Track Sounds Cut Out After Going Off Track

[SamF7]

Hello!

I just purchased this on steam, although I had this problem with the demo version I downloaded and played last night, also.

Essentially, after I go off the track during a race, all sounds except the narrator suddenly stop. No explosion sounds, no laser sounds, even the music cuts out. I DO hear the narrator, however ("LAST LAP!"). I can only get sound back if I exit the game and re-enter. Sound then works normally until I go off the track again (which is...*sigh*..inevitable).

I'm using an intel-i7 based motherboard with WinXP (32-bit), but I AM using an off the shelf sound-card, SounBlaster Audigy 2 ZS. Let me know what other informtion I can provide you to help track this down.

I think it's safe to assume that the lack of sound is what's causing me to lose every round, huh? ;-)

EDIT: I did some more experiements: Sound cuts off automatically after the first race, even if I DON'T hit a wall. Interestingly enough, I hit a few walls in that race without losing sound. When the race ended, the sound died until I rebooted (except the narrator).


SamF7

[LineOf7s]

In case SamF7 feels like it's just him, this is happening to me also.

I just bought SLR now from Steam (bargain!), and when playing a tournament, all is good for the first race. From the second race onwards though - as described - all sound disappears apart from the announcer and some weapon impact/explosion effects. No music, no engine sounds (in fact, I've played so many games now without all the sound effects I can't remember what else there is). Further testing with longer/elimination/survivor quickraces shows that it's indeed something to do with the "Bzzzzt!" sound effect that occurs when you go off-track. It doesn't seem to take out all sound at once though, as much as bits at a time.

The only thing I seem to have in common with SamF7 is a Creative sound card: mine's an X-Fi Platinum. (Oh, and WinXP 32-bit)

Without the ability to leave a tourney halfway through, it's either play only a single race at a time, or play every race in a tourney but the first in near silence. Given the amount of work you've undoubtedly gone to with regards the sound effects and music, I'm sure nobody wants that. :o)

[siread]

Hi guys. Have you tried updating your sound card drivers? If not, head over to the Creative site...

http://support.creative.com/Products/Products.aspx?catid=1

Choose your product then you should see a list of Drivers. Choose the latest one for Windows XP and install. Let me know how it goes. :)

[Refeuh]

Hi all !

Same problem here - Great game, but the music cutting off after the first race makes the tournaments much less enjoyable :/

It seems we all have an X-Fi sound card ; 'mines a Creative X-Fi Elite Pro. Here are the other details of my computer :

OS: Windows 7 64b
MB: Abit AW9D-Max
CPU: Intel E6600
Ram: 2Gb Corsair Twin DDR800
Graphics card: XFX nVidia 9800GTX+
Sound card: Creative X-Fi Elite Pro
HDD: 2x WD Raptor RAID0 (+other hard drives, but that probably doesn't matter)

All drivers fully up-to-date

What sound API does the game use ? Maybe there's a way with ALchemy to force a redirection :-?

Additionally, restarting a race/tournament from the main menu does not fix the problem. The only way to get the music back is to quit and restart the game.

'Hope that helps ! A fix or workaround would be greatly appreciated, once the issue has been identified ;)

[LineOf7s]

Thanks for the response, siread. Yeah, updating my sound drivers (the last for mine was from June 2009) was the first thing I did after my initial post (before my edit). 150+MB of downloads later, and three reboots, no change.

[SamF7]

Hi siread!

I tried the latest Audigy ZS drivers - no luck. Sound still cuts out after the first race.

About the only thing we all have in common is that we have Creative Sound cards - I would start debug with that, if possible. What's interesting is that we are seeing the problem with both WinXP(x32) and Win7(x64).

Let me know if there is anything I can do to help resolve the problems. Logs, things to try, debug mode, etc.

I tried deleting the old settings directory and movigng it (you suggested this to others with problems) - no luck. I also set debug=1, but no log was created.

SamF7

[Refeuh]

'tried a few things -

. forcing the OpenAL with ALchemy crashes the game on start up (even though it sounds useless to force OpenAL with a game already using it, it does fix some audio issues with certain software)

. I enabled the "debug", and a log has been created in the application folder. It doesn't seem to show much ("FadeMusic" ? could it be that it's not fading back in for some reason ?). Would it be useful to send the file ?

[LineOf7s]

Hrmmm... I replied before - saying I'd tried the newest drivers with no luck - but got some message about the post requiring "moderator approval"... despite the fact my first post ever didn't. My second post is yet to appear, though. I'm really rather posting this out of hope that I'll actually see it. :o)

[edit] Okay, this one actually worked. Huh? No matter - although my other post was much more eloquent. :oD

[edit2] Also, I've had problems with the sound on the computer (with SLR) from the start, as mentioned in this post on the Blitz forums (http://www.blitzbasic.com/Community/posts.php?topic=86005#974108). I mention it here in case it gives you any clue. I don't recall any sound or music dropping out from back then, though.

[Cookie Monster]

vBulletin thought you were a spammer for a second :P It's all sorted now.

[darth_careful]

Hey guys,

As promised, I've been testing SLR out on Winx64. I get the same sound issue on my X-Fi Gamer. It happens in stages - first, the engine noise cuts out in the middle of the first tournament race when I go off-track. Races after that have no engine noise or music.

After that, I went back to the direct download version (1.0) and that worked fine.

Tech... E6700/P5N-E SLI/Winx64/X-Fi gamer/7800GTX. Latest drivers throughout.

In other news, I'm just using a borrowed 7800GTX temporarily after my 8800GTX went pop. The 8800GTX used to work brilliantly with SLR (and I've also got it installed on a couple of other PCs with integrated graphics, and they work fine too)..... BUT!! the 7800GTX seems to have quite a bit of micro-stutter going on with both the Steam and direct versions.

It might just be my machine, but I mention it in case you're hearing it from other people too. It's not a problem for me ... I have a nice new i5 machine arriving this week :D so I'll give it a test on that and let you know.

[LineOf7s]

I thought I'd have a few QuickRace sessions since I was tired of playing in near silence, thinking it would work better. Sadly, after the first race (during which the sound dropped out in stages as described by darth), any subsequent QuickRaces were also deathly silent, just like in Tournament mode.

D'oh!

[SamF7]

siread,

That might be an interesting debug point: If you can arrange to get us a "non-steam" full release, we can uninstall the Steam version and install that one to see if the problem is somehow related to the specific Steam install.

Let me know. I'm interested to see how the game plays with full sound :P

SamF7

[siread]

Ok, so this is the non-Steam demo version:
http://download.newstargames.com/Install_SLR_Demo.exe

I'd be interested to hear how that works for Sam and LineOf7s. The sound operates in exactly the same way as the full version but if you have an X-Fi and want the full non-Steam version drop me a pm.

[Refeuh]

Hi !

I tried the non-steam demo, and the problem is exactly the same for me. The music always cuts at the end of the first race (in all modes, quick races of tournament), and only a few sound effects are left.

(I actually tried the non-steam demo BEFORE buying it on steam, hoping the demo was a slightly earlier version with an audio bug that would have been fixed in the full release. No luck :D )

It doesn't appear to be a Steam issue :/

I noticed something "interesting" yesterday ; the X-Fi audio processors have 3 hardware modes : multimedia, audio creation, and games. Each mode has a different hardware path in terms of DSPs, and as a user, you switch between modes via a creative UI.
After playing SLR, I couldn't changed mode anymore - this is something that usually happens when the sound card is left in an "unstable" state (audio application crash, etc.) , and requires a reboot.
So i guess some of the OpenAL operations that happen when loading a new track must not be "safe" to use with X-Fi cards :-?

Are there any other debugging tool we could run to get you more info ? ('no idea what the game is written in, but being a professional game developer myself, I've got a full set of debugging tools already installed on my machines, if that can be of any help - I'm mainly targeting next-gen consoles in C++ though)

Thanks for trying to look into this bug :)

[LineOf7s]

I can answer that bit: SLR is written in Blitzmax (yay!), and that's mentioned on the main screen (down the bottom, eventually).

I'm yet to test your demo, but I'm not hopeful. I'll post again when I do.

[LaserMan]

I have the same issue with the steam version. Sound fxs disappear after some time in the race.

The download version (1.0) works fine, yet some crackling sounds from time to time.
(win xp 32 sp3, SB audigy 2, latest drivers)

[siread]

Hi guys. I've uploaded a new demo version 1.12 (non-Steam) here:

http://download.newstargames.com/Install_SLR_Demo.exe

Could you install that and let me know if it fixes the sound issues please.

[Refeuh]

many thanks ! I'll give it a try first thing when I'll be back home in a few hours, and I'll post my feedback this evening.

[darth_careful]

I've has a good bash with all four tracks on the new demo; and the sound is PERFECT!! 1.12 definitely works on my X-Fi :)

[Refeuh]

Oh Yes !! 'works perfectly !

I can't wait for a Steam update to continue my tournaments :D

[LineOf7s]

Just had a long (15 laps?) quickrace, making sure I went off into BzzzztLand as often as possible.

Announcer's voice came from the centre speaker for the first time in the game's history (yay!) and the sound effects lived for the duration of race (I think that's the first time I've heard the mines make their sound effect).

Yay! x 2

[siread]

Cool. It should be up on Steam now too. :D

[Cookie Monster]

Yep it is :) And btw with the new Steam UI it says that SLR has 20 achievements and that I got 16 achievements but there's nothing in my community page.