Possible solution for X-Fi and OpenAL related crashes

[MSuomi]

Get the newest official drivers.
They include the UT3 fix as well.
However, you still have to deactivate the X-RAM...
Greets

Yes, they made the beta to official one. This from Creative's forums:

"Yes the new driver is the same as the UT3 BETA driver, however the new Driver includes new versions of the Audio Console application and Volume pannel so it is worth downloading and installing the new 2.18.008 driver even if you did have the UT3 BETA driver."

And

"this is quite interesting after installing these drivers i noticed they contain :



new version of OpenAl (newer than in previous drivers)



installer 2.0.6.0

* OpenAL32.dll version 6.14.357.23
* wrap_oal.dll version 2.2.0.5



while public version of OpenAL on Creative Connect OpenAl was



Updated Summer 2007 : Version 2.0.3

DLL Version numbers:

* OpenAL32.dll version 6.14.357.22
* wrap_oal.dll version 2.1.8.1"

With these changes:

* Added new enumeration extension (ALC_ENUMERATE_ALL_EXT) to use AL on any soundcard / audio endpoint

* "Generic Hardware" device only appears in the enumeration string if it can be used

* Fixed alcGetIntegerv's requirement for an active context

* Fixed alcCaptureOpenDevice so that it returns 'NULL' if the capture device fails to open

* Fixed software reverb bugs (Reflection Delay and Air Absorption HF)

P.S. This changelog was actually for previous version of OpenAl, NOT for this new version! Sorry...

[IntelliMoo]

Old thread, I know, but I love this game and play it all the time, and I finally stumbled upon a real solution that works!

http://forums.steampowered.com/forum....php?t=2559053

[Xandros]

Old thread, I know, but I love this game and play it all the time, and I finally stumbled upon a real solution that works!

http://forums.steampowered.com/forum....php?t=2559053

This brought me back here, and I just have to mention two things, then I'm off again. First of all, that workaround was posted in this very thread multiple times years ago. Secondly, it isn't a solution, it has exactly the same effect as if you go into UT's settings and turn off hardware acceleration because you're essentially breaking OpenAL by doing it. Some people seemed to think you still got hardware acceleration by doing this and swore blimey that they could hear the difference but, they really couldn't. Seriously, the two files are different and perform different functions, renaming one file as the other is breaking those functions, not magically fixing a relatively obscure bug, hence the metric fukton of errors that come up in the log when it is done.

The actual fix was always to use beta drivers provided by Creative that allowed you to turn off the X-Ram usage, because the bug is in actuality when a sound file gets stored in X-Ram, however, that file apparently either gets corrupted or misnamed somewhere or along the line or simply doesn't get put in there when it is supposed to and the result is UT3 eventually tries to load it, fails, and instead of saying "oh well that didn't work I'll carry on as normal" it has a spaz attack and crashes.

[IntelliMoo]

This brought me back here, and I just have to mention two things, then I'm off again. First of all, that workaround was posted in this very thread multiple times years ago. Secondly, it isn't a solution, it has exactly the same effect as if you go into UT's settings and turn off hardware acceleration because you're essentially breaking OpenAL by doing it. Some people seemed to think you still got hardware acceleration by doing this and swore blimey that they could hear the difference but, they really couldn't. Seriously, the two files are different and perform different functions, renaming one file as the other is breaking those functions, not magically fixing a relatively obscure bug, hence the metric fukton of errors that come up in the log when it is done.

The actual fix was always to use beta drivers provided by Creative that allowed you to turn off the X-Ram usage, because the bug is in actuality when a sound file gets stored in X-Ram, however, that file apparently either gets corrupted or misnamed somewhere or along the line or simply doesn't get put in there when it is supposed to and the result is UT3 eventually tries to load it, fails, and instead of saying "oh well that didn't work I'll carry on as normal" it has a spaz attack and crashes.

OK, you're completely wrong, mate. Let me clear things up for you:

"Workaround posted years ago": WRONG. I have not found THIS solution THAT WORKS (true surround sound) on Vista/7, and using the "OpenAL-Soft" replacement to achieve it..

"It isn't a solution...exactly the same effect": IT IS A SOLUTION, because it provides true surround sound in a non-hardware-accelerated way (meaning software only). Creative's software-only device called "Generic Software" -- used by the game when you turn off its "Hardware OpenAL" setting -- is stereo only! It is NOT exactly the same effect, why would you think that after my extensive explanation in the solution post??

"Actual fix was...": WRONG AGAIN. The issue affects ALL X-Fi cards, not just those with X-Ram, because I had the issue and my XtremeGamer card does NOT have X-Ram.

Believe me, this has been researched and tested by me, I do actually know what I'm doing. Full OpenAL functionality is NOT broken using the real solution I have posted, in fact it restores it for the game (full surround sound without crashing; better effects than when using stereo). And I play this game all the time!

Cheers!

P.S. I didn't mean to sound mean, but you seemed to be another typical example of either not fully reading and/or understanding, not actually trying for yourself, or otherwise trolling against the game finally being fixed.

[Xandros]

My mistake. My short attention span resulted in me briefly skimming over that post of yours on the Steam forums and I saw words like "rename" and "errors" etc. and immediately thought you were waffling on about that bogus "workaround" I mention that does completely bugger all other than break hardware acceleration.

OK, you're completely wrong, mate. Let me clear things up for you:

"Workaround posted years ago": WRONG. I have not found THIS solution THAT WORKS (true surround sound) on Vista/7, and using the "OpenAL-Soft" replacement to achieve it..

I also do apologise in the respect that I didn't reference what I was talking about here; I meant to write "this very thread", but thanks to said short attention span I forgot to link to it so I suppose you thought I actually meant "this" thread we're posting in right now.

As for that other fix of yours, if you're content with soft sound that's up to you. It still doesn't really fix the issue of course, which is that hardware accelerated sound will still result in a crash. And as far as any research into the mater went it was prominent with X-RAM enabled cards, but yes, did also occur on cards without it, but that might have been a different crash related to something else entirely. It was a safe bet back in the day that if your card had X-RAM on it, this game would brick it sooner or later if you had hardware acceleration switched on.

Well, never mind. This was an issue I gave up with years ago. Seeing as the updated OpenAL versions (nearly) rectified the issue for me, although I believe also there were crashes involved with the graphics card drivers that never seemed to get fixed but they may have got confused with the X-Fi crash. I've completely forgotten if I fixed the problem in the end with updated drivers or something or if it was on-going when I gave up playing the game altogether. I expect I've had a good moan about it in that thread I just linked to.

[IntelliMoo]

My mistake. My short attention span resulted in me briefly skimming over that post of yours on the Steam forums and I saw words like "rename" and "errors" etc. and immediately thought you were waffling on about that bogus "workaround" I mention that does completely bugger all other than break hardware acceleration.

I also do apologise in the respect that I didn't reference what I was talking about here; I meant to write "this very thread", but thanks to said short attention span I forgot to link to it so I suppose you thought I actually meant "this" thread we're posting in right now.

No problem, understandable mistake.

As for that other fix of yours, if you're content with soft sound that's up to you. It still doesn't really fix the issue of course, which is that hardware accelerated sound will still result in a crash. And as far as any research into the mater went it was prominent with X-RAM enabled cards, but yes, did also occur on cards without it, but that might have been a different crash related to something else entirely. It was a safe bet back in the day that if your card had X-RAM on it, this game would brick it sooner or later if you had hardware acceleration switched on.

OK, but to be clear, please understand my "soft sound" fix is not a fix for hardware acceleration at all, obviously. It is a fix for getting true surround sound without hardware acceleration (and therefore without the crashes/bluescreens). That is the whole point of my fix, since yes actual hardware acceleration (which is available only with the Creative OpenAL device) is still a problem (and will be forever apparently).

Well, never mind. This was an issue I gave up with years ago. Seeing as the updated OpenAL versions (nearly) rectified the issue for me, although I believe also there were crashes involved with the graphics card drivers that never seemed to get fixed but they may have got confused with the X-Fi crash. I've completely forgotten if I fixed the problem in the end with updated drivers or something or if it was on-going when I gave up playing the game altogether. I expect I've had a good moan about it in that thread I just linked to.

Too bad you gave up the game. OpenAL-Soft was just recently updated to 1.14, which improves performance a bit so there is even less worry of using the software implementation to get surround sound. All I can say in the end is OpenAL-Soft is a miracle to me concerning this age-old problem with the game, and surprisingly works very well getting surround sound without the once thought requirement of needing hardware acceleration on the sound card.

Cheers

[Flak Master]

OK, I'm running into a non-UT3 related issue with my sound card. I just installed the latest drivers for my sound card, but, even though the PC recognizes the sound card, I still can't get any sound. My sound card is a Sound Blaster Audigy XtremeGamer Fatal1ty Pro. Any help would be appreciated!

P.S. I know that this request for help is off topic, but I don't know exactly where else to ask.

[IntelliMoo]

OK, I'm running into a non-UT3 related issue with my sound card. I just installed the latest drivers for my sound card, but, even though the PC recognizes the sound card, I still can't get any sound. My sound card is a Sound Blaster Audigy XtremeGamer Fatal1ty Pro. Any help would be appreciated!

P.S. I know that this request for help is off topic, but I don't know exactly where else to ask.

Hiya. I'll state some common things that will hopefully help (some very obvious, I know):

- Make sure the speakers are powered on and properly connected
- Make sure any volume control on the speakers is up
- Make sure the speakers device is enabled in Windows
- Make sure the speakers aren't muted in the Windows mixer
- Make sure the proper speakers type (2, 5.1, etc.) is selected in Windows, and also the Creative Audio Control Panel
- Make sure the speakers output is not set to digital, if you are using normal connections (or vice-versa)

[Flak Master]

Thanks for the response. I checked everything, but I'm still getting nothing. I might try my headphones out to see if I can get sound from those, but I have a feeling they won't work. Any other ideas?