Questions? Ask TSR-KenC here!

**TSR-KenC**

Greetings, loyal fans of MXO!

Most of you know me as Ken, and some of you know me as 'that guy'! Either way, I've been put as the Tech rep here and I'd like to make the most of it assist you fine folks.

As such, I will create posts such as this on a semi-regular basis to show that I'm very dedicated to your cause. In this thread, you're free to ask anything of me.

Do you have a graphical issue that would like to get rid of? Ask away.

Do you have a question regarding the game as a whole or the server's status? Ask away.

Do you wish to know how much caffeine I consume on a regular basis? Ask away. (though not entirely on topic, I'll allow it here!)

Or anything else I might have missed.

You always have the option of sending a PM my way as well (in fact, I encourage it!) if you would like to keep the issue more private.

**phi**

How long have you been working for SOE?
Do you drink more coffee than me? (8 to 10 cups of grande doppio cafe latte or two spoons of instant per cup... that's 9 to 5... then I go home to my espresso machine) O.O *buzz*

Any news from 9mmFu on the nVidia 8xxx/9xxx series driver situation other than "they'll get 'round to it eventually"?

There seems to be a lot of people with sound issues (myself included). The sound engine has been fairly buggy since release, but the current biggest issue seems to be effects stopping from working in interlock.
Everything is fine and then when I'm fighting the music and environmental noises (birds, traffic, etc) are fine, but sound effects come and go. It's like there's a bug with the sample/channel scheduler.
When a sound plays it plays in it's own channel (like on a mixing desk). Say there are 32 audio channels in MxO if 32 sounds are playing and another one is scheduled, the sound in channel 1 will stop and have the new sound play instead (simplified for the purposes of this example). If the "next channel" counter (NCC) has a problem no new sounds will play. Often the NCC relies on a "sound sample finished playing" signal to know when a channel is free for use. If the "sound sample finished playing" signal isn't detected or has other problems then no channels will free up and sound effects will stop.

Could you get the guys to have a look at the sound engine to see if samples are getting stuck because of this? Like too many samples are going through at once and jamming things up. The sound engine should have a sample time-out feature where if a sample has played for longer than a certain time the channel should be freed up.

**Mathalos**

Why even if all the sound options are unchecked and all the way down, do I still hear sounds from time to time?

**TSR-KenC** · 06/19/2008 18:41:20

1. about 9 months!

2. No coffee here. Most of my caffeine comes from Mountain Dew or another carbonated beverages.

3. Mr. 9mmFu is handling that from a separate department, so I don't have much news for you on this unfortunately.

4. That's a pretty impressive diagnosis. If I can locate the appropriate person to send this info off to, I'd be happy to discuss the situation regarding this. I'll let you know if I can make any progress on that route.

**phi**

Mathalos wrote:

Why even if all the sound options are unchecked and all the way down, do I still hear sounds from time to time?

I suspect that is linked to the issue I mentioned above. The settings apply to all the audio channels in your immediate environment space. If a sample gets played outside of this space or in an incorrect channel the settings don't apply.

**phi** · 06/19/2008 18:53:34

TSR-KenC wrote:

4. That's a pretty impressive diagnosis. If I can locate the appropriate person to send this info off to, I'd be happy to discuss the situation regarding this. I'll let you know if I can make any progress on that route.

Imagine what I could do if I actually had the source code instead of just relying on my coding background to guess at the causes.

Despite DirectX and various bits of hardware acceleration, not much has changed with the basic way things work. I think the last time I coded an audio engine was for some crazy Uni project involving phong-shaded 3d tetris that ran without hardware acceleration. I wish my team had picked space invaders or tank-wars or something instead of tetris... the game engine is ridiculously simple for tetris.

I'll try to not hijack your thread SMILEY

**Strykre**

TSR Ken,

I'm having several issues. In Vista i cannot do a screen shot.. neither bmp or jpg aa on or off.. funny thing is .. it creates a file and i can preview the file fine.. if i open it is black...

Issue 2..

Vista SLI graphics... 8700m GT 512mb each with a new X9000 processor but i turned over clocking off and still no dice..

render engine keeps crashing.

Issue 3..

XP graphics with AA on i get a shiny coat that turns everything in game shiny esp new construct Satis playground.

If i put on a widows moor hat it does the same..

Some coats make my screen look like its CGA...

thx