Syplheed-Reborn/docs/re/structures/sound-cue-table.md

The sound-cue table, and how dialogue binds to a recording

✅ Settled 2026-08-26. dat/tables.pak carries the game's cue index. It closes the join from a message id to the .slb bank that voices it — the missing link between the script/caption side and the audio side.

The table

One IDXD object in dat/tables.pak (373 680 bytes, 5 records, 10 937 fields) holds:

record	shape	content
SETTINGS	3 fields	PATH = game:\dat\sound.pak+, PARAM = Pj_Silph.xgs, and a positional BANK_SE
BANK_SE	1 positional	Static.slb
FILES	5 135 positional	bank paths — jpn\Voice\VOICE_TCAF_592.slb, BGM_001.slb, …
STAGES	0 fields	present but empty
SOUNDS	5 798 named	cue name → numeric sound id

SOUNDS is the only record on the disc found so far that is entirely named fields, and the names are the join key.

Cue families and their id ranges — the id space is partitioned by family, with no overlap:

VOICE   n=5044    1500 .. 7331
SE      n= 322       1 ..  901
DEMO    n= 295    8000 .. 8408
BR      n= 101    8500 .. 8600
BGM     n=  32    1001 .. 1109
JNGL    n=   3    1201 .. 1203

5 797 of the 5 798 values are numeric and all 5 797 are distinct — the ids are unique, so the id is not how banks get shared. One cue's value is non-numeric.

The id is not an index into FILES: ids run to 8 600 and FILES has only 5 135 entries. FILES is reached by name, not by id.

The join: a message id to a recording

MSG_VOICE_D_257   (built-in 64's operand, see isl-message-dialogue-link.md)
  -> cue   VOICE_D_257          `MSG_` becomes `VOICE_`
  -> id    6945                 SOUNDS
  -> bank  jpn\etc\VOICE_D_257.slb   FILES, matched on stem

The prefix rule has one wrinkle, and getting it wrong is easy:

• MSG_ is replaced by VOICE_ — it is not simply stripped.
• A name that already carries VOICE_ keeps the one it has rather than doubling it: MSG_VOICE_D_257 → VOICE_D_257, but MSG_TCAF_592 → VOICE_TCAF_592 (not TCAF_592).

I got this wrong first. Stripping MSG_ resolved 1 250 of 1 338 script message names and left 88 unresolved, and the 88 were exactly the four-letter ship families (ADAN 32, ADPL 27, TCAF 12, ACRO 3, RHIN 2) — which I was ready to write up as "text-only announcements with no recording". Seeing jpn\Voice\VOICE_TCAF_592.slb in FILES refuted that: the recordings exist, my rule was wrong. Under the corrected rule the count is 1 326 of 1 338.

SOUNDS and FILES agree exactly — the same 12 names are absent from both, and every one of the 5 135 bank files has a cue (zero orphans). 663 cues have no bank file; those are SE/BGM-family cues living in other banks.

The 12 script lines with no recording

MSG_VOICE_A_273   MSG_VOICE_D_183
MSG_VOICE_D_600 … MSG_VOICE_D_608   MSG_VOICE_D_611

All twelve are in the VOICE family, have caption text, are called from the stage scripts, and have neither a cue nor a bank. Ten of them form the near contiguous block D_600–D_611. Whether they are subtitle-only by design or a late cut is not settled — the shape (a contiguous high block) suggests lines added after the recording sessions, but that is a guess, not a measurement.

What this does not settle

• The wrong-recording case was already explained, and I overstated it as open. On first writing this page I said the cue table "does not explain" the hokyu_DS_s13A → VOICE_D_452 rejection and that the sharing must therefore live deeper. That was careless: voice-bank-leading-region.md settled it earlier — the bank holds one generic line ("Resupply complete. You are cleared for take-off!") reused across four stages, so the binding is right and only the expectation was wrong. What this table adds is narrower and worth stating precisely: the reuse is a movie-slot → bank relation, not a cue-level one, because all 5 797 numeric cue ids are distinct and no two cues name the same bank file.
• STAGES is empty, and what would have populated it is unknown.
• SOUNDS' one non-numeric value was not chased down.
• Only the English pack and the jpn\ bank paths were examined. Every path in FILES begins with jpn\, which is consistent with the already-recorded finding that the voice set is Japanese, but the other language packs' tables were not diffed against this one.

Tool

tools/re-capture/sound_cues.py summary | resolve <MSG_id> | demo | unbound