TheNightTerror on 24/5/2009 at 03:21
I've been having issues with both Thief Gold and System Shock 2, but not Thief 2, having mono sound, and not allowing me to enable hardware and EAX sound, for a while now. The problems cropped up after a friend altered his .cfg files and sent them to me to enable widescreen for my Dark engine games.
Me being the raging dumb ass I am, I didn't back up my original .cfgs. These installs are the same ones I've been transplanting from laptop to laptop for years, so there's no reason why I should be having troubles now. There could be a chance that the audio is somehow hardware related, but if it is, I would've thought it would affect all three Dark engine games.
It only happens with positional sounds in game, so, for example, if a hybrid is coming, I won't be able to tell where the hell he is. The really odd thing is that the audio over the main menus is in stereo.
I was wondering if anyone could help me out here? If anyone could give me virgin copies of the .cfg files to tinker with, or even to test, that'd be great. (I haven't seen hide or hair of my install CDs since I moved.) Or, if anyone wants to help me tinker with the .cfg files, that would be a huge help too. :)
Bjossi on 24/5/2009 at 16:01
Don't know if it will help, but here are my sound-related lines from SS2's cam.cfg, I do get proper 3D sound as well as EAX and hardware acceleration.
sfx_vol_music -474
sfx_device 2
sfx_vol_2d 0
sfx_channels 16
master_volume -59
sfx_vol_3d -59
Another thing you can try in addition to this is to (
http://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=117175) download a legacy A3D.dll file and put it into TG and/or SS2 root folders, this will force the game to use that file rather than the newer one supplied by your audio driver. Although I don't need this for SS2 and T2, it fixed all my audio problems in T1, such as "un-graying" some of the audio settings in the menu.
TheNightTerror on 24/5/2009 at 22:17
And this is why I hate trying to troubleshoot anything when I'm half asleep -- I can't find a link to anything on that thread. I don't know where to download the drivers.
Those entries forced on hardware sound, but now I have no audio whatsoever. :erg:
Bjossi on 24/5/2009 at 23:23
(
http://www.dll-files.com/dllindex/dll-files.shtml?a3d)
That's the file we're looking for. Just extract the downloaded archive to the root SS2/TG folder and the games should pick it up.
Oh, and to turn off hardware acceleration just set sfx_device to 1. :)
(you do need that for EAX though, hopefully the legacy A3D file will do the trick)
TheNightTerror on 25/5/2009 at 00:41
I wound up following the guide you linked me to, and it's no damned wonder things weren't working right. That .dll was supposed to replace ones that were in two system folders, and neither one actually had that file in them to begin with.
I dropped them in, and now I have stereo sound again, in both games, and the new SS2 Straylight patch is fair game. Thanks a ton! I've been dying to play SS2 in widescreen, I'll have to take it for a test run soon. :)
Bjossi on 25/5/2009 at 01:00
I see it as a very bad idea to downgrade files in the system folders to an older version for the sake of compatibility and stability, plus there is a good chance the driver would automatically replace it with the newer version anyway. You should always keep system files up-to-date and keep the odd few downgrades local (local meaning the folder of the game/app, so the file will only be used by that game/app rather than by the system as a whole). In this particular case only TG and SS2 are using the old DirectX 5 A3D.dll, while all other programs and games that use A3D.dll will use the newer version supplied by the driver.
Anyway, I'm glad I could help you out. :)
TheNightTerror on 25/5/2009 at 01:08
I haven't had my nightly caffeine infusion, not quite following the first paragraph? I didn't have the .dlls at all, so I wasn't replacing anything with older versions?
Bjossi on 25/5/2009 at 01:16
Then the newer versions of the file are simply called something else than A3D I guess. It would certainly explain why you weren't getting 3D sound if the game couldn't find the 3D audio API. This stuff depends entirely on the driver & supplier though, Creative still supply a file called A3D.dll in their driver packages.
