[fixed for V0.36] Sound cuts out after ~30 mins

Lee · Post by **Lee** » Thu Mar 09, 2006 2:50 pm

I've been getting lots of these but not with the editor, with RTC itself. Sometimes after playing for a while (for arguments sake we'll say half an hour) the sound suddenly cuts. I tried turning sound on/off using the button in the char inventory and nothing changed so naturally when this happens I save my game and quit. Every time I do that, I get an access violation in windows after RTC closes similar to the one stated above... well kind of anyway, take a look:

RTC (V0.35) Diagnostic file - Tue Mar 07 14:38:36 2006

Error:
an access violation exception.

Stack Dump:
utilMemory.utilVerifyMemory();
RTC.RTC_DeInit();
RTC.MouseLButtonDownQuitCredits();
RTC.OnLMouseButtonDown(int 370, int 407);
RTC.WinMain();

Is this related to the above bug, or something seperate? On a side note, once the sound disappears and I quit, sounds do work in windows afterwards so it's not the machine itself BUT I tend to have to reboot if i want everything to be functioning properly again.

George Gilbert · Post by **George Gilbert** » Thu Mar 09, 2006 2:56 pm

It might be the same bug, but it's not clear. In fact, it might well be two bugs.

1) The sound cutting out.

2) The crash.

It is very unlikely that the crash is time related - more likely that you do something in the dungeon that causes some memory not to be freed and then when you quit after this event then the crash happens.

If you can find the event, then I can fix it!

Lee · Post by **Lee** » Thu Mar 09, 2006 3:35 pm

Sounds like fun lol, I remember the first time it had happened was drinking from a fountain... I filled up my first 2 chars and then when I swapped to third char and clicked on it, there was no sound. At first I thought it was part of the game (Reactor, had never played it before) as in there was a limit to how much you could drink... but then I noticed all the sound had vanished. I can't remember what I was doing at any of the other times though, but I shall note them from this point forward.

I'm going back to England today though so it's going to be a few months by the time I come back to Canada to use this savegame, I'll see if the same thing happens on my ubercomp at home though.

Post by **Gambit37** » Sun Mar 12, 2006 1:02 am

As an addition: I've just had the sound cut out on me part way through level 2 for no apparent reason. Really helpful, I know!

George Gilbert · Post by **George Gilbert** » Sun Mar 12, 2006 9:31 am

Gambit - a few follow up questions to see if this is the same thing or different!

1) Did the game crash after quitting after the sound cut out?

2) How long after starting the dungeon did this happen?

3) How long after resuming your save game did this happen?

4) If you quit and resume after the sound cut out, was everything normal again?

5) Roughly where in level 2 did this happen? (Oh, and which dungeon was this, and had you made any modifications to it).

Post by **Gambit37** » Sun Mar 12, 2006 10:58 am

Hmmm... I would have to try this again to be accurate, but from memory:

1) No
2) 10-15 mins?
3) Didn't resume once, think I saved once shortly before it happened
4) Didn't try again in that Windows session
5) After "Step Inside", fighting the mummy in the flask room with the two screamers, realised sound had gone. Yes, this is a customised DM(RTC rules) dungeon with a new wallset and nothing more.

Crucially, I had been doing a lot of editing in RTC for hours before and regularly getting memory errors. Think the machine was low on RAM as I began to get screen corruption on title bars of programs. So I rebooted and all was fine.

George Gilbert · Post by **George Gilbert** » Sun Mar 12, 2006 11:10 am

Gambit37 wrote:Think the machine was low on RAM as I began to get screen corruption on title bars of programs.

Ahh, now that is interesting...

Suule · Post by **Suule** » Sun Mar 12, 2006 11:44 am

Memory leak?

Post by **Gambit37** » Sun Mar 12, 2006 11:47 am

Here's something to confound you:

Just played around 45 mins and the sound cut out! Continued my level 2 save game and also played most of level 3 except for the last room on the right. I was doing some inventory management in the room of the gem, so was standing still for a couple of mins. On going outside and closing the door, the sound had gone.

Haven't done anything else in this Windows session except ran firefox and windows explorer and had them both in the background.

No crashes or memory errors from RTC. This is the dungeon with the new wallset.

George Gilbert · Post by **George Gilbert** » Sun Mar 12, 2006 4:22 pm

I managed to reproduce this (as with you - only after playing through the game to the last room in the choose your fate area).

As far as I can see this is due to a bug in either FMOD or DirectX or the sound hardware drivers as the calls RTC makes to FMOD (even after the sound has cut out) all work and return OK error codes.

I've managed to work around it for though by diverting the sound through software emulation of the sound hardware. Although this means a slight loss in frame rate (only about 1-2fps) the sound no longer cuts out (i've managed to play through from the start to the end of the worm level without any problems).

So, fixed for V0.36

Lee · Post by **Lee** » Tue Mar 14, 2006 2:53 am

Excellent

. Sorry I couldn't really give any more details about it to make it any easier, it was an awkward one to pinpoint!