No sound nor music playing (posted november 2016) [SOLVED]

[Surt Mada]

Heya there Hanako Games, I really appreciate your work here but unfortunately I have to revive one old problem I saw in a few threads (that never really got solved). I bought Magical Diary and some other Hanako Games that had gameplay in it recently and when I start them no sound nor music is playing and the game is silent all along. It's happening every time.

I run the game on windows 8.1 and my sound driver is realtek high definition audio which I updated already to try and solve the problem. My sound card is'nt locked and I have no other sound devices enabled. I have Directx11 installed.

I also tried the oldversio mode and the title music is playing in this case but the game crash at the title soon after and does'nt work so it can't actually help me.

Long live the queen works fine with me but A little Lily Princess AND Black Closet are mute too. Long live the queen being the oldest of the three it makes some sense, I understand the current version of the renpy engine used does'nt support my sound card.

I have created the file named zzz.rpy under the game directory (with the content :
"init -1 python:
config.debug_sound = True") in the install directory and it didn't caused any crash.

I did bought those three games and would like to play them so I would like to know if you could come up with a solution and I'm of course ready to do anything I can to help you solve this problem and close those threads once and for all.

Thank you for what you're doing.

PROBLEM SOLVED :

In your steam library right click on the game and select properties then local files then browse local files. It will open the installation folder. Go into the game folder and delete the presplash.png file.

If you're experiencing the same problem with Black Closet you need to download the following file :

https://spikycaterpillar.com/diagnostics/black_closet-screens-nopresplash.rpyc

Then browse the local file and go into the game folder. Rename your downloaded file screens.rpyc and replace the current screens.rpyc with it.

The problem with a Little lily princess solved itself on its own in my case.

[spikycaterpillar]

Excellent.

I think the first step is to figure out if the newest Ren'Py versions fix support for the Realtek HD Audio hardware on your computer, so - if you download the stock Ren'Py 6.99.11 build from http://www.renpy.org/ - does the tutorial app play sound on your computer? If it doesn't work, does the 6.99.12 prerelease work?

The next step is to narrow down exactly which version pairs introduced/fixed the problem. There's an archive of all the released Ren'Py versions at https://www.renpy.org/release_list.html

IIRC the versions of Ren'Py our games are written for are:

6.11.2: Magical Diary oldversio branch
6.12.2: Long Live The Queen
6.99.8: Black Closet, Magical Diary current branch, A Little Lily Princess

[Surt Mada]

The Ren'Py 6.99.11 build displays sound correctly for me. I'll try to narrow down the different version to see where the problem began/ended.

Ok so far here's the weird thing. I tried to launch the tutorial and the example project titled "the question" with the 6.99.8 version and the sound and music worked correctly... (it does too with the 6.99.9 version, the 6.99.4 and the 6.18.3)

Should I still continue testing ? Seems like the tutorial is light in code and that does'nt pose any problems somehow with the sound nor music whatever version I'm testing.

Since 6.99.8 version works I'm afraid all the version will and the problem has to be specific to how those three Hanako Games are written. I don't know, tell me what you think.

[spikycaterpillar]

(Sorry about the lag in replying, I've been traveling)

The good news is, if a stock 6.99.8 tutorial works then it tells me that the problem is somewhere in something we've done, which narrows down the code to examine a lot...

[Surt Mada]

Well py'xmas to you and I hope you have time to enjoy the new year happily ! Thanks a lot for not forgetting me and working on the problem. Take your time, I just want it to be solved in the end and don't hesitate if you need anything else on my part. I finished long live the queen a first time and it's a very nice work indeed, I really would like to be able to play these three games in their fullest potential and not just muted. It loses a part of the atmosphere you create.

[spikycaterpillar]

I've made a couple test builds of the tutorial, if you can check them out:

http://spikycaterpillar.com/diagnostics/tutorial-6.99.8-SPIKY.zip
http://spikycaterpillar.com/diagnostics/tutorial-6.99.8-STOCK-win.zip

If the -SPIKY build has working sound then the problem is somewhere in Magical Diary or in the interaction between MD and Steam, and there's no need to check the -STOCK build.

If the -STOCK build has working sound and the -SPIKY build does not then that confirms that it's my patches to Ren'Py that broke sound. (Hm, I wonder if the unicode fixes conflict with DirectX somehow? That would be annoying.)

If the -SPIKY build and the -STOCK build both don't have working sound then it's likely to be a problem triggered by building distributions on Linux.

(edited to correct URL)

[Surt Mada]

They both have the sound working correctly. The problem I have is common to Magical Diary, Black Closet and A little lily princess but I only posted in the Magical Diary forum because it's the first one I tried to start and it's the first forum I looked into. Maybe if we find a solution we should put it on all three. (and I might have been wrong but I only looked the Magical Diary forum when I tried to understand what was happening).

[spikycaterpillar]

Okay, next thing to check is the demo from
http://spikycaterpillar.com/demos/MagicalDiaryDemo-1.1.1.1-win.zip

If the demo has working sound then that suggests a conflict with the Steam integration, and things to try on your end include: Turn off the Steam overlay for MD, delete the steam.rpyc from the Steam-installed copy.

If the demo doesn't have working sound then it might be a sample rate issue and the next thing to try is checking to see if tracks from MD will play properly when dropped into the tutorial.

[Surt Mada]

The sound is'nt working in the demo. But I didn't quite catch what was the next step. What do I need to do with the tracks ?

[spikycaterpillar]

Next step's for me to try putting oggs from MD into the tutorial until I get a tutorial that breaks on your machine. (If you have an RPA extractor and want to mess with the tutorial code you can also try doing it yourself.)

[spikycaterpillar]

Okay, next two test builds are at:
http://spikycaterpillar.com/diagnostics/tutorial-6.99.8+spiky+archive-win.zip
http://spikycaterpillar.com/diagnostics/tutorial-6.99.8+spiky+mdtitle-win.zip

Expected behavior: +archive should work like the tutorial normally does (the change was to archive the oggs); +mdtitle should have the Magical Diary title music play on the tutorial title screen.

[Surt Mada]

The archive is playing normally and the mdtitle does display the title music. I do have a little experience in code myself but do not have an rpa extractor and actually I've reoriented myself since and it's not my area of expertize anymore. I can still understand the big picture though as well as follow instructions, search and find specific elements.

[spikycaterpillar]

Hm. What happens if you remove game\presplash.png from the Magical Diary demo?

[Surt Mada]

Well... it works ! By deleting the presplash.png file from the game folder of the demo, the demo then display sound correctly at the title and in game : the music and the effects are working ! I tried doing it with the true game local file and it worked too ! At least... for Magical Diary. I tried for Black Closet and the title sound is displaying but an exception is occuring with an error screen popping. And for a little lily princess... ther'es no presplash.png file. But it definitely worked in Magical Diary case. That's one problem of three solved, thanks a lot !

[spikycaterpillar]

Woot, then I know what part of code to look in for a proper fix. (Last I dug in that part of Ren'Py, the presplash was displayed through a separate process IIRC - so most likely the sound driver is being opened by the presplash process and not properly released or something similar.)

If you add a presplash.png to a 6.99.11 tutorial build (or 6.99.12.2, the engine updates fast) does that break sound on your machine?

[Surt Mada]

Adding a presplash.png file (the magical diary one) to either the tutorial or the question game files of the 6.99.11 build displays the presplah picture on screen but prevent the tutorial from launching. After displaying the presplash picture nothing happens. Do you think you'll be able to fix Black Closet and a Little lily princess ? I'm playing Magical Diary now and it's really great ! No problem so far except a little bug when I rewind some text with the mousewheel two different music tracks can overlap each other but reloading fix the bug. Like a lot of player apparently I would really appreciate a sequel and/or a boys variant !