Missing Sound when running in Chrome

[edge421]

I'm not sure if this is the right forum for this, but when I try to play an rpgmaker game embedded in chrome, there isn't any audio of any kind. This issue didn't occur when I tried to run it in firefox, but the weird thing is that this issue only started a couple of days ago. I was playing a game and it had sound and everything, but then I came back a few hours later and there was no audio. I am not the developer of these games so I can't say exactly which version of rpg maker the games are running, but I went back to try other online rpgmaker games that I knew were working earlier and they didn't have audio either. Any ideas?

[XIIIthHarbinger]

Do we have an ideas, as to why google's browser causes audio problems, for a couple of games you can't be bothered to name, & can't tell us what engine was used to create them, on a system we know nothing about?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lhckuhUxcgA

[edge421]

Oh yeah sorry, its a couple of games called Tales of Nebezem on kongregate.com, and Medieval Cop, which I've tried on both kongregate and newgrounds. Both are series with multiple entries that were working before, but now have no sound. I've message the creators to ask what engine they were using but am still waiting for a response. I'm gonna try to see if the same issue occurs with other games too.

[edge421]

Oh also I'm running windows 8.1 on an HP 15-f019dx Notebook with an Intel quad-core i3-4030U 1.9GHz processor. I don't know what my sound card is (probably an onboard one), but the driver is Realtek High Definition Audio version 6.0.1.7730. That said, since the games were working before, and haven't been changed it's pretty safe to say that they aren't the problem, and since they work in other browsers as well as outside of browsers, the problem probably isn't with my system specs or sound driver either. Edit: I just tried erasing my cookies and cache from the last week and the problem wasn't fixed. I'm at a loss here.

[◢ k r i s ◤]

Yeah, software changes will break stuff. While it is admirable that you want to fix these games, this is really something you need to confront the respective developers about as only they can fix the issues after becoming aware of them or offer you, as a player, solutions to use in the mean time (like not using Chrome browser). We can't do anything for you here.

Though, to be honest, I don't think there is anything these respective devs can do either to enable you in continuing to play on Chrome either. This problem is rooted pretty deep so further upstream the RMMV-devs will have to fix it. Unfortunately, they've had their hands full with getting v1.6.x to stand upright on its own two-feet lately, so Chrome fixes have been a pretty-low priority for a while. I'm even doubtful they are aware of these changes to the Chrome browser or have plans to fix them quite yet. The base-projects for RMMV v1.6.0 and v1.6.1b still have these sound-issues.

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For convenience sake, the mentioned game series are found here, respectively.
Tales of Nebezem: https://www.kongregate.com/games/Beranek
Medieval Cop: https://www.kongregate.com/games/VasantJ

And yeah I see the issue too. It's listed among the several errors occuring in Console.

rpg_core.js:6574 The AudioContext was not allowed to start. It must be resume (or created) after a user gesture on the page. https://goo.gl/7K7WLu 

The shortened URL (that Steam so thoughtfully censored for you all in the code-block above) leads to https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2017/09/autoplay-policy-changes#webaudio which, by address vocabulary alone, can suggest why it stopped working.

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There really is no easy solution to this for most of the devs that would use RMMV. In fact, if you look at the comments for that policy-change notice, you'll see all sorts of developers are upset because this breaks audio for a lot of HTML5 applications and games that only affects Chrome users. The sentiment is to basically use a different browser until RMMV-devs catch up (which they might not for risk of wasting effort, because even Google admits these changes are not "set in stone") or until Chrome-devs come to their senses and find a better solution for the annoying-autoplaying-youtube problem that other browsers can agree with. (and maybe without relying on Liam Neeson and Sean Bean memes to try and elevate the mood they just created)

Alternatively, and I'm not recommending this as necessarily a "good" solution as it does introduce other problems and complications, but you can try uninstalling your Chrome-browser then re-installing a version of Chrome that came out prior to these changes (April 2018.... that would probably mean you would want to try v65.0.3325.181[filehippo.com]) and then disabling the auto-update to keep Chrome from bringing you back to the current-stable version. http://www.chromium.org/administrators/turning-off-auto-updates

Again, this is just an alternative solution. I would not recommend it unless you are comfortable with doing this sort of thing already and understand the risks of using outdated software. Personally, I've had to do this myself with Firefox as the move to Firefox Quantum (v57 and later) was just too disruptive for my personal and professional use of Firefox. These are unfortunate circumstances, but as the software becomes more complex it also becomes less agile so these little changes here-and-there can be quite problematic.

[edge421]

I see, thanks. So it's a known issue of a recent chrome update. I'll just use firefox for now. Appreciate the help, and sorry for the bother.

[JohnDoeNews]

This is weird. I host my games online, and don't have a problem with chrome, or firefox.

[◢ k r i s ◤]

Originally posted by BigFatX:

This is weird. I host my games online, and don't have a problem with chrome, or firefox.

You might not have updated to v66.0.3359.139 yet. You can see which version you are using with chrome://version. All three of your games on http://johndoenews.boards.net/ have this issue too and are completely silent in current Chrome-stable.

[JohnDoeNews]

I can't check. :p I re-installed my windows few days back, after a crash, and I didn't reïnstall chrome. So, if the version is the problem, then I stand corrected.

This is a bummer though. Hopefully not many players use chrome... And hopefully they will fix this soon.

[JohnDoeNews]

I get the players can't do a thing about it, but what about us developers? Any idea if I can force the games to play music again?

[XIIIthHarbinger]

Originally posted by BigFatX:

I get the players can't do a thing about it, but what about us developers? Any idea if I can force the games to play music again?

Unlikely,

First you would have to identify what changes google made to their browser, that is causing the conflict with RPG Maker. Frankly I don't see google providing that information to you, even if you asked.

So you would have to compare & contrast the differences in code between two versions of Chrome yourself; & then try to identify the culprit.

Assuming you could do that, you would then still have to figure out a way to end the conflict with RPG Maker.

& even if you could do all of that, there is no guarantee you would get it done before chrome changes yet again, so the longevity of any fix you come up with, is likely to be VERY SHORT.

[◢ k r i s ◤]

He's right. This is a really unique problem compounded with a lack of standardization and preparation and an air of volatility. I'm too unfamiliar with the audio system in RMMV to know if this can be easily resolved with a one-time "user-gesture", as the Unity devs seem to have found here[forum.unity.com] or if this requires a more elaborate overhaul to account for every, individual audio file or if that somehow introduces a necessity for an audio-preloader too. In any case, this is going to be something we want to have handled upstream - and upstream devs might intentionally delay making their own fix for this until the mess gets sorted out.

It is absolutely ridiculous that Chrome is going AWOL with this and introducing such an untested and unstandardized policy in the stable-branch and with such poor notice and preparation before hand. For the large majority of users and developers, this whole thing probably came as a surprise with a quick blog-post[blog.google] and some incredibly shortsighted impressions on part of Chrome-devs.

The best thing to do with a giant like this is just stand-clear and wait to see where the dust settles - nobody here is agile enough to keep up with what could happen next. If we're lucky, the RMMV devs might know how to fix this easily and be able to patch v1.6.1c to handle these Chrome-exclusive changes, but I'm not actually counting on that.



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I just saw this[itch.io] which does give me the impression that a single user-gesture might suffice for the entire page-load, so maybe this really won't be the worst case scenario I had imagined. Unfortunately, I still have my doubts that someone downstream will find a reliable and universal fix for this within RMMV itself that works for everyone.

BFX, your games are hosted on itch.io - maybe you should try the solution in that link. If that works, that might be a lucky workaround for itch.io users to try in the mean time.

[JohnDoeNews]

Oh poop.

But about the chrome source code... I thought google was always open and honest about their codes, unlike facebook?

*read the google blog*

Oh man. Seems like they even did it on purpose? They think it is a good thing, if not all the sounds start at once?

I saw you can turn "play on load" of, that would fix it... But that would make the prettiness of my site back from a 9.5/10 to a 5.5/10. (Yes, I chose the scores myzelf.)

[Marquise*]

Awwwww... When was the good old time we could trust good corporate sites?

[◢ k r i s ◤]

Originally posted by BigFatX:

But about the chrome source code... I thought google was always open and honest about their codes, unlike facebook?

I get that this was intended as a humorous jab, but being Open-Source doesn't mean they lack a sense of direction that might detract from public interests. It just means they release their code for everyone to poke at. Chrome and any related products (Chromium, Chromebook, Chrome-mobile, etc) is a hot-mess, in my opinion, due to poor resource-conservation and cross-browser standardization. I've all but stopped using this fancy Samsung Chromebook I got earlier this year because it just crashes every single day from light-use (and it's supposed to be the "professional" model).

If you see the link[developers.google.com] I posted earlier with the exact information about the changes, this is something that was mentioned as far back as November 2017. It just flew under everyone's radar because it was so radical that nobody would think they'd need to babysit Chrome-dev to prevent stuff from breaking. Usually we join browser-dev groups to try the latest-and-greatest CSS or Javascript features - not to check if our 10 year old HTML5 standards will break in a few months time (and that's why it probably came as a surprise to everyone, even the Unity devs).

Originally posted by BigFatX:

I saw you can turn "play on load" of, that would fix it... But that would make the prettiness of my site back from a 9.5/10 to a 5.5/10. (Yes, I chose the scores myzelf.)

Well, any solution that gets provided will require this change so it's going to ruin your pretty site any ways :P I suspect HTML5 games now will start to resemble flash-games of a decade-ago where we had that little loading bar and the play button that pops up once the preload completed. In reality, that could be a good thing for the long run if it's done correctly with a partial preload not being too time-consuming for low-bandwidth users.

[JohnDoeNews]

I didn't mean they are open-source though. But the codes are normally not secretive (idk where to find them, though) so developers can build their apps upon it.