Sound mods / custom sounds don't work

[Sance231]

GAME INFORMATION

• GAME BUILD #: 101.102.17051.0 (#82587) 11090916
• GAME PLATFORM: Steam
• OPERATING SYSTEM: Windows 10

ISSUE EXPERIENCED

I have an issue since forever (I’m pretty sure that this feature has never worked for me and I’ve been playing the game on and off since it came out): sounds mods just don’t work for me. Graphics mods are fine, custom campaigns are fine but whenever they have custom audio in them that just won’t play.

Custom campaign has voice acting? Nope, won’t play.
The official sound fx replacement mod for soldiers being trained? Nope, if I apply the mod I don’t get any “soldier ready” sound effect at all, just silence.

I’m pretty sure that I’ve spent around 6 months without any graphics mods working either but that eventually got fixed so I was kind of patiently waiting around for my chances are edge case bug to get fixed but it just never happened.

I have no idea what the problem could be. Maybe it’s something to do with the file structure? This is what I have for the AoE 1 DE sound fx replacement mod:

C:\Users\myusername\Games\Age of Empires 2 DE\76561197999856819\mods\subscribed\22306_[Apr2021] Age 1 DE Military Unit Creation SFX\resources_common\drs\sounds

My windows username has a special character in it, an “á” and I remember that being the issue once before but if that was a problem none of my mods would work, right? Maybe it’s the fact that AoE2DE keeps the userdata on the C: drive while I have the game installed on my F: drive (both are SSD). I’d love to have all my game data on one drive but there is no option to move the userdata and I don’t keep games on my C: drive so /shrugs.

FREQUENCY OF ISSUE

Always, 100% of the time when mods with any kind of custom sound file is being used.

REPRODUCTION STEPS

You tell me.

EXPECTED RESULT

Nice custom sounds, custom music and custom voice acting should be playing depending on the mod.

IMAGE

Sounds mods are broken

GAME FILES (SAVE / RECORDING)

Log file from the session in the video:
2023.05.14-16.25.34.txt (11.3 KB)

[Felizon89]

Hi, thanks for this report, we’re now tracking the issue

[iSyser]

I had the same problem, I couldn’t use sound mods if the mod path contained non-ASCII characters, but other mods like string still worked.

I finally found a solution, maybe it will work for you too, it’s very system impacting, I would only recommend turning it on when you’re gaming and turning it off when you’re done. I also hope that the official team can figure out where the problem is based on this solution process.

1. Press Win + R to open the run dialog box, type intl.cpl and press ENTER.
   

   

2. As shown in the picture, to enable this feature, you also need to restart the computer.

Beta: &Use Unicode UTF-8 for worldwide language support

[PeakHornet46539]

Any update on the issue of sound/music mods not working. They were working for me fine until ROR came along. My game version is 101.102.20078.0

[Felizon89]

I’m afraid I don’t have the information or can’t provide an ETA

[thieftdp8498]

the issue with sound mods for replacement method was that if you have other mods that have sound folder, it needs to be in every mod (local) which kinda defeats the purpose.

have 4 local mods, use replaced sound method on my main mod and the custom sound didn’t work, throwing custom sound file replacement for all 4 mods solve the issue for me, but main mod has the highest priority so I’d consider this only 25% working.