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not be verified automatically in the game (decisions 4c).
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- **Unlinked subtitles**: ~8 % of the subtitle strings have no event path to a streamed sound (unused or
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placeholder lines); they are listed and editable but not linked.
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- **Unnamed sounds**: ~9,000 BANK sounds have no event name and are named `<Bank>_<n>`.
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- Two copies of media `1C898731` differ; its checksum is left empty. Channel order for 4-6 channel sounds is
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unverified. M4A/AAC/WMA input needs an ffmpeg on the system.
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- Another game build is scanned at first start (WADs: seconds; banks and subtitles: a few minutes, cached).
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## Next steps
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1. Gameplay check (a person): a replaced footstep/foley sound and an edited subtitle in a mission.
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2. Optional: lift the subtitle length limit by relocating dialogue objects (needs that gameplay check).
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3. Extend the curated speaker lists (`data/catalog/source/<lang>/*.txt`) and rebuild the catalog.
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