Sound problems in Vista
BlitzMax Forums/BlitzMax Programming/Sound problems in Vista
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| I managed to test my game in Vista today, and it mostly worked, apart from sound. FreeAudio worked, but all sounds played start playing about a second or so after I tell them to. DirectSound - couldn't get a peep out of it. Those are the only two drivers I'd catered for. I did try installing Blitzmax on the Vista PC to fix it there and then, which is an issue in itself. I read about the OpenAL driver but I don't know where to start in getting this to work. I guess I need to install third party stuff since Import brl.openalaudio and EnableOpenALAudio seems to do absolutely nothing. I don't think I can expect my customers to go installing other bits and pieces to get my game to work. Anybody got any solutions to this problem? Note to the Anti-Microsoft brigade - not supporting Vista isn't an option. By the way - what problems did I encounter with Blitzmax and vista? Well, first of all, I tried to install Firefox. IE7 point blank refused to go to www.getfirefox.com, while every other site worked fine. I stepped around the issue by getting it from download.com. I then tried to get BLIde. Firefox needed a plugin. Yep, you guessed it, it wouldn't download any plugins! So I went with MaxIDE. Tried to syncmods - It downloaded a few modules, up to dxMax2D, at which point a message appeared in the output window "Unhandled memory exception". It now does this every time I try to sync mods. So I think I'll be passing on Vista until it actually works, but for now, I need to get my game sorted so it works properly on Vista. |
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| I supose you have already done this, but be sure to give administrator privileges to BlitzMax, and run it on from an administrative account. to the BLIde issue, you can go to the Updates and service packs and download there the latest full release. By the way, the getfirefox website is down, i think the place to get offically firefox now is: http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/ |
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| So you borrowed a friends PC or what? That's what I gotta do soon...or buy Helen a Vista laptop I guess... |
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| You need to install the OpenAL runtimes before you can use OpenAL. And yeah - installing OpenAL should fix any sound issue you have in Vista (as far as I'm informed). |
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| You won't be able to your game working properly on Vista until the hardware manufactures take the **** out of their **** and write drivers. Its most their fault as they haven't started writting drivers in Vista alpha and counted on "vista will have the same crap driver handling as XP so our old drivers will work". During late beta and first RC they suddenly realized that their trash drivers are no longer supported outside of legacy compiled applications, which only very few are. Thats the similar thing that happens to many DX9 applications on XP that have been recompiled since DX SDK dec 09 which dropped support for Pre 2K windows and Pre 2.0 shaders outside of legacy. There is a fair amount of devs and manufacturers that got damned lazy and now they and sadly our potential costumers have to pay the price for it. |
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| If the sound works in Vista, it should work for BlitzMAX applications in Vista as well. In either case OpenAL has a software mixer thingy, that should make any hardware limitations or poor driver support irrelevant. |
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| Wow, that really sucks how many problems you've encountered with Vista. I now use Vista as my main OS for everything except play games. Firefox is my browser of choice, I use BLIde as my IDE for BlitzMax, and have had little or no problems that weren't quickly resolved. I do run from an admin account with UAC disabled, which probably goes a long way to having BlitzMax syncmods and generally work well. MinGW also installed and worked with a little extra effort (detailed in the module tweaks forum I believe). The DirectSound problem is more than likely down to a driver issue for the reasons mentioned above. I already had OpenAL installed, although I'm not sure where it came from - maybe as part of my sound drivers, or possibly a game that needed them! Of course, if a user doesn't have OpenAL installed already, it will mean another download, which as you say, is not really an option, as everything should work "out of the box", so to speak. Hopefully it won't take too long for the drivers to become Vista compatible, so the problem shouldn't be around for too long. Just need to make sure that the end user is aware that it is more important now than ever to ensure that their drivers are up to date. |
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| Well, sound in Vista worked fine, as can be testified by IE7 making a stupid 'click' noise every time I so much as looked at the left mouse button. Seemed to be just Blitzmax stuff that it didn't like, although admittedly I didn't spend a lot of time checking out much beyond my game, so maybe there are sound issues in other apps as well. |
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| What sound card do you have? apparently soundblaster drivers are a bit flaky (flakier than normal) in Vista, especially the x-Fi |
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| Haven't got a clue as it wasn't my PC. I'm going to get OpenAL up and running tomorrow, so next time I get a shot at a Vista PC I'll test it out again. |
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| It's a real stinker that BMax sound doesn't work properly in Vista. It's also dodgy in 98 and Me (dunno about 95/NT, probably those too). So basically it only works on XP and 2000 (maybe 2003?). Wow! It would be really nice if BMax's NATIVE sound support just worked and could be relied upon for professional games hitting a wide market but it seems we have to used MaxMod or OpenAL or FMOD or whatever instead. Meaning figure out new code and related issues and hope that it's not bugged or got some other deficit. Shame... Man if BRL "upgraded" their sound capability, I'd be prepared to pay for it. |
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| Well, apparently there's nothing to figure out in order to use openAL, since there's a brl.openAlAudio mod. Just set the right Audio driver and continue as normal. Somebody's just told me on IRC that I can just use the openAL DLLs in my game package, and that'll work. Tested it out and yep, it does seem to work in XP at least. As for dodgy sound in Win98 - one of my testers has Win98 and hasn't reported any sound problems. As for WinME... anybody still using that? o.O |
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| apparently soundblaster drivers are a bit flaky (flakier than normal) in Vista, especially the x-Fi Actually, the X-Fi drivers (not too sure about the other SoundBlaster ones) are now out of Beta and work just fine. These are the ones I use. Apart from the one second delay when using FreeAudio (which I'm sure other people also get on different cards) there are no issues. Any issues are down to drivers. On Vista, simply use DirectSoound or package OpenAL with your app and use that, as Gfk has pointed out. There's no need to learn any other commands if you're using FreeAudio, DirectSound or OpenAL, as you simply select which driver you want to use and carry on as normal. |
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| GfL: Oh OK then I take it back if it's that easy :-) But do I need to include an OpenAL.dll with in my game folder? As for W98, my Holiday Bonus musician has that OS and he reported stuttering sounds on the game (and sent me a recording to prove it). I also just heard it on my son's WinMe Machine. About 10% of people visiting my site still use W98. If you made $9000 from a game, and the W98 users didn't buy, you just lost $1000. |
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| it seems we have to used MaxMod or OpenAL or FMOD or whatever instead. Yes. Just like real game manufacturers. Wow. Anyway using OpenAL is such a non-issue, I can't believe anyone could be opposed to it. |
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| Yes. Just like real game manufacturers. Wow. :-| |
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| No seriously. When was the last time you played a game that didn't use one of the following: 1) Miles sounds system. 2) OpenAL. 3) EAX. 4) Bass or FMod. The problem with audio (in general, and with Windows in particular) is that it's too much of a moving target, too narrow profit margins, and nobody really cares. How many people do you know who have a Turtle Beach soundcard? I'd wager it's less than one in 100. How many do you know who has a Realtek AC97 or HDAudio on-board sound chip. I'd wager it was everyone else. On-board sound chips are every bit as suspect and useless as on-board gfx chips. It's just that nobody cares enough about sound to buy a proper sound card. |
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| I find that sounds support sucks in Vista when running in Windowed mode, PERIOD! No matter the game or the audio technology behind it. |
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| FD: OK. Yeah I've heard that FMOD is pretty popular if you are big enough to afford the license fee. Indiepath: wow! But is that just your PC? |
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| How many people do you know who have a Turtle Beach soundcard I'm that 1-in-100. |
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| It's the same on the laptop as it is on the PC, the problem is the crappy drivers - both machines have very good sound cards, the PC card is a professional studio unit. Bottom line is very very poor driver support. |
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| lame isn't it. Hey that's a big sig. |
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| I agree with what Gfk siad in the original post: not supporting Vista isn't an option. However, I have recently come to the decision that I am going to use Linux and MacOS for the majority of my development (using Windows just for testing) and I will support the Linux community by releasing games on that OS in addition to the others, something I had not even thought of doing 6 months ago. Vista is an abomination no matter how you dress it up, and if I can do my little bit to help support Linux, I will. |
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| That's no sig it's blatent advertising. |
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| Actually, the X-Fi drivers (not too sure about the other SoundBlaster ones) are now out of Beta and work just fine I have a friend with Vista, he got crackly audio and a bit of delay with the Beta drivers, the release ones give him no sound at all (unless it's being delayed for a week or so...). |
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| That's no sig it's blatent advertising. LOL, OK then. |
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| A bit lame that directsound hardware support was removed from vista. |
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