What exactly is BankInfo.Hash in 2022.1?

Question

Hello,

I would like to migrate my Wwise plugin to support 2022.1, and I am facing the changes that were made greatly to the SoundBank metadata files following the migration documentation. The first thing and almost the only thing that confused me is the new "Hash" field on SoundBank elements. It looks like a GUID, but it is named "hash" and it changes and changes back when I edit a bank back and forth. The only definition I can find for this field is in ak.wwise.core.soundbank.generated, where it says "Hash value used for SoundBank generation purposes", which is too ambiguous to implement.

Does this field affect Source Control on the generated SoundBanks?

I want to implement this field because the new feature introduced in 2022.1, WG-56344 Automatic update of source control for generated files on SoundBank generation. It is not hard to think if they are associated. My plugin operates directly on the xml files, and I don't want to break anything in 2022.1.

Is this field necessary? How can I implement the hash? How can I make use of this field?

Thank you.

Answer 1

Hello. Sorry for the confusing description for BankInfo.Hash. Yes, it is formatted as a GUID. However, the field is simply a 128-bit hash value of the contents of the associated Soundbank the last time it was generated. The value is used by the Soundbank generation process to determine if the Soundbank has changed since the last generation. But, the value is not read from the metadata file. The same value is also in the Soundbank file (.bnk). The value is added to the metadata file as extra information. It may prove useful in the future. At the moment, it's not used.

Hope this helps.