Bus driver goes to open gates - game freezes (spoilers!)

[Snod Blatter]

I am outside Tomorrow Corporation and can talk to the bus driver, but when he goes to open the gates all I see are his hands and some levers but no animation - is there supposed to be some FMV? I have searched but can't find anyone else with the same problem.

Oddly the game has not crashed as I can still hit escape and quit to title or desktop normally, it's just that the game doesn't go anywhere. Any help? I'm running XP SP3 and AMD Catalyst 13.4 (legacy for HD3850 AGP) if it helps. Cheers!

[Raxo]

Idk whats wrong :o

(ps. you should type spoiler in the title ;). )

[Snod Blatter]

Eep, I didn't think I was giving anything away..

Is it a piece of FMV that kicks in? Maybe it's a codec problem? I have tried running it in compatibility mode, both Win2K and 98/ME but it made no difference.

[allanblomquist]

it sounds like the cutscene animation is trying to sync to the audio playback but something is going wrong where the game doesn't think that the audio playback is making any progress. out of curiosity, what kind of audio hardware do you have and did the little inferno commercial jingle (the "little inferno just for me" video that you get in a letter in the middle of the game) work normally? that uses the same system to try to sync the audio and the animation.

[Snod Blatter]

I have a Sound Blaster Live! 5.1 and am running the latest KX Project drivers with it, so no EAX if that makes any difference? All cutscenes have worked perfectly until this point, both in game and the intro. It's a shame, I was thoroughly enjoying the game until this point!

I have verified the game's files and rebooted, the files were verified 100% already and nothing has changed.

[allanblomquist]

interesting that the in game little inferno video worked but this doesn't since they're exactly the same system (the title isn't synced at all so it wouldn't count here.) i'm at a bit of a loss since we've never encountered this kind of issue before. you may be able to work around the problem by quitting the game, then going into your device manager in windows and disabling your audio device. that should make the game think you don't have a sound card and so it won't try to keep the cutscene in sync with the audio next time you run it. i know it's not much of a solution but at least maybe it would let you get past that one cutscene (which is the last part of the game that does this AV sync before the end credits) and finish the game?

[Snod Blatter]

Disabling the sound card actually worked! Thanks!!

I have tried routing sound through 0/1 which is the sound card plus all the nice KX extras (not all games like this) and through 2/3 which is straight through to the card, no extras (this has always worked in the past). I even tried increasing buffer sizes and latencies but nothing helped, it always stopped right at the same point. I guess it's one of those weird incompatibilities that no one expects. I even tried disabling Xfire (the game tracking program) and the Steam overlay, but nothing made any difference.

[allanblomquist]

glad to know that you were able to get around it. out of curiosity, when the cutscene was frozen at the beginning like that, were you hearing the cutscene audio playing normally behind it? or was the audio stuck in a glitchy loop? or was there no sound at all? i'm trying to imagine what could be causing this problem so that i can try to fix it in the future for people. thanks!

[Snod Blatter]

There was absolutely no sound at all, just the first frame of the animation. I was amazed that I could still press escape and exit to title or desktop as it looked exactly like the game had frozen, but of course it hadn't.

If you want to furnish me with a save for that point, I'll happily do any tests you want. Just so you know!

[allanblomquist]

that would be great if you could run a quick test for me. shoot me an email (allanblomquist at tomorrowcorporation dot com) and i'll send you more info. thanks!

[vee_]

Amazing game. I've always been a little bit of a pyroteknic, so I had lots of fun. Major props.

[vee_]

I hae just realized i typed that on the wrong forum! sorry.