Sound effects too loud, ignores volume settings? eg very loud 'beep'

[sartan]

Just picked up this game - playing on HTC Vive in VR, if it matters.

The various 'beeps' for setting a target, jumping into hyperspace, acknowledging a target are ear-piercing. I can even set all of the in-game volume settings to 0%, the beeps continue, even as you navigate up and down in gameplay audio settings.

This seems like a bug. I can't turn the beeps down at all, even if i wanted to make the rest of the game extremely quiet. There's no win here.

Unfortunately it makes the game unplayable right now =/

[Marauder Interactive]

Hi!

Sounds like the sound middleware doesn't like like your setup or it had trouble loading the banks. The sound volume probably isn't working because of the error talking to FMOD.

1) Is the game installed in some non-standard folder, like when you span drives for your Steam app folder? A user noticed this before with another sound issue. Another user said it helped when they just reinstalled the game.

2) Are your sound drivers up to date? What kind of device do you use? The UI uses Unity's standard stuff, but a lot of the game uses another library that is a little better for 3D sounds.

3) How are your outputting your sound (HDMI, headphone jack, etc), and does this happen in non-VR mode?

I won't be able to look at this closely until after the holiday, but hopefully this helps.

[sartan]

Thanks so much for your reply, I'm very interested in helping to resolve this. I'm fairly technical and am able to help with debugging with tools like windbg, memory analysis, etc, but don't really know where to go.

1) Yes - I have 3 steam install folders. C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\Steamapps, D:\SteamLibrary\steamapps\common\DyingSun, and e:\Games\steam\SteamApps\ -- this game is installed D:\SteamLibrary\Steamapps\common\dyingSun\

2) I'm using a whole bunch of sound cards. Onboard Motherboard RealTek, offboard USB-based sound card, and the built-in HDMI-based USB HTC Vive sound card. Specifically for this problem the HTC Vive & built-in sound are accurate an up to date. SteamVR will nag me if anything is obsolete.

3) I'm sending sound output to the HTC Vive HDMI-Based USB sound output (basically a standard sound jack on the headset). I will remove the VR headset and get back to you sometime tonight, working right now.

@ Sartan TODO -- test w/ non-HTC headset sound, test with disabling all sound outputs except a single one, test changing audio transformation settings in windows, test with disabling vendor-specific sound outputs

[Canoe]

Oddly enough I've got this exact same issue. Standard Windows 10 install. OS on SSD, Steam Games on separate drive. Audio is built-in Realtek on a brand new Skylake Core i7-6700k build with 32GB DDR4 and an Asus Strix GTX970 4GB. The confirmation beeps are are insanely loud, all other effects can be adjusted in settings without any issue.

[Marauder Interactive]

Ok I'm back! I will look at this tomorrow morning but if you see this before then, can you start up the game, go to the options menu, change the sound volumes, then quit out and send me your log file?

Log files are located in <install>\dyingsun_Data\output_log.txt -- and the email is [e-mail].

This will let me know if anything is breaking during startup and/or when you change the sound volume option.

Thanks, guys!

[Canoe]

Thanks for the fast response, - I've just mailed out. Hopefully you can see what's happening. Full description has been given in the mail.

[Marauder Interactive]

Ok, thanks for your help guys. I think I found the problem and uploaded a build to the beta branch. Can you give it a go and let me know if it worked?

To access the beta branch, right-click the game in your Steam library, hit "Properties" then go to the "Betas" tab. Select "beta" from the dropdown box and hit "OK." Steam will try to download the other version.

I had to go through the audio files and manually assign mixers for the UI sounds (even though it should all be routed through the master bus by default). I may have missed a couple, so if you hear something super loud again, I probably missed that one. Let me know what sound it is and I'll fix that one too.

[Canoe]

Great work! Definitely much improved, - the latest beta as of 1900hrs UTC is usable with headphones. The primary issue was the confirmation beep which is now balanced in terms of volume against other effects. Thanks again for the quick review and fix. More so for it being during the holiday period!

[Canoe]

Just a quick note to let you know, even on the latest beta, the beeps are back to being deafening. Not sure what's changed, - my kit is still the same. :(

[Marauder Interactive]

Hmm, I'll check the mixer again before I upload the final version of 1.05. Maybe something got unhooked in the project setup. Thanks for the heads up!

Edit: It's the main/settings menu hover sounds again, right?

[Canoe]

Originally posted by Marauder Interactive:

Hmm, I'll check the mixer again before I upload the final version of 1.05. Maybe something got unhooked in the project setup. Thanks for the heads up!

Edit: It's the main/settings menu hover sounds again, right?

Not just those, it's the confirmation beep when commands are confirmed as being accepted. The weird thing is that some beeps are deafening, some not as bad, whether there's more than one beep, I'm not sure. It's most obvious in the opening test scenario where you have to adjust your controls and engage thrust etc.

[Marauder Interactive]

Looks like the tutorial confirmation audio was specifically not adhering to the global listener volume, so that should be fixed, and would explain why some sounds would be following the volume rules and others wouldn't.

Thanks for the clarification. There's a new beta build that should be propping now(ish).

[Canoe]

Nailed it! All beeps are nominal. ;) Great work! Thanks again for your continued and extensive support, it's really appreciated!