Sound Mods Result in Missing Sounds

[ProphecyDoggo]

GAME INFORMATION

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• GAME BUILD #: 17957298
• GAME PLATFORM: Steam
• OPERATING SYSTEM: Windows 11

ISSUE EXPERIENCED

^{DESCRIBE THE ISSUE IN DETAIL (below). LIMIT TO ONE BUG PER THREAD.}

Installing sound replacement mods, such as Original Sounds, result in certain sounds missing or silent. I have specifically noted this is the case with ‘under_attack’ and ‘button_ui’ sounds.

I was attempting to create a mod that replaces the ‘under_attack’ sound when I discovered this issue. If there is an issue with the method used to create or apply Original Sounds I believe it applies to most sound mods. The creator of Original Sounds has written a popular guide on the subject and other guides and tutorial videos reference that guide specifically and recommend essentially the same steps.

A further issue occurs where ‘button_select’ stops working after some period of time or action. This behavior occurs after already bugged behavior is observed so I have not investigated it in detail.

My reproduction steps use the game editor to quickly trigger sounds, I have observed the issue in Skirmish mode as well.

FREQUENCY OF ISSUE

^{How often does the issue occur? CHOSE ONE; DELETE THE REST!}

• 100% of the time / matches I play (ALWAYS)

REPRODUCTION STEPS

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Here’s the steps to reproduce the issue:

1. Install Original Sounds mod through in-game mod browser (this one: Mods Single - Age of Empires - World's Edge Studio).
2. Restart the game.
3. Create a scenario in the editor.
4. Add a trigger.
5. Set “Trigger Looping” to yes.
6. Verify that “Trigger Starting State” is set to “On”.
7. Add an effect to the trigger: Play Sound.
8. Enter under_attack in the Sound (Event) Name field.
9. Press Esc and click Test.
10. Note that no sound plays.

EXPECTED RESULT

^{What was SUPPOSED to happen if the bug you encountered were not present?}

“under_attack” sound should play on repeat roughly ever 0.5 seconds as it does without the mod applied.

IMAGE

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AoE2SoundReport

GAME FILES (SAVE / RECORDING)

^{Attach a SAVE GAME (.aoe2spgame) or GAME RECORDING (.aoe2record) of the match where you encountered the issue. Link it below if using an external file service.}

Not applicable.

[ProphecyDoggo]

https://www.reddit.com/r/aoe2/comments/1jw4xpx/anyone_else_missing_sounds/

People in this thread mention some other sounds that are missing when using Original Sounds. I’m really not familiar with any possible differences Original Sounds is expected to have, so I focused on a couple.

[InvArrow]

Noticing the same with a lot of sound mods. This patch has broken a lot of them.
Another example where the patch broke is with the Original Campaign Voices mod: [UFS] Original Campaign Voices
The dialogs while playing the scenarios don’t play most of the time.

[J4MMYD0D93R]

Thank you! I was literally about to post this same bug, but without knowing what the cause was. I had made a video and everything. You posting this has made me check my mods, and disabling the original sounds mod has fixed my issue. Thank you again

[Tharkun221]

I am having the same issue. Have a mod that changes the TC set gather point sound and the sound is completely missing (no moded sound, no default sound, just silence). If I disable the mod the default sound returns. Hope they fix this soon!

[Ekarlath]

Sounds mods requieres you to restart the game also for all the files to be refreshed. I think the issue comes from wav versus wewm format, some kind of “stream I/O” related properties, like the game engine act abit like a “BiOS” for the game, and then it cant reaccess low level content so you have to shutdown / start from fresh, because “restart” function never worked on any computer system since the dawn of humanity. (I.T. spaeaking there, 99.99% of IT issues are fixed by unplugging repluggin the power cable, reboot function is trash)

Normally, when you use a mod with sounds, if there are missing sounds in this mod, it will fallback to vanilla sounds so…It can only work. The only thing that can happen is that you’re activating some new sound files, that the “runtime engine” of the game can’t access correctly to read them, load them into your RAM and push them into the audio drivers. If I’m right, particles also share that same “issue”, where you just have to quit the game and start it fresh.

Hope those info will help you in understanding abit better how the sounds works, and if it did not help, well, then I just stole you abit of your time and just for that I’m proud of myself xD.

[Scandalf]

It looks like some sound IDs and sound names got changed or unintentionaly locked. The building and unit sounds from the “Original Sound” work no problem. But certain sound files make the gamesound bug out completely. For a temporary solution go to the mod directory “C:\Users\Username\Games\Age of Empires 2 DE\761…3876\mods\local\Original Sounds\resources_common\drs\sounds” and delete the files below, and then the rest of the mod works again while no crucial game sounds are missing.

List of problematic .wem files:

button_select
button_ui
notification
error
tribute
age_up
player_eliminated
wonder_started
wonder_completed
wonder_destroyed
capture_everything
capture_broken
monk_attacking
monk_convert_complete
under_attack
town_under_attack
flare
victory
defeat
farm_depleted
gatherpoint_set
technology_researched
button_gfx
button_mouseover
population_capped
animal_discovered
townbell_start
townbell_stop
chat_received
market_sell
market_buy
gate_close
gate_open
objective_changed
relic_pickup
animal_attack
spy_infiltration

Question is if those sound files can be re-assigned with another filename/id.

So its basicly all UI sounds that cant be customized, Units sounds still work

[ProphecyDoggo]

Your list seems to match all the sounds listed in the file sounds.json, found here for my Steam version of the game:
C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\AoE2DE\resources_common\dat\sounds.json

They’re all prefixed with Play_, but the game seems to autocomplete that when you try and play a sound in the editor using my reproduction method.

The names for playing the sounds haven’t changed from the game side for triggering the sounds, but the mapping for the replacement method might have changed. In some of the comments on StepS’s guide they mention UI sounds used a different system and naming scheme. Maybe they switched to the new scheme, or a different one entirely? It’s possible we just have to find the new sound IDs.

@StepS7578 Have you gotten any reports about your mods?

[HestiaAoE]

@Scandalf

List of problematic .wem files

Appreciate your effort! I can confirm most of them not working, except “under_attack” still working for me.

EDIT: Alright, after I move all other broken files out of the mod, “under_attack” is broken as well!

@Ekarlath

so…It can only work

@Ekarlath

Hope those info will help you in understanding abit better how the sounds works, and if it did not help, well, then I just stole you abit of your time and just for that I’m proud of myself xD

At least verify your assumption before educating others?

[HestiaAoE]

We need a hotfix @StepS7578 this game is unplayable with so many critical sounds broken:

@Scandalf

button_select
button_ui
notification
error
tribute
age_up
player_eliminated
wonder_started
wonder_completed
wonder_destroyed
capture_everything
capture_broken
monk_attacking
monk_convert_complete
under_attack
town_under_attack
flare
victory
defeat
farm_depleted
gatherpoint_set
technology_researched
button_gfx
button_mouseover
population_capped
animal_discovered
townbell_start
townbell_stop
chat_received
market_sell
market_buy
gate_close
gate_open
objective_changed
relic_pickup
animal_attack
spy_infiltration

[InvArrow]

Campaign specific sounds are also broken (part of the Original Campaign Voices mod). Adding a few below for reference:

play_a1a.wem
play_a1aa.wem
play_a1ab.wem
play_a1ac.wem
play_a1ad.wem
play_a1ae.wem
play_a1af.wem
play_a1ag.wem
play_a1ah.wem
play_a1b.wem
play_a1c.wem
play_a1d.wem
play_a1e.wem
play_a1f.wem
play_a1g.wem
play_a1h.wem

We definitely need a hotfix for this. Would be good if the devs at least acknowledge this issue rather than ignoring it because it only affects the sound mods.

[StepS7578]

We are looking into these reports.

[DerMauch]

Is the bug being tracked yet and is there by any chance an estimation when it will likely get fixed? I couldn’t find it in the two lists below.

https://support.ageofempires.com/hc/en-us/articles/360049490811-Known-Issues-Solutions

List of unfixed bugs

This post is a community effort to keep track of ongoing issues that remain unaddressed, as well as important new-found issues that affect the gameplay experience negatively Feel free to link a bug report of a new issue as a response to this post. High Priority: Out of syncs after game starts on ranked immediately Force drop loses resource decimals Freezes after patch - Game disrupting freezes that last for 5-10 seconds, happen every 4-5 minutes ------ NOTE: FIX FOR FREEZE IS TO LOG …

If we can help with reproducing the issues or anything else, please let us know.

Thank you!

[UnluckyForSome9]

Yep players contacting me about the Original Campaign Voices Mod too…

As discussed it seems like some modded SFX are still working, so only some sound IDs/sound names/sound locations got changed or unintentionaly locked.

I tried extracting the Base.pck WWISE file - these extract out to Base_1.wem, Base_2.wem etc etc

Replacing the line “Follow the path to the Blue flag” from William Wallace, with it’s counterpart, Base_425.wem in the same mod structure as before:

(mods\local[UFS] Original Campaign Voices\resources_common\drs\sounds\Base_425.wem)

doesn’t work either

[UnluckyForSome9]

DLC has released, sounds still broken.

[HestiaAoE]

When could we get a hotfix?

[GoKu]

This is still not fixed even after the release of the DLC. One of the worst bugs that can happen to a game.

[UnluckyForSome9]

Still not fixed. I’m going to keep bumping this

[HestiaAoE]

@StepS7578 Is this really hard to fix?

[ADragon8602]

Hi everyone. This is being added to our Known Issues page and is being investigated by the developers. In the meantime, there is a potential work around for Steam players.

This is not fully tested so there is the potential for additional bugs. The changes will need to be reversed when a fix is found.

You can work around the issue locally by pulling the files out of the mod package into your base game path. Here is how to do it:

1. Open up your mod directory, navigate to resources_common\drs\sounds
2. Copy the sounds folder and paste it into the resources_common\drs folder under your base Steam installation. This will not replace any files (unless conflicting with other mods), because the substitute sound load system is different from the .pck system used in the base game. Note: the user profile path will not work for this.
3. If your mod utilizes per-language sound groups, do the same (all relative paths) for those languages as well.
4. Make sure the mod is deactivated

If you’ve got a data mod and need scenarios to play custom sounds in your multiplayer games, you can convert those into data entries (new “Units”/“Sounds” in AGE) and create dummy units or graphics in-game to produce those sounds.