Audio is muted when game doesn't have focus (=when it's not the foreground app)

[fredsa42]

Love the game! Just one request: please override Unreal Engine's default behavior which causes Unreal to mute the audio when the game loses focus.

This is really annoying for two reasons:

1. When bringing other programs (e.g. SteamVR, Windows audio settings, etc.) to the foreground, the user that's in VR can't hear anything: they don't hear the game and temporarily lose voice chat

2. Sometime its desirable to bring up another app (e.g. web browser) on the computer while someone is in VR. Currently that means the VR user loses audio.

--

AFAICT (I'm not an Unreal developer, but this "feature" ^H bug appears to affect all Unreal games), this is controlled by the "UnfocusedVolumeMultiplier" Engine.ini setting, which defaults to "1.0" when not set. See for example https://answers.unrealengine.com/questions/66918/keep-audio-from-losing-focus.html

Please either:
- change this value to 0, so that game audio does *not* mute when Raw Data is the background app
- make this setting user configurable

[aleXtrm]

Hi fredsa42, thanks for the improvement suggestion and doing the research into the fix, this helps a lot I appreciate it. The solution will probably be to turn this off by default and add a new toggle option to audio/sound options. We will not be able to get this into next update (lockdown is already in effect), but I'll put it on our feature request back log.

By the way, in the mean time, I believe you should be able to set this setting yourself by going to "C:\Users\%USERNAME%\AppData\Local\RawData\Saved\Config\WindowsNoEditor\Engine.ini" and pasting though lines there. Hope that works!

[fredsa42]

Thanks for the reply aleXtrm, adding these two lines:

[Audio]
UnfocusedVolumeMultiplier=1.0

to this the file you named:

C:\Users\%USERNAME%\AppData\Local\RawData\Saved\Config\WindowsNoEditor\Engine.ini

worked perfectly. The game audio no longer mutes when the Raw Data is the background.

Thanks!

[oren88]

Just saw this thread - Does it fix the voice-chat issue? Seriously I need to edit files for the voice-chat to work in-game?

[fredsa42]

The file edit described here is specifically is just so you can override Unreal Engine's default game behavior of muting muting game audio when the game is not in the foreground. Most players won't care. But, if you want to be able to switch to other apps on the desktop while someone else is in VR, this edit is useful.

Suggest you start a new thread discussing the voice chat issues you have.

[klutt]

Does anyone know of where to paste UnfocusedVolumeMultiplier=1.0 in Linux?

[grzegorz77]

Originally posted by Kapuff:

Does anyone know of where to paste UnfocusedVolumeMultiplier=1.0 in Linux?

I have no idea what you are writing about.
But wine (proton) creates in the user directory, directory structure mapping user directories from drive C: on windos.
You should find this structure without any problem, be careful it can start with ".".
Once you find it, find the right file you should paste it into. If it is not there, create it in the appropriate path. This should work. Remember about access rights.

edit:
here:

[Linux /] [home] [user...??] ..... [c:\Users\... ..... ...\AppData\Local\RawData\Saved\Config\WindowsNoEditor\Engine.ini ]

this:

[Audio]
UnfocusedVolumeMultiplier=1.0

[grzegorz77]

Originally posted by Kapuff:

Does anyone know of where to paste UnfocusedVolumeMultiplier=1.0 in Linux?

Have you tried this solution?
(I edited the previous post, after a long time)

[klutt]

Originally posted by grzegorz77:

Originally posted by Kapuff:

Does anyone know of where to paste UnfocusedVolumeMultiplier=1.0 in Linux?

Have you tried this solution?
(I edited the previous post, after a long time)

I realized (if I'm not mistaken) that this was not a Steam configuration, but a configuration of an individual game. So it's not relevant for my situation. Thanks anyway.

[grzegorz77]

I checked, many games have this layout of files.
That's how I found the path.
You can edit for each.
As this is a problem for you, you could even make a bat file that would paste it into the files.

[S1D3WYZ]

did location/method change since thread last active?

there's no /rawdata in my user/appdata/local .. which does have unreal and unrealenginelauncher folders, but neither have the engine.ini (drilled down thru sub-folders included)

would love conan to NOT mute when tabbed out

[grzegorz77]

Originally posted by S1D3WYZ:

did location/method change since thread last active?

there's no /rawdata in my user/appdata/local .. which does have unreal and unrealenginelauncher folders, but neither have the engine.ini (drilled down thru sub-folders included)

would love conan to NOT mute when tabbed out

No.
Look more closely, maybe it's hidden or something like that.

path:
c:\Users\....your user....\AppData\Local\RawData\Saved\Config\WindowsNoEditor\Engine.ini


edit:
Is your copy legal?
You don't have a badge next to your username that you own the game.