Tag-Scored Pools

A category folder plays one shuffle-picked file — but not every line in a pool fits every moment. Tags let a voice pack refine which file plays without splitting content across dozens of narrowly-named categories: files carry tags (what a line commits to), a play call carries facts (what is true right now), and the best-matching pool wins.

; plain call — plays only untagged files, exactly like PlayVoice
AudioUtil.PlayVoice(npc, "BattleCry")

; tagged call — same category, plus the facts of the moment
AudioUtil.PlayVoiceTagged(npc, "BattleCry", "angry intense undead")

The design has one safety rule at its core: tags are constraints, facts are freedoms. A file tagged afraid can never play in a scene whose facts don't include afraid — but an untagged file plays anywhere. Pack authors tag only what they actually recorded; anything they omit safely falls back to the untagged pool or the normal category fallbacks.

Off by default

The plugin ships no tag vocabulary (the neutral-default principle — same as the empty slot and SFX tables). Tags activate only when some config file defines a [tags] section; with none anywhere, the whole layer is dormant: category folders scan flat, subfolders and bracketed filenames mean nothing, PlayVoiceTagged behaves exactly like PlayVoice.

1. Defining the vocabulary — [tags]

The consumer mod that calls PlayVoiceTagged owns its vocabulary, shipped in its base AudioUtil.toml or a config\*.toml overlay. The vocabulary is a set of named axes; each axis is a list of mutually-exclusive tokens plus a match weight:

[tags]
mood      = { tokens = ["calm", "angry", "afraid"],  weight = 8 }
intensity = { tokens = ["soft", "intense"],          weight = 4 }
target    = { tokens = ["human", "beast", "undead"], weight = 1 }

• One fact per axis. A moment is either angry or afraid, never both — and a file tagged with two tokens of one axis can never qualify (it is excluded at scan time, with a warning). A request that names two tokens of one axis keeps the first and drops the rest, warning once.
• Weights rank axes, not files: with the table above, matching the mood is worth more than matching the target — a file that nails the emotional tone beats one that merely names the right enemy type. Choose weights so the axes a listener notices dominate (a good rule: each tier's weight exceeds the sum of everything below it).
• Up to 64 tokens total across all axes. Tokens are matched case- and punctuation-insensitively, like every other AudioUtil name.
• Additive across config files. [tags] merges from the base AudioUtil.toml plus every config\*.toml overlay (sorted filename order), like slots and sfx — so several consumer mods can each ship their own axes and coexist on one install. A new axis name adds; a same-named axis unions its tokens — no file can remove another mod's tokens, so nothing already tagged can be broken by installing another mod — and its weight is last-writer-wins (logged when it changes; numeric filename prefixes order deliberately).

Extending the vocabulary

Growing a vocabulary is always safe — au reload applies it live, and adding tokens or axes never breaks existing packs (old tags keep parsing; a new token is inert until packs tag with it and calls send it as a fact). That inertness is also why cross-mod interference stays nil: mod B's tokens on mod A's files only ever match facts mod B sends. Removing or renaming a token in your own file is the breaking direction — files tagged with it turn into unknown tag token exclusions. Reweighting re-ranks every pool on that axis. Pick reasonably distinctive token names (or prefix them, myMod_close) if you worry about colliding with another mod's generic vocabulary — a duplicate token across two different axes goes to whichever loaded first, with a warning.

2. Tagging content — the three carriers

Tags attach to files inside a normal category folder. A file's effective tag set is the union of all three carriers; use whichever is convenient, mixing freely.

Tag subfolders (broad strokes)

One level of subfolders whose names are tag sets — token order irrelevant:

Sound\MyMod\Voice\PackA\
  BattleCry\
      cry_01.wav              ← untagged pool (plays for any facts)
      cry_02.wav
      angry\
          cry_10.wav          ← angry
          cry_11.wav
      afraid intense\
          cry_20.wav          ← afraid + intense

Only one level: a folder inside angry\ is ignored (warned). This is the carrier for whole batches recorded in one tone.

Filename brackets (per-line nuance)

A trailing [...] group in the stem: cry_12 [angry undead].wav — tokens space- or comma-separated. Inside a tag subfolder the sets union: angry\cry_13 [intense].wav is effectively angry intense.

The bracket group is part of the filename, so same-stem sidecars — a caption .toml or a .lip file — must carry the identical full stem: cry_12 [angry undead].toml.

A bracket group holding no vocabulary token at all is not read as a tag set — it's just a filename. Packs bracket names for their own reasons (moan_04 [loud].wav), and any mod's [tags] block turns the carrier on for every pack on the install, so an unrelated convention must not mute content. A group that names some known tokens is a tag set, so a typo inside one ([angry undad]) still excludes the file with a warning. Category subfolders follow the same rule: a subfolder whose name holds no vocabulary is ignored silently, exactly as it was before tags existed.

_tags.toml manifest (no renames)

An optional file per folder mapping filenames to tag strings — the carrier for tagging an existing pack without renaming thousands of files and their sidecars:

# Sound\MyMod\Voice\PackA\BattleCry\_tags.toml
"cry_05.wav" = "angry"
"cry_06.wav" = "angry intense"

_tags.toml is never scanned as audio. It works inside tag subfolders too (again a union).

3. How a file is chosen

For PlayVoiceTagged(actor, category, facts):

1. The category resolves first, exactly as always — aliases, male_only_remap, category fallbacks, then the slot's fallback chain (see Voice & Category Resolution). Tags work inside whichever category wins. A category whose only pools are tagged and non-matching counts as missing for this call, so it falls through the fallback chain like any absent category.
2. Within the folder, every distinct effective tag set is a pool (untagged files form the tagless pool). A pool qualifies iff all its tags appear among the facts.
3. The qualifying pool with the highest weight sum wins; ties go to the pool with more tokens, then deterministically by token order. The untagged pool scores 0 — the always-valid floor.
4. The winning pool's own shuffle bag picks the file (no repeats until that pool's deck empties).

Worked example, against the folder above:

Call	Winner	Why
...Tagged(npc, "BattleCry", "angry intense undead")	angry\ (8)	afraid intense disqualifies (afraid not a fact); angry beats the floor
...Tagged(npc, "BattleCry", "afraid intense")	afraid intense\ (12)	full match outranks everything
...Tagged(npc, "BattleCry", "calm")	untagged pool (0)	every tagged pool disqualifies
PlayVoice(npc, "BattleCry")	untagged pool (0)	no facts = legacy behavior

Two practical corollaries for callers:

• Send every fact you know, omit what you don't. A missing fact never causes a wrong line — it only keeps the most specific pools out of the running for that call.
• An unknown fact token (typo, or a vocabulary mismatch between mods) is ignored and warned once per distinct string in AudioUtil.log — the call still plays.

And one for pack authors: keep pools chunky. Ten files sharing one tag set cycle nicely; ten files with ten unique sets are ten one-file pools and audible repeats. Tag at the folder level first, reach for brackets sparingly.

4. The natives

int Function PlayVoiceTagged(Actor akActor, string category, string tags, \
    float volume = 1.0, string group = "", string channel = "", \
    bool blockLipSync = false, bool blockCaption = false) global native

int Function PlayVoiceFromSlotTagged(string slot, string category, string tags, \
    Actor akFollow = None, float volume = 1.0, string group = "", string channel = "", \
    bool blockLipSync = false, bool blockCaption = false) global native

API v6+. Both are their untagged counterpart plus the tags fact string and a blockCaption opt-out (suppresses the line's caption sidecar — HUD subtitle and AudioUtil_Caption event — for callers rendering their own text) — every other argument, the gag routing, lipsync behavior, groups, channels, and the returned handle are identical. Empty tags (or no [tags] vocabulary) makes them byte-for-byte equivalent to PlayVoice / PlayVoiceFromSlot, so they are always safe to call.

Introspection (CategoryExists, GetCategoryFileCount, GetResolvingSlot) stays tag-blind: it answers "does this category hold any content at all", counting every pool.

5. Exclusion rules and log lines

Nothing tags can do produces a hard error or plays a file in the wrong context — every failure mode is this file/folder doesn't play, one line in AudioUtil.log:

Warning	Cause	Effect
unknown tag token '…' (scan)	a carrier uses a token outside the vocabulary	that file/folder never plays
contradictory axis tokens	one effective set holds two tokens of one axis (e.g. soft folder ∪ [intense] file)	that file never plays
subfolder '…' is not a valid tag set	a category subfolder that names some vocabulary but doesn't parse (a name with none is ignored silently)	folder ignored
nested folder(s) under tag folder … ignored	a second nesting level	inner folder invisible
unknown fact token(s) '…' ignored (play)	a PlayVoiceTagged fact outside the vocabulary	fact dropped, call proceeds
fact token(s) '…' share an axis (play)	a request names two tokens of one axis	later token dropped, call proceeds
SFX '…': every pool is tagged beyond this request's facts	an sfx category exists but holds only pools the call can't cover	nothing plays for that call

The registration roster logged at load (and on au reload) shows what the scan understood: each category lists its total file count, and categories with tagged pools get a tags detail line — [angry](2) [afraid intense](1) — so an author can verify their tagging in one glance.

6. Testing from the console

With ConsoleUtil Extended installed:

autest voicetag PackA BattleCry "angry intense"   ; explicit slot, quoted facts
autest voicetagpc BattleCry "afraid"              ; through the player's slot
au reload                                          ; re-scan after retagging

GetHandlePath (on the returned handle) tells you the exact file the pick chose, which pool a given fact set lands in included.