[Aerix]

Hey hey, I'm an old FS2 player who recently came back after finding out about the Source Code Project.. I started using the May 17th build and my command briefing, briefing, and ingame .avi cutscene sounds all stopped working. My regular ingame flight sounds still work, as well as the effect sounds when I move over a button or something in the game, I just have no briefing sounds, etc. Did I do something wrong or forget to d/l something? o.O

-Aerix

[Herra Tohtori]

Open AL?

At least it sounds like a classic case of nonexistent or too old OpenAL. Check what happens when you update/install it.

[Aerix]

Yah, I downloaded This Version when I updated to the newer FSO build.

[karajorma]

Do you actually have a creative soundcard? Cause if you have a nForce board that's not going to work.

BTW try the May 9th build as well. We need to solve this problem but at least that build should allow you to have sound while we fix it.

[taylor]

I started using the May 17th build and my command briefing, briefing, and ingame .avi cutscene sounds all stopped working.

You mean just the interface/game music and briefing voices, or more (playing .avis has nothing to do with the game sound code so I'm assuming that you are mistaken there)?

The music and voices run through one part of the code, the regular sound effects go through another.  That the normal sound effects are working indicates that OpenAL is ok.  Run a debug build and post your fs.log file so we can see if there are any strange error messages.

And as karajorma mentioned, make sure to use the OpenAL drivers for your hardware.  Using the Creative version (what is linked off of www.openal.org) is fine as long as you don't already have another hardware specific (ie, nForce2) version installed.  The Creative version works great in software mode (which is compatible with any sound card) or with a Creative soundcard (in which case it's hardware mode), but the hardwave specific DLLs have different names so you can end up with more than one installed and that can cause problems.

[karajorma]

I've been reading around the subject a little and as far as I can gather it appears that nForce boards are supported by the latest versions of the drivers in hardware too.

Basically as far as I can gather no one should have nvopenal.dll installed regardless of what hardware you have as its now obsolete.

That said there is very little hard information on the subject so I'm mostly going on forum posts.

[taylor]

Well, it's a bit more complicated than that.  You do still need current/new nForce drivers installed *before* you install the newer OpenAL versions.  Hardware support is still provided by extra stuff and not the base OpenAL drivers, but it's far less of a pain for everyone to manage now since Creative and NVIDIA have finally smartend up on the whole thing.  Remember that OpenAL is, at the basic level, just a wrapper around native sound drivers.  You write the code for OpenAL and then you don't have to worry about the 5 or 6 other sound architectures that would have to program for otherwise.  OpenAL doesn't really provide hardware support itself, it's only an interface to native drivers which do, or can I guess I should say, since there is no promise of hardware acceleration.

[karajorma]

Now I'm really confused. I have an nForce board and I'm trying to figure out if I should have the nvopenal.dll or not

[taylor]

Now I'm really confused. I have an nForce board and I'm trying to figure out if I should have the nvopenal.dll or not

Hehe, I did skip that part!

Short answer is, no, you shouldn't need nvopenal.dll as long as you have current nForce drivers and current OpenAL installed.  Previously everything went through nvopenal.dll, but as fixing the basic issue there, OpenAL 1.1 does away with it (in theory at least).  I don't think that current nForce drivers install it (but they may for legacy app support).  The docs for 1.1 do still list it as something to contend with, but I don't know for sure if current OpenAL will actually try to use it or not.  It may get used if, and only if, you request that backend (which we don't currently do) when initializing OpenAL.  I am going to play around with the enumeration soon, so that we can start making full use of hardware and/or EAX, instead of relying totally on the DirectSound backend.

Basically all you should need to do is make sure that you have the most up-to-date nForce drivers installed and then install the OpenAL drivers on top of that.  The game code should be able to handle anything else, unless it's a bug.