AudioCore

1. Enable the plugin

   Edit → Plugins → search "Audio Core" → Enable → restart the editor. AudioCore enables the MetaSound and Synthesis plugins it depends on automatically.

2. Add the player component

   On your player pawn (Blueprint or C++) add an Audio Core Player component. This one component drives all music, ambience, combat, interiors and day/night.

3. Give it music

   Either assign a Default Profile (a Sound Profile data asset) for the full package, or just drop a sound into Default Day Music for a basic setup. Optionally set Combat Music.

4. Place a zone (optional)

   Drag an Audio Core Zone into the level, size its Box/Sphere, and assign a Sound Profile or inline Day/Night music. Walking in takes over the soundscape; walking out fades back.

5. Mark your enemies (optional)

   Add an Audio Core Enemy Marker component to enemy actors so they trigger combat music when near the player.

6. Drive time of day (optional)

   Call SetTimeOfDay(0–24) from your own time/sky logic so day/night music variants switch automatically.

7. Test in PIE

   Type AudioCore.Debug 1 in the console to show the live debug overlay.

AudioCore is built around one component on the player plus a few optional actors and data assets. There is no manager actor to place and no required setup beyond the player component.

• Audio Core Player (component) decides what you hear — it owns a zone stack, an interior stack, the enemy scan, the day/night clock, and the music crossfade slots.
• Sound Profile (data asset) bundles a complete soundscape — day/night/combat music, looping ambient beds, and random scatter one-shots.
• Zones choose which profile/music plays in an area. Interior Volumes change how the whole mix sounds while inside (muffle, reverb, ducking, ambience leak).
• Enemy Markers feed the combat state. Settings subsystem bridges your options menu and save system to channel volumes.

A Sound Profile is a data asset that describes a complete soundscape for an area. Any sound asset works in every slot — Sound Wave, Sound Cue, or MetaSound Source. Profiles are optional; zones and the player component also accept inline music for basic setups.

Music Section

Ambient Beds — Continuous Loops

Steady layers that play the whole time the area is active: wind, rain, room tone, river, crowd, machinery.

Scatter Layers — Occasional One-Shots

Intermittent sounds fired on a random timer: birds, insects, distant animals, creaks, gusts. Layers are auto-staggered so they never fire in lock-step.

Music plays through two audio slots that ping-pong, so every change is a smooth crossfade of Crossfade Duration seconds. Music is non-positional (2D) — it always plays at full level regardless of listener position.

With Resume Music Position on, AudioCore remembers where a track was when it was swapped out. Return within Resume Memory Duration (in-game seconds) and it continues mid-track; wait longer and it starts fresh. Set the duration to 0 or less to always resume. Zones and interior volumes can override these rules per-area via Override Resume Settings.

While one or more active enemy markers are inside Enemy Detection Radius, combat music takes over. The track is resolved in priority order:

1. Per-enemy — the nearby active enemy with the highest Combat Music Priority that supplies its own Combat Music (e.g. a boss theme).
2. Active profile — the current Sound Profile's Combat Music.
3. Component — the player component's Combat Music.

If the active profile defines Combat Stems, they start in sync with the combat track and fade in or out as the nearby enemy count crosses each stem's Fade In At Enemy Count, building intensity as a fight grows. Ambient beds and scatter layers fade out during combat by default (opt back in per-layer with Play During Combat).

The Transitions section on the player component smooths out edge cases from standing on a boundary or fighting trickling enemies. Every value defaults to 0 — turn them up only where you want the extra polish.

Each Audio Core Zone the player overlaps is pushed onto a stack sorted by Priority. The top zone decides the music/ambience. Exiting any zone pops it and the next one down resumes — no manual tracking needed.

A zone provides sound via a Sound Profile (full package — day/night/combat music plus dynamic ambient beds and scatter), or just inline Day/Night Music for a simple area. Its Ambience Mode can be Inherit (use this zone's profile ambience) or Silence (stop all ambient beds and scatter — for tense or dead spaces).

Interior volumes are orthogonal to zones: a zone decides which music plays; an interior decides how the whole soundscape sounds while you are inside it. They stack by Priority and all transitions blend over Blend Time.

A Audio Core Snapshot is a data asset describing a predefined mix state pushed from gameplay — underwater, low-health, dream sequence, spirit realm, drunk. It is the same kind of acoustic state an interior applies, but driven by code/Blueprint instead of a volume, so it can react to anything: health, items, story beats.

// Push when the player goes underwater, remove when they surface
PlayerComp->PushAudioSnapshot(Tag_AudioCore_Snapshot_Underwater, UnderwaterSnapshot, /*Priority*/ 10);
PlayerComp->PopAudioSnapshot(Tag_AudioCore_Snapshot_Underwater);

Snapshots stack by priority and compose with any active interior: the highest-priority snapshot wins for muffle/reverb, and its music duck multiplies with the interior's.

API on the player component: PushAudioSnapshot(Tag, Snapshot, Priority), PopAudioSnapshot(Tag), ClearAudioSnapshots(), and queries GetActiveSnapshotCount, GetActiveSnapshotTag, IsSnapshotActive(Tag).

World sources are sounds that live in the level rather than ambience tied to the listener — waterfalls, forges, campfires, windmills, magical crystals, ocean surf, flowing rivers. Each works the moment you assign a Sound — no attenuation asset to author — and is shaped by two editable radii:

• Audible Radius — the outer reach. Full level inside, fades to silence at this distance, virtualized (essentially free) beyond it.
• Core Radius — the inner core. Inside it the sound is full volume and rendered to both ears (non-spatialized), so standing near it surrounds you. Outside the core, the sound is directional.

Sound Source (Point)

Drop it where a sound should live, assign a Sound, and set the two radii. No tick. Use Set Source Active to switch it on/off from gameplay. Supports optional day/night, weather and season gates.

Spline Source (Path)

Lay its spline along a river, stream, wall of flame, or stretch of surf and the sound plays all along it. A single spatialized voice rides the point on the spline closest to the listener — a tube of sound wrapped around the whole path. One voice, no gaps, no phasing, and it costs nothing when out of range.

Select the actor to see a live wireframe tube in the viewport — cyan for the Core Radius and orange for the Audible Radius. Enable Use Per-Point Widths to give each spline point its own radii — a wide river mouth, a tight upstream channel.

Environmental Ducking (Proximity Masking)

Turn on Duck Other Audio on any Sound Source or Spline Source to gently lower the player's music and ambience as the listener approaches. The dip scales with proximity and multiple sources blend — the strongest duck wins per channel, so overlapping rivers never stack into silence.

• Ducked Music Level / Ducked Ambience Level — the levels (0–1) that music and ambience reach at the heart of the source. 1 = no change; 0.6 = down to 60%.

World sources and discovery volumes can be configured inline for a one-off, or driven by a profile data asset so one authored setup can be reused across the level. Assigning a profile fully drives the actor and hides its inline fields — tweak "RiverLoud" once and every river updates.

Drop Audio Core Sound Emitter on any actor to have it play occasional one-shots on its own random timer — a wolf that howls, chirping birds, a frog, an owl, dripping water, a sputtering machine. Timer-driven (no per-frame tick), and a BlueprintSpawnableComponent.

Runtime API: StartEmitter(), StopEmitter(), IsEmitting(), and PlayNow() to fire one immediately.

An Audio Core Discovery Volume is a Box or Sphere that fires a one-shot moment when the player walks in — perfect for vistas, ruins, and reveals. Any combination plays together:

• Stinger — a musical accent on the music channel.
• One-Shot — a 2D sound effect (whoosh, shimmer).
• Narration — a voice line that can auto-duck music for its duration.
• Snapshot — push a mix snapshot for a music swell/mood, auto-popped after Snapshot Hold Time.

Fires once by default (Trigger Once). For exploration saves, expose Has Triggered keyed by the stable Discovery Id to your own save system. Enable Re-Arm On Exit to let it fire again each time the player re-enters. The On Discovered event passes the discovering actor so you can drive quests, UI or markers in Blueprint.

AudioCore keeps a 24-hour clock that selects day vs night variants of music. Drive the time from whatever sky logic your project uses:

// Standard 24-hour clock (0-24): 12 = noon, 6.5 = 6:30 AM
PlayerComp->SetTimeOfDay(13.5f);

// Convenience for systems that report a 0-2400 clock value
PlayerComp->SetTimeOfDayScaled(1830.f); // 1830 = 6:30 PM

Day Start Hour (default 6) and Night Start Hour (default 18) define the windows. Calling SetTimeOfDay every frame is safe — music only re-evaluates when the day/night boundary is actually crossed.

Weather and season are tag-driven and system-agnostic. Map your project's current state to a Gameplay Tag and pass it in — AudioCore never reads any external system directly.

PlayerComp->SetWeather(Tag_AudioCore_Weather_Rain);
PlayerComp->SetSeason(Tag_AudioCore_Season_Winter);

Ambient beds and scatter layers carry optional Weather/Season gates: an empty gate always plays, otherwise the layer only plays while the current tag matches. The On Weather Changed and On Season Changed events let you react in Blueprint without polling.

The Audio Core Settings subsystem holds Master, Music, SFX and Ambient volumes (0–1). Grab it from any Blueprint with Get AudioCore Settings (no object pin needed) or in C++ with UAudioCoreSettingsSubsystem::Get(this).

To drive actual channel levels, assign a Sound Mix and Sound Classes once on the subsystem: Audio Mix, Music Sound Class, SFX Sound Class, Ambient Sound Class.

UI Sliders

// On a slider's OnValueChanged:
UAudioCoreSettingsSubsystem::Get(this)->SetMusicVolume(SliderValue);

// To initialise the slider:
MusicSlider->SetValue(UAudioCoreSettingsSubsystem::Get(this)->GetMusicVolume());

Bridging Your Save System

// Persist whenever volumes change
auto* S = UAudioCoreSettingsSubsystem::Get(this);
S->OnSettingsChanged.AddDynamic(this, &UMySave::OnAudioChanged);

// On load, push values back:
S->SetMasterVolume(Saved.MasterVolume);
S->SetMusicVolume(Saved.MusicVolume);
S->SetSFXVolume(Saved.SFXVolume);
S->SetAmbientVolume(Saved.AmbientVolume);

All functions live on the Audio Core Player component.

Read-only state exposed for HUDs and tools: IsInCombat, IsCombatMusicActive, GetNearbyEnemyCount, GetZoneStackDepth, GetInteriorStackDepth, IsInsideInterior, GetActiveTrack, GetActiveProfile, GetTimeOfDay, IsDay, GetWeather, GetSeason, GetActiveSnapshotCount, IsSnapshotActive, and more.

AudioCore registers a starter vocabulary of weather, season and snapshot tags so the gates work out of the box. You are not limited to these — all gates and API calls accept any Gameplay Tag.

The panel groups every AudioCore system into labelled sections: Output / Settings, Music (active track, playback position, crossfade, resume, override), Combat (state, enemy count, transition-delay hysteresis), Ambience (active profile, beds, scatter, proximity duck), Interior / Acoustics (active volume, muffle, reverb), Snapshots, Zones, World State (time of day, weather, season), and World Sources (audible vs virtualized, nearest source state). Values are colour-coded — green for healthy/active, amber for warnings, blue for proximity ducking, dim for inactive.

• Add the Audio Core Player component to your player pawn. Each client hears its own mix based on its own zone/interior/combat state.
• Gate setup on Begin Play with Is Locally Controlled if you only want it active on the local player's pawn.
• Enemy markers are evaluated client-side against the local listener, so each client's combat state is independent.
• The Settings subsystem is a GameInstance subsystem — one independent instance per client.