Scene Audio Runtime Routing

Scene audio runtime resolves authored cue ids into playback on the correct bus, category, spatial route, and lifecycle. It covers placed sounds, loops, one-shots, footsteps, cutscene cues, combat cues, and diagnostics.

Purpose

Use this page when a sound validates but does not play, a placed loop leaks after scene changes, or authors need to understand how cue ids become runtime playback.

Cue Lookup And Prepared Indexes

The audio cue catalog maps ids and candidate paths to runtime assets. Scene runtime prepares indexes so repeated playback does not keep rediscovering the same cue. Missing cues should show both the authored id and lookup candidates.

Decode And Validation Warmup

Validation can catch missing files, unsupported formats, and suspicious cue settings before runtime. Runtime still needs decode/readiness checks so packaged builds fail with useful diagnostics.

Buses, Categories, And Spatial Routing

Audio should declare whether it is music, ambience, UI, dialogue, combat, footsteps, or world sound. Spatial sounds need listener position, attenuation, and cleanup. Non-spatial UI sounds should not inherit world attenuation.

Footsteps And Surface Sidecars

Footsteps depend on movement state and surface tags. If footsteps are silent, inspect tileset surface metadata, nav masks, actor movement state, and footstep cue ids.

Placed Sounds And Loops

Placed loops must start, update, and stop with scene lifetime and trigger state. One-shots should not be promoted into loops to paper over repeated trigger firing.

Debugging

Inspect cue catalog load, authored placement, category, bus, spatial listener, scene lifetime, and runtime audio phase. If editor preview works but standalone fails, inspect asset packaging and VFS routing.