XP Sound Problems - Try this out

[RedMike]

I just tried GDI mode and no progress but I think I need to go back and convert the mp3's to wav at 16 bit as I indicated before. I have a 24 bit batch I was exoerimenting with in the Sounds folder now. I did change snd.ini file too for the record.

Oddly enough the background sounds play perfectly, the weapons are the difficult buggers.

Report more as I go...

RedMike...out

[RedMike]

Further testing shows I can get the same crappy sound with the stock mp3 files as with converted wav files.

I have things set to:
No Intro
GDI
Fullscreen
800x600

Sound on in game preferences causes discernable lag, not bad but noticeable.

Sound off in game preferences eliminates any lag, game hums along nicely in "stealth" mode.

I've posted a support request on this one at TransGaming, developers of Cedega, which is not technically an emulator. It's more along the lines of crossover libraries and drivers. That sort of thing (winex).

Hey Andy, just curious if you guys thought about using cross platform libraries when you planned developing the Windows version. Why not SDL/OGL for example instead of DirectX ?
As a self-taught game programer wanna develope something someday kind of a guy, just wondering.

Cheers!

[Mobhack]

there is not enough of a UNIX market to make the hassles of multi platform development worth the candle.

If you are getting sound - you have some emulation/handling of DirectShow. However the game uses up to 21 strams for concurrent play (overlay of sounds), your card/and or emulator/and or drivers may olny allow 1 simultaneous MP3 stream.

Try background noises off, sound on. If it "chops" any overlapped/overlaid sounds (exchanges of fire, movement noise across multiple hexe moves etc) then something in your system is limiting you to only 1 sound channel. If it is doing it with WAV files as well, definately some part of unix/emulator/sound card/drivers is most likely limiting to 1 channel?.

It may also be something to do with your O/S or emulation's handling of COM objects - each DirectShow channel is a COM object, which gets fed the next sound file, and then gets re-used later when finished if needed. 20 nax sounds at one as I recall (been a while) and the background music/noises channel, and 1 for the mouse click.

Try turning mouse click off if you have it on, BTW.

Cheers
Andy

[RedMike]

Thanks Andy, I'll do some more experimenting along the lines pointed out and report back. There is a sound issue I've read about regarding Linux and ESD and some programs that has to do with multiple sound channels. I'll read up on it.

For the record, my specs:

Pentium 4
2.26 GHz cpu
512 mb ram
GeForce 6800 GT 256 mb
Sound Blaster Live!
ubuntu Breezy Badger i686

Regards,
RedMike...out

[RedMike]

Andy,

Here's the latest from my ongoing Linux experiments.

WinSPMBT runs perfectly well with exception of choppy sounds.
Requires Cedega (v5.03 tested) fullscreen 800x600 mode for smooth play.

SPMBT v3 runs exceptably well with DosBox v0.63. Perfectly playable sound and all.

SPWW2 v7.01 runs exceptably well with DosBox v0.63. Perfectly playable sound and all.

Will continue to try and get sound playback running 100% with WinSPMBT and report back if and when I make progress.

RedMike...out

[RedMike]

OK...I give up. After going through every conceivable sound system/driver combination (esd,alsa,oss etc.) I've come to the conclusion that there's nothing wrong with my hardware setup. I can play multiple sounds concurrently no sweat. I can even run xmms (a music player) whilst running Cedega/WinSPMBT and hear both the music, the game background sounds, friendly vehicle movement sounds, aircraft sounds, and chopped up broken intermittent weapons sounds.

I think the trouble is definitely with Cedega and WinSPMBT.

Have to wait on TransGaming to fix it...maybe.

RedMike...out

[RVPERTVS]

Stian said:
Zaphod,
Here's something you could try; a way of out finding what codecs are used when playing audio files like mp3 are using a free tool like GSpot:

http://www.headbands.com/gspot/download.html

It's a bit technical but here's a quick walkthrough;

In GSpot, go to the File menu, then Open -> Select an mp3 file (any will do I think), click Render (bottom), then look at Audio Path there and you should get the name of the codec windows uses to play the file.

Also, click on the 'Status' line and then the name of the filter for info on where the offending file is located on your system.

Then go the the windows Start menu -> Run, type 'regsvr32 /u path to codec file' and the codec should be uninstalled.

Hopefully the game will then use your the default, MS-supplied codec for mp3 playback.

Hope this helps you to finally enjoy the game!

Stian

Ok, I haven´t experienced a sinlge crash, just audio hicups (I want to know if my system is using a problematic audio codec or not) I dowunloaded and ran the Gspot v 2.21 with one of the game mp3 sounds and I had this render info:

"Direct Show claims to be able to play the file. The following combination of filters were used:

C/:Program Files/Shrapnel Games/WinSPMBT/Game Data/Sounds/2.mp3 (Audio Source)
MPEG-I Steam Splitter (Audio Pre-Processor)
MPEG Layer-3 Decoder (Audio Decoder)
Default DirectSound Device (Audio Renderer)"

Also there is some more large info (which I can print to a file if someone tells me how)when I click on any of the above mentioned fields. Anyway, the "main" driver appears to be quartz.dll

I just want to know if those audio hicups I´m experiencing are due to a problematic codec or not and want to know if these could be fixed without converting to WAV.

Any help with this will be appreciated, thanks in advance.

[cusbut]

Heres another one, my version of Winspmbt kept crashing but would play if the sound was turned off, I tracked the culprit to a 'Mpeg4system.dll' file that came with the software for my new samsung phone. I have renamed the file 'copyMpeg4system.dll' and the game runs perfect now, if I need to use the phone software I just have to remember to rename that file, lol

[Eazy]

On a similar problem guys. i've noticed that when firing ATGM's at tanks equipped with VIRSS (what does that stand for btw?) the missile hit sound is replaced by the sound of the smoke dischargers (that pop noise)
Does anyone know whether that's part of the same XP/onboard sound problem here?
Thanks

[Mobhack]

See the Mobhack help (where the technical nuts and bolts tend to be discussed) - Units tab page, EW section, where ARENA and VIRSS is described.

Acronnyms Site useful WWW link, found within 1 minute of entering "virss" as a Google search term. Google is a very useful search site, if you need to find a term you aren't familiar with.

As to the VIRSS smoke sounds replacing the missile hit sound - depends, if the missile was deflected, there will be no hit sound, as the VIRSS worked

Cheers
Andy