Issue Report: bad sound with Darwinia and Uplink (possible fix in thread)

[abelthorne]

When launching Darwinia from Steam Linux, sound is bad : crackling, distorted...

If I launch the non-Steam version of the game (installed from the Ubuntu Software Center), sound is fine. The in-game options seem to be the same. Is the Steam version using a different audio backend? or maybe local libs instead of system ones?

[vasi]

Sound works ok for me, using Intel HDA audio.

[abelthorne]

I suspect it might come from the libSDL that are packed with the Steam version.

My soundcard is audio chip on motherboard "Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] nee ATI SBx00 Azalia (Intel HDA)" (from lspci). The Azalia chip has other similar problems with PulseAudio and software like VLC or Skype. I guess the main problem comes from PulseAudio but the fact that it happens on Darwinia Steam and not Darwinia non-Steam makes me think that it also depends on obsolete libraries packed with the game.

[abelthorne]

I have the problem with Uplink too and have narrowed it down: it indeed comes from the embedded libSDL library in the lib64 folder (I'm on Ubuntu 64 bits). If I remove libSDL-1.2.so.0 so that the games use the system one (installed from the Ubuntu repos), the sound is clean.

A bit off-topic: I've seen similar problems (not sound issues but e.g. error messages preventing gamges to run) happen on non-Steam games when they had a libSDL embedded, that would get fixed when removing it. So I guess there are some builds of the library widely used by developers that have problems (too old libs?).

Could the devs check which version of the SDL library is embedded with Darwinia and Uplink (probably DEFCON too but currently it doesn't install anything) and eventually update it?

[[PPIT]Loki]

The problem is the enabled oss support in the bundled SDL Library. Try to set

SDL_AUDIODRIVER=alsa

in your env. Export the var before you start steam, and the sound will be ok.

[abelthorne]

I'll try that but how do you explain that the sound is ok when using the libSDL drom the system and not when using the one in the games dir? I don't set this env var.

[abelthorne]

Setting SDL_AUDIODRIVER seems to fix the problem. Although I still don't understand why using the system libSDL with no env var set works too... Has there been changes in SDL at some point so that it sets the var automatically?

[[PPIT]Loki]

Origineel geplaatst door abelthorne:

Setting SDL_AUDIODRIVER seems to fix the problem. Although I still don't understand why using the system libSDL with no env var set works too... Has there been changes in SDL at some point so that it sets the var automatically?

Maybe, the system libSDL does not have OSS Support enabled.