PSA: You can improve Blockland sound by updating OpenAL32.dll

[Abstath]

everything sounds so clear and sharp
i love it
Worked almost flawlessly for about an hour until the connection sound swapped to music in the middle of a game. Oh well.
It also swapped some sounds to custom ones from a server, yet they still worked in singleplayer.

[Ad Bot]

[ZERØ]

This is a deal breaker for me.


Maybe it has something to do with the audio cache.

Pageloss.


Has anybody looked into if its a audio cache issue?

[kongo]

2015 has been a good year for blockland

[Badspot]

I am almost positive that I have updated openAL in the past and then reverted it because it caused random issues for people.  Either it crashed or it didn't run or it was the sound mix up issue.  I don't remember exactly because it was years ago, but I'm pretty sure we've been down this path before.

[Kyuande]

Pageloss.


Has anybody looked into if its a audio cache issue?

Pretty sure it's an audio cache issue, I am updated with openal32 and I've had no issues

[Electrk.]

I am almost positive that I have updated openAL in the past and then reverted it because it caused random issues for people.  Either it crashed or it didn't run or it was the sound mix up issue.  I don't remember exactly because it was years ago, but I'm pretty sure we've been down this path before.

How easy/hard would it be to add an ability to choose from different OpenAL versions?

[Swollow]

How easy/hard would it be to add an ability to choose from different OpenAL versions?

probably pretty easy if you allowed only the launcher to write it
just have the launcher reach the player's prefs and if update open al is enabled overwrite/verify the dll

[Zeblote]

Blockland already has a drop down for the audio driver in options, could just make it have "openAL" and "old openAL"

[Electrk.]

Blockland already has a drop down for the audio driver in options, could just make it have "openAL" and "old openAL"

yeah this is what I was thinking too

[Kyuande]

I am almost positive that I have updated openAL in the past and then reverted it because it caused random issues for people.  Either it crashed or it didn't run or it was the sound mix up issue.  I don't remember exactly because it was years ago, but I'm pretty sure we've been down this path before.

Can you please add 2 different audio versions and hopefully have the old one be default for the prefs?

[Zeblote]

Can you please add 2 different audio versions and hopefully have the old one be default for the prefs?

You mean have the new one be the default

[Kyuande]

You mean have the new one be the default

What if people are dumb and don't know how to change it?

[Zeblote]

What if people are dumb and don't know how to change it?

Then they'll make a post on the forum asking for help with wrong sound and someone will tell them how to fix it.

Much less people would try to change the audio settings because alarm is too loud, they'll just assume it's broken.


Obviously, it'd be better to actually fix the problems people are having with it.

[Val]

Pretty sure it's an audio cache issue, I am updated with openal32 and I've had no issues

Unlikely since we're literally switching out function pointers and it has nothing to do with a cache. If the old version works with the code TGE has now, it *should* theoretically work with the new DLL, the main issue being header/dll incompatibility, which brings me to my next point...

Just updating the DLL and having incompatible AL-related #defines in TGE (or deprecated methods, whichever), coupled with the fact that there's virtually no error handling in there is probably the reason why there's weird effects happening. There's barely anything to tell you if something went wrong so it just goes with it and this is what you get. Welcome to DLL Hell.

Swapping DLLs like this probably isn't the best idea for everyone anyways, though it may work for some of us lucky ones if we grab the right version (me included, I guess)

[portify]

I am almost positive that I have updated openAL in the past and then reverted it because it caused random issues for people.  Either it crashed or it didn't run or it was the sound mix up issue.  I don't remember exactly because it was years ago, but I'm pretty sure we've been down this path before.

Ahh, now it's starting to make a lot more sense. I couldn't see it just being left on 1.0 unintentionally for this long, so I was wondering what might have kept you from updating it. I apologize for making it sound so much like a plain "fix-all" solution that can't be wrong, but that's more attributed to how I saw effectively zero issues with it most of the time. I think it's still reasonable to say that the option does exist and does to fix these historic issues.

It seems to run for everybody so far, and I don't think sounds get mixed up until the audio driver is reloaded while the game is running, or many audio profiles are switched out (leaving to join another server). I hope everybody can somehow find a way to solve sounds getting mixed up, but letting people know that it does work, with fair warning, seems reasonable: it's perfectly fine for things like recording videos of Blockland where you wouldn't be hopping servers anyway (or similar cases).

I've made the warning about possible issues in the OP more noticeable for the time being.