It's Like An Anti-Audio Virus!

PePsiCola · Posted: Mon Sep 24, 2012 2:58 am Post subject: It's Like An Anti-Audio Virus!

So in the past I was switching mods around and forgot to move my mod's audio.bag, thus sounds were messed up. I didn't have the proper .idx so some sounds stopped working. But now, it seems every once in a while, a new sound stops working. The Grand Cannon rotate sound stopped working, but when I played a few hours ago it was fine. And eventually, less and less sounds will work unless I can solve this.

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Dny · Energy Commando **Joined**: 28 May 2008

hmmm well im not sure what causes this but that happened to me too. what i did is compact my audio .idx and .bag and it got solved its weird though im pretty sure that wasnt it Confused

Lin Kuei Ominae · Seth **Joined**: 16 Aug 2006 **Location**: Germany

If you have new audio files, check if they have the correct format.
Maybe one doesn't has the format 22050Hz,16bit,mono and thus breaks the audio-engine.
Though usually all sounds stop working after the engine tried to play one with a wrong format.

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Graion Dilach · Posted: Mon Sep 24, 2012 7:20 am Post subject:

Restart. Never mix bags and idx. idxes store the offsets where sounds start and end, ofcourse if you mess it up they won't work. Because the idx points to nonsense and the sound's offset in the bag is at the other place. Which, considering the whole bag being one binary stream, is impossible to determinate.

Maybe MAYBE a compacting via XCC Audio Editor fixes it, but it can also cause you more harm than good.

ApolloTD · Commander **Joined**: 19 Nov 2003

To correct LKO, unlike TS where wrong khz of AUD for example jams the audio engine for good, such is not happening in RA2 and if there is faults game typically ignores playing that particular sound event (giving silence instead) but won't jam whole sound engine, sometimes game does play bits and pieces if IDX points in middle of a file instead of start.

Given bag is simply raw data storage, messing up with the idx is very bad and most likely if idx has been swapped around but bag hasn't..the whole system is no doubt a mess and you should really re-do it all or go thru all sounds in list that they play ok in xcc sound editor and use compact to clear spaces in raw data.

Besides XCC won't allow insert wrong formats in to the bag unless actual raw data is corrupt with valid headers and audio wise, RA2 supports any khz mono/stereo, highest tested is 88200khz both in pcm and adpcm encoding.

MasterHaosis · General **Joined**: 01 Nov 2010 **Location**: Serbia

What Apollo said! he has golden mouth you know, he can explain everything with high detail.
Apollo, but one thing. Game would actually play some wavs which does not support, playing them about 10 times slower or more, making them unpleasant to hear. That happened to me many times if I put wrong compressed wavs, so it wont just put silence in all cases.

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ApolloTD · Commander **Joined**: 19 Nov 2003

Your issue is about wavs and namely the ARES custom sfx support which is not so fool proof addition unlike original westwood logic given it does not read the header.

PePsiCola · Posted: Tue Sep 25, 2012 1:20 am Post subject:

Hmm...now what if I told you I'm using a .bag that had previously been mixed with a different .idx, but now I'm using that .bag with a new .idx. Same problem right?

But...I think I'm actually using a fresh .bag and .idx, but this problem occurs anyway.

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ApolloTD · Commander **Joined**: 19 Nov 2003

The sounds stop working because you've screwed up once and used wrong idx when editing the bag contents and once you did this, it can easily lead a degrading path for more sounds to begin fail the more you edit the bag and thus you should start from entirely new bag and idx, no re-using the idx or bag alone!

Unless feel like going thru every sound in list and making sure it works for all but given your expertise level and what some bag fixing would require, I would advise start fresh or plain simply use ares pcm 22khz mono wav support.

as for any new sound adds that do not work, I hope your using the latest xcc mixer 1.47 that has fixed adding problems of adpcm waves with certain khz that could be the issue for not working.

Unless you insist on recovering your existing bag maybe I can take a look how bad the situation is.