Something I can't understand...

[Dhalin]

Okay, one of you guys that is pretty good with Pref files could help me maybe...

For the longest of times, ever since that delta that hit right before the infamous EI takeover, it nearly obliterated Music, completely, on my dragon character. I hear music when I first log in, and maybe for about 5 minutes, then if I change areas, use a teleporter, recall, etc, ALL music stops, Period.

Now, on my biped, music will always play, for an infinite length of time, except some music is obviously buggy (the "play 2 sec, switch track, play 2 sec, switch track, play 2 sec" thing), but it at least plays, somewhat.

I thought something was just corrupt in that dragon character's pref files, and just shrugged it off, figuring that I would fix it "someday".

But, last night, I made a new dragon, a whole new character, new name, new everything, on Blight, and the same thing happens that happened with my other dragon: I hear music for about 5 minutes, change areas, and then nothing the rest of the session.

Do dragons and biped characters use different global pref files or something? Or is music just screwed up for dragons (but not bipeds??) or something? I'm not really understanding what is going on here... none of my dragons have music, but the bipeds do...

Should I just nuke all of my pref files, and log in, and re-do them all from scratch? If so, which files do I need to nuke?

Edit: I have also tried UNchecking the "play music", logging out, logging back in, putting a check back in it, and relogging again... no dice.

[Gorek]

But, last night, I made a new dragon, a whole new character, new name, new everything, on Blight********
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Very interesting, I have played on Chaos and now am playing on Blight and I have never had a problem with sound/music files.

So all I can really suggest is that it isn't the client side but must be your side, so upgrade your sound card drivers, or even downgrade them

Not sure that nuking all of your pref files is a good idea but then again somebody, sometime may well have come across this before.


Regards

[Solitaire]

It should not have mattered what was in the prefs files. When you create a new character, you will create a whole new set of prefs for that character. In the \Horizons\prefs folder, you will see individual character folders in a format similar to this "server_charactername". There will also be some .def files in the prefs folder itself. If you want to experiment and not take the chance of wiping out everything, just change the name of the prefs folder and it will recreate it as a default next time you launch. If nothing changes, then delete that new folder and restore your old one if you don't want to lose ALL your settings and hotkeys. And make sure that you don't have anything in the /Horizons/resources_override folder that could affect it as well. Might want to rename that folder also.

But to me, and I'm guessing and not making a statement on hard knowledge, I might agree with what Gorek said about the drivers. Or it could be a problem with some Creative sound cards that HZ has had for a while. Sound and music has been problematic at times since this game's beginning. What fixes one thing breaks another. Tis a legacy of poor code from long gone devs that has been difficult to overcome.

[Dhalin]

If it were drivers, why would sound play fine for my Biped, and not my Dragon?

I doubt the sound hardware (or drivers) would know (or care) whether or not my character is a dragon, or a biped in some game...

[Vahrokh]

I never had any problem when I played on Unity, but creating a new character on Chaos made something that now I have the "2 seconds then skip to next music" thing as well.

[Starmind]

Just a thought
Try doing a defragment. It's possible the music files used for the dragon and the music files used for biped are different and located at different places (after all, dragons do tend to hang in different cities) If a music file is scattered throughout the hard drive, it can become sketchy and jumpy
Take the couple hours and do a full defragment. You'll be surprised all the little things this will clear up.

[C`gan]

I would have to say this is something within the .defs or client somewhere, but I'm not sure exactly where. Here's my reasoning.

1. The sound files are localized. They are always in the Music folder and are not moved when used. They can be changed by adding and subtracting whatever files you want and putting in new ones with the same name as what was removed, so if you want to hear Enya on the training islands, that's fine.

2. The ambient set and the original set had different .def files and different mp3s. There was a player-made ambient set put out a good two or three years ago to add things into some of the music files (metal being worked in Aughundell, children and shop vendors in Tazoon, etc.) They worked fine, except for missing a few areas in the original .def like Bristugo and the guild islands.

3. At some point, things changed. This bug affected both the original and the ambient .def files the same way. 2-3 seconds of play, swap music file. The interesting part about it is that in doing this change, music files were suddenly being played again in Bristugo and the guild islands with the same fade in/chop/fade in new song.

[Steelclaw]

This is an issue with the client and has nothing to do with how fragmented your hard drive is. (although, you should defrag it about once a week if you play hz every day)

There are .def files that are global (in prefs) and local to your character (in prefs/character_shard). Maybe one of those does affect the music looping bug. Save the clientprefs_main.def file from the character that doesnt have the problem, then copy the same file from your dragon in its place. If you then have the looping problem, see whats different between the two files, and change one value at a time untill it goes away.

If you are having issues with the music disappearing period, try this:
- copy resources\commands_player.def to resources_override
- edit resources_override\commands_player.def
- at the bottom, right above the last two closing curly braces '}', add

<tab><tab>{
<tab><tab><tab>string name = "soundReInit"
<tab><tab><tab>int numParams = 0
<tab><tab>}

The <tab> is a tab character, not literally the string "<tab>".


When the music stops working, do /soundreinit

[Starmind]

Just a further note. On most computer's priority settings (IRQ settings), the sound is low man on the totem pole. If something else is slowing up your computer (such as severe fragmentation), everything else on a lower IRQ setting has a chance of suffering. Being as sound is one of the lowest priority items (not system critical in any sense) it will be one of the first things to show problems. As to the fact that it only happens with the dragon and not the biped, I can't say. It could very well be a problem with the load. Just remember. All sound playing is done local (there is no logic to using the server to switch sounds and whatnot, would severely affect bandwidth). It is something on your computer and not the server that causes it. (Though once again, it could be bad implementation)

Suggestions for improving performance:
1. Regular maintenance (clear cache, defrag, scandisk, etc.)
2. Run MSconfig and edit unnecessary widgets out of your startup menu.
3. Run a spyware removal tool at least once a week (Spybot works nice)
4. Disable your Anti-virus (only if absolutely necessary and restart soon as you finish playing) while playing HZ as Norton and others can severely weaken HZ playing
5. Disable automatic updates on Windows and other applications as these will often be downloading in the background and severly deplete accessible bandwidth. (Be sure to check regularily for updates then)

There are other steps to take, but these are a good start that don't have too many negative effects. Most things in startup (with the exception of your antivirus) really don't need to be there.

A last ditch step to try is a registry cleanup tool. Whenever you install and then later uninstall any program, widget, etc, the uninstall program rarely removes all references to it from the registry. These references will sometimes lock out memory which would otherwise be accessible. Be careful with this as some of those "registry cleanup tools" can do more harm than good. Do some serious research before using one. A bad registry cleanup can facilitate the necessity of a reload of your OS.
<<ALWAYS BACK UP REGISTRY BEFORE EDITING OR CLEANING IT UP>>

Just a thought or two from someone with 8 years of Technical Support Experience.

[Steelclaw]

It is something on your computer and not the server that causes it. (Though once again, it could be bad implementation)

Didn't I just say that?

This is an issue with the client

Yup, I did.

In fact, it's a known issue. If you'd like to help with it, start by collecting prefs from configurations that don't seem to have this problem and isolate the settings that cause it, if there are any.

Just a further note. On most computer's priority settings (IRQ settings), the sound is low man on the totem pole. If something else is slowing up your computer (such as severe fragmentation), everything else on a lower IRQ setting has a chance of suffering.

The problem described by Dhalin is not caused by the data starvation, as what happens when the sound card's interrupt doesn't get serviced in time and its buffer runs dry. That sort of problem sounds like skipping, popping, or repeating the same bit of sound over and over, not the general absence of music, but otherwise functioning sound.

Furthermore, hard disk read/writes are handled by a DMA controller (which handles coaxing the drive into reading the disk, waiting for it, and storing the data in a buffer), freeing the CPU to do other things. The CPU time penalty for servicing the disk interrupt (or servicing the sound card interrupt) is a few orders of magnitude smaller than the time it will take the disk operation to complete, and as stated above, the CPU is free do do other things in the meantime. This means that a fragmented filesystem won't cause the sound to skip.*

Anyway, your tips for better performance are for the most part good advice (except for clearing the world cache). I just strongly disagree with suggesting defragging as a fix to the music problem, as well as your explanation as to why filesystem fragmentation would cause the problem in the first place.





* This can happen if the fragmentation is so bad that the file containing the sound to be played can't be read off the disk fast enough, or if the application generating the sound gets blocked while waiting for some part of it to get swapped in. If the system has a cheap sound card with a software DSP and it's accessing its disks in PIO mode (which DOES tie up the CPU), the sound can skip if the DSP doesn't get enough CPU time. In either case, it has nothing to do with the number of interrupts generated.

[Starmind]

Heh, never said I was always right. I've personally never had problems with the music so it was just my best guess scenarios

I dinna mean world cache, I meant IE cache. but that's my fault for not being more specific