I know the name “Master.bank” and the FMOD designation of a “Master bank” in the general sense are two different things. I remember there being problems where Master.bank was renamed, like breaking mixing routing due to some dependencies. It’s been awhile, though.
Is it safe to rename “Master.bank” to something like “Essentials.bank” while leaving it “
Mark as Master bank”, and what dependencies must be considered?
Yep! It’s totally safe. You will need to update your game’s code to use the new filename instead of the old one, of course, but that’s a simple task.
It’s true that in earlier versions of FMOD Studio, the master bank could not be renamed. However, since version 2.00.00, any bank can be marked as a master bank, causing it to include content that’s relevant to the project as a whole rather than to individual events, such as the project’s mixer buses and snapshots. At least one bank containing master bank-type content needs to be loaded at all times to gain the benefit of having a master bank, but it doesn’t much matter which such bank is loaded if there’s more than one (unless different master banks have different master bank content, but that should only come up when dealing with patches, DLC, or UGC).
Thank you Joseph for yet another superb answer with the subtleties clearly laid out!
Also — what is the current importance and reliance on the “Master.strings.bank” file (aside from being able to reference events by name), when do I need to include that?
The strings bank contains all your events’ names and paths, and so is needed both when your code references events by name and path, and when you get the name and path of an event via Event.getPath as described in our documentation. If your game’s code never does those things, you can safely delete the strings.bank file.
That being said, referencing events by name and path instead of GUID does tend to make a game’s code more human-readable, and removes the need to edit the reference whenever an event in your FMOD Studio project is deleted and replaced rather than edited. For these reasons, many audio programmers prefer to reference events by name and path.