I’ve found the “Exclude All Platforms” option as a convenient way to keep different options available within an event while iterating on the game, as a way to enable and disable different “versions” of the implementation.
However I’m wondering: if parts of an event that refer to audio assets (audio tracks with Multi-Sounds) are excluded on all platforms but the event itself is assigned to a bank, and those assets are not used in any other event, will they be considered “unused” and not be included in the sound bank?
At least “unused” tag does not show up in the Asset Bin for assets where this is the case.
Your guess is correct: If an asset isn’t used by any event on a particular platform, that asset’s sample data is not included in the banks built for that platform.
As for why the #unused tag doesn’t appear for assets that are used in events but excluded from all platforms: The purpose of the #unused tag is to indicate assets that are not in use so that they can be deleted. Deleting an asset is a big deal, as it removes the asset file from disk and can’t be undone.
It is true that an asset excluded from all platforms won’t appear in your game, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that the file is safe to delete; it could just as easily mean that the events that use the asset are works-in-progress, that you haven’t added all your target platforms to the project yet, or that you’ve only excluded that track for testing purposes and intend to un-exclude it later. As such, Studio can’t be sure that such an asset excluded from all platforms is safe to delete, and so doesn’t mark it as #unused.