A baffling unexplained problem

[Zahael]

***I copied this post to general because I was getting no responses under the sound and cutscenese section***

Hi everybody, I have an amazing and baffling problem.  I am no stranger to making my own cutscenes or acompaning sound, but this has got me stumped.  I would reallym really appreciate any help.

MY problem is this - I have a smalll cutscene where an officer is being briefed by his commanding officer.  I have no problem doing this - the wav to lip worked fine and the speech was perfect. Problem was that some of the camera angles were faily far away, so sometime the speech could no tbe heard.  To solve this, I created a second set of speech files, exactly the same and used the "playsound" command directly after the "say" command, so the lip file would still work. Eg this sound file was called "comd1" I save it to a new file called "pscomd1", add it to the description.ext and change the original "comd1" file so that it plays silence (i delete the sound so there was just an empty file.  THis should've stopped ghosting or cluttering of sounds).

This problem is, no speech plays.  Its baffling because text comes  up as though it is playing, but no sound comes out. I used exaclty the same sound format as before (44hz, 16 bit, mono) but no sound.  As an experiment I deleted the "say" command and just used the playsound, and text comes up, but no sound.

I assume my description.txt is correct because if it wasn't, I would get an error message or the text wouldn't come up.  

Can anyone see any glaring things that it might be?  It is really giving me the sh*ts.  Big time.

THanks in advance,

Zahael  
 
 

[macguba]

I don't know enough about sounds even to understand your problem fully, never mind know the answer, but it seems to me you are asking the game simultaneously to play some speech and also to play some silence.     Since silence is what you are getting, that file/sound seems to be prevailing.    What happens if you remove the silence file altogether?

[Zahael]

Yes, I thought of this as well.  BUt I have used a similar method with a previous mission and there were no probs (I discovered the technique after posting about a year ago and someone suggested it to me).  Thinking that might be it, I removed the silence file and just used the playsound command.  Same thing, the writing came up, so it could definately access the file, but no sound.  Baffling

[Zahael]

Any other ideas??

[Sui]

Heya Zaheal,

I regularly do this sort of thing (Have one sound file playing while another displays the text).

Could you please post up the two entries in your .ext file, and we'll see if we can't sort this puppy out

[mcnorth]

Having been brutally punished by perplexing sound & sfx problems all I can offer is pity. But you can bet I'll watch this thread to learn a thing or two.

[Zahael]

Thnks Sui.  TO tell you the truth, I think you were the one who gave me the idea in the first place, and it has worked before which is why I am at a loss to explain why thi swon't work.

I will attach the entire description.ext file.  THe sound files with the ps prefix in front of them are the actual sound files (ps stands for playsound) while the files lacking ps are the silent, lip files.

I use it in the script by going:
PlaySound "pscomd1"
comd say "comd1"

Thanks.  I really do appreciate it.

[Zahael]

Hmm, it didn't seem to attach.  I'll try again

[Sui]

Hmm... that looks ok...

Ah ha!

I think I've worked out what's going on.
You can keep that as it is but make sure that there is no comd1.ogg file in your sound directory.
If you get rid of any sound file called comd1.ogg (even if it's silent/empty) out of your sound directory and if you leave the lip file in there, you'll still get the lip movement

What I think might have been happening is that the playsound file was playing a (silent) sound over top of the speech, so you can't hear the speech.

[Zahael]

Sorry Sui, good try but no joy.  Same shit, different day. Can I send you the actual sound file and maybe you can see what I am doing wrong or maybe something I can't see?

Thnaks

Zahael

[Zahael]

Maybe an email address.  Its too big to attach

[rock dude]

why did you gras on mickey you evil prick he is my brother and i am going to find and beat you up

 

[Sui]

* Sui steps over all the abusive plebs

Geez... is it a full moon or something? What caused these guys to come out of the woodwork?

Anyway Zahael,
Instead of sending me the sound file, just delete it from your sounds directory. Get rid of it

Leave the .ext file as is, and leave the .lip file in there. Remove the .ogg file and it should (hopefully) work...

[Zahael]

SOrry Sui, you misunderstood me.  I actually did do that like you suggested, but it didn't work.  What I wanted to do was send you the sound file that actually had the speech in it (the file I used with the playsound command) and maybe you can look at it and be able to see something that I can't.  Or maybe you could use it on your computer and see if it works for you, or something.

And what the hell was that random crap that guy was spinning??

Thanks Sui.  I appreciate the help

Zahael

[Zahael]

Still with me sui?

[lone wolf]

Hey Rock Dude! I dont think you can say that on this forum!

p.s. Amy is fit

[Sui]

Yeap... sorry bout that mate.

Having a bit of grief with my ISP... I'm formulating a cunning plan to get around their new policies as we speak ;D

Check your IM's

[Zahael]

Sorry Sui, IM?  What does that mean ?

[Zahael]

Any luck sui?

[macguba]

IM is Immediate Message, in the unlikely event that you haven't worked it out yet  ;D     At the top of this page it says Hey, you have 1message, 1 is new.

[Sui]

Sorry bout the delay Zahael... got there in the end (at last)

I could play the sound file in my sound editor no problems, however it was a bit quiet...

This is the sound you play with playsound is it?

It may be too quiet to be heard from far away...
I suggest setting up a dummy mission and seeing if you can recreate the scenario without having to sit through your whole mission just to test it. Then you can tweak and test very easily, and just cut and paste into the real mission once you're satisfied with the result...

[Zahael]

Yeah sui, that is the file I use to play with play sound.  So it did play.  Maybe I will have to go back to the start and see what I am doing wrong.  Perhaps it does have something to do with the fact I am doing the say command at the same time.

Thanks for all your help

Much apprecaited

Zahael