Some Sounds and No Snapshots Making it Into Package Build

[jasiomusic]

Hi guys, my team and i are trying to package up a build in UE 4.24 and we’re running into some issues with the audio.

Everything works just fine testing in the editor, when packaging the game up, only a select few sounds don’t make it into the game for some reason. There are sounds in the same bank that do make it, but oddly enough one bank has more issues than the others though it’s not the only one. I can’t seem to find a pattern between why some of these are missing and others are not.

I lose all my snapshot functionality in the packaged build as well.

I have double checked the packaging settings to make sure that the FMOD folder is included in “Additional Non-Asset Directories to Package”. It was in Additional Non-Asset Directories to Copy" at first because fmod complains in UE when that isn’t set. At this point I’ve tried both and neither is fixing the issue.

Also, I tried following these instructions as per the fmod resources though I’m a little confused about it as I’ve used some of fmod studios stock plugins on sounds before exporting them to a bank, does this mean I should include a list of every plugin i used in my fmod studio project? or is this for something else? -

I tried anyways, putting a plugins.txt file that I put in my unreal engine version folder: /UE_4.24/Engine/Plugins/FMODStudio/

With the following contents (list of plugins I am using in this fmod studio project):
fmod_multiband_eq
fmod_spatializer
fmod_compressor
fmod_reverb
fmod_pitch_shifter
fmod_3-eq
fmod_delay
fmod_distortion
fmod_chorus
fmod_highpass

But when packaging, the presence of this file will spit back an error when it reads any of these plugin names, I tried more than one just in case my formatting wasn’t correct as the documentation doesn’t really go any deeper than that screenshot. Made me think something about my entire process here is not correct.

I’m using FMOD version 2.00.08 as that was the latest stable version out when we started. I’ll probably experiment soon with updating to see if it helps anything but I wanted to see if there’s anything obvious I’m missing here. UPDATE - I’ve updated my fmod studio and plugin to 2.01.01 to see if anything changed, I get the exact same behavior.

Any help would be hugely appreciated! We’re so excited about getting the game done it’s been so heartbreaking to watch a bunch of crucial audio disappear come build time .

thanks kindly,

-j

[richard_simms]

For your first issue regarding missing sounds:

Please enable Live Update on the release build of your game and record a profiler session of these issues. Can you see any particular errors being thrown? Can you enable a log file for your game to write to and see if any errors are coming out that are being missed?

In regards to your second issue:

You don’t need to write down the FMOD plugins in the plugins.txt. The plugins.txt file is only for third party plugins such as Resonance or AudioWeather.

[jasiomusic]

@richard_simms thank you for the suggestions and information. I haven’t been introduced to the Profiler yet so this is great. I followed FMODTV’s Profiler resources to record a play through of the game and was able to do so successfully.

I am partially stumped here though because I’m not sure how to get the game simulation in the Unreal Engine Editor to replicate the issues that I mentioned because they are only present when I package the game up into an executable product. In the profiler session I ran, all my sounds are working fine as they do within the engine before packaging the game.

I can add to this information slightly, I am working on a mac and building a mac product. Another on my team is building a windows version on his end, both of our packaged games produce the same result with the same sounds missing so at least something systematic seems likely at play. In our case, some basic attack, jump, jump land events are not working (while other character sounds based on user inpu like footsteps work), some button hover events in UI, and as I mentioned all Snapshots are not working so there are some game dynamics that just don’t come to life, etc…

I am also not 100% sure where to enable the log file you need, there are so many log places in ue I’m still learning my way around the debugging tools. Are you referring to the Output Log found under Settings > Developer Tools > Output Log (screen attached for ref)?

I do see some warnings sometimes about it not being able to find some FMOD events for packaging, but these aren’t the sounds that get lost.

I am going to keep researching to answer these questions for myself so I can get this information up for you, but if you happen to see this before I can update and are willing to perhaps guide me a little further I would be grateful.

Thanks so much,

-jk

[richard_simms]

That is very strange. I’ve been researching but can’t see anything immediately that would cause such an issue aside from not assigning events to banks before building (though this would not explain why they work in the editor and not in the package).

Are you able to send your FMOD Studio project over to us? You can email support@fmod.com and provide a link to a Google Drive folder or something similar.