Topic: D2X-XL freezes/ Custom music

[Alieo]

EDIT EDIT: UPDATE: Ok, so I tried doing the following:

- turn off music: sound works but blasts would max out again
- turn off sound: DID NOT FREEZE and blasts did not max out
- turned DOWN volume to sound and music to its lowest notch: I CAN PLAY DESCENT AGAIN! WOOHOO!!! All I gotta do is adjust the volume from the desktop before I open the game.

Hurrah for the scientific method!

So, I guess I'll consider this fixed for now. I guess I maxed out my soundcard. What do y'all think?

EDIT: This is a complete repost of the issue. I tend to make things more complicated than they are...

I wanted to play the Descent 1 and 2 redbook mp3s I have in-game. I followed these instructions verbatim:

Go to: http://www.descent2.de/install-frames.html then click on "Custom Music" from the menu on the left.

I even converted them to ogg. The problem isn't with the music. I got everything set up right...

MAIN ISSUE: Any explosion sound effect that occurs causes radio-like static followed by temporary silence of ALL music and SFX until the explosion SFX is finished, then the music resumes.

I feel like a spoiled child trying to get candy at the checkout lane of the supermarket. I have always wanted to have the RedBook audio as the background music without having to use a CD. I can assign what tracks I want to what levels. This is great, but now, D2X-XL has become unstable.

This is what the d2x.ini file looks like in my config folder:

;launch d2x-xl in fullscreen mode
-fullscreen
;keep mouse focus in game window
-grabmouse
;use sound sampled at 22 Khz
-sound22k
;don't use Redbook audio from CD
;-nocdrom
;use trilinear filtering and mipmaps
-render_quality 3
;let OpenGL handle rendering of layered textures
-gl_alttexmerge
;display multiplayer game messages from other players
-playermessages
;suppress duplicate messages
-noredundancy
;don't playback cut scenes movies, but allow robot movies
-nomovies 1
;use bitmap reticle
-gl_reticle 0
;use short multiplayer game data packets
-shortpackets
;send 10 updates per second in multiplayer games
-pps 10
;add your default player name here to make D2X-XL load it at program start
;-player default
;use the following screen resolution at program start (overrides player profile)
;-640x480
;set the following value to 0 to enable a backwards compatible camera rendering method
-render2texture 1
;set the following value to 0 to enable the original menu style
-menustyle 1
;set the following value to 1 to enable faster rendering of new style menus
-fastmenus 1
;set the following value to 1 to enable sound rendering via SDL_mixer (enables midi playback on non-Windows OS-s)
-sdl_mixer 1
;set the following value to 0 to use Descent 2 sounds in Descent 1 levels
-use_d1sounds 1
;specify the name of a custom menu background to use here
-altbg_name menubg.tga
;specify the brightness of the custom menu background here (0.0 < brightness <= 1.0)
-altbg_brightness 0.75
;specify the transparency of the custom menu background here (0.0 < alpha <= 1.0; -1.0 to keep what's set in the image)
-altbg_alpha -1.0
;tell whether to convert the custom menu background to a grayscale image
-altbg_grayscale 0
-midifix 1
-sdl_mixer 1
-introsong c:\descent2\music\31 Descent II.ogg
-briefingsong c:\descent2\music\32 Crawl.ogg
-creditssong c:\descent2\music\33 Revelation.ogg
-playlist c:\descent2\music\my level songs.txt

Is there a magic "code" I can put in this file to make the game more stable and not freeze up?

[Pumo]

This may happen if you don't have hi-res sounds installed for D2X-XL.

Download them here: http://www.descent2.de/downloads/sound/hires-sounds.7z

Unpack both sounds1 and sounds2 folders to your main Descent 2 folder (if it asks for overwriting, do it).

After that, add this line to your d2x.ini file:
-hires_sound 2

and remove the -sound22k line.

Hope this helps.  


(BTW, it seems that INI file you're using is outdated, as from some old D2X-XL version. There are some changes and new parameters as well as some that doesn't works anymore on newest versions. If you need my INI file that is up to date, I can send it to you and you can make the changes you want to it.)

[Alieo]

FIXED!

And to make sure I could be confident enough it was fixed, I put the volume on full blast and went to D1 lvl 4 and let those Medium lifters gangbang me against a corner... NO CRASH! no radio static, no glitchiness, no NOTHING! All normal Pyro-GX wreckage. Thanks a LOT!

And sure, I would like to compare my d2x.ini file with yours. You wanna copy and paste it to a post? If not, feel free to email me. My email address is public on my profile.

This is great. I'm just now discovering "The Enemy Within." HIGHLY HIGHLY HIGHLY addictive! The briefings and storyline won't LET you quit! Absolutely EPIC beyond words. I see you're one of the level designers too! Did y'all get together and make these levels or was it all done through remote means, like, emailing someone the mine files, etc. When did TEW come out?

THANK YOU AGAIN!

[Pumo]

Yeah, indeed The Enemy Within (TEW) is one of the best missions at this time.
Darkhorse (or Ben K) made some of the best levels of the set IMO.

Oh yeah, and it was made remotely, sending the level (and in the case of Darkhorse and Sirius also custom robot) files to Darkflamewolf's mail.

Oh, and now that you are on it, be sure to play TEW using the new OGG soundtrack made specially for it by Alter-Fox (wazzazzle) with a couple of bonus tracks by me. Check it out here: http://www.planetdescent.net/index.php?topic=565
--

And now here is my d2x.ini file if you want to compare (of course, there are some custom stuff like the path to my ogg music files, but that's the obvious ):

;launch d2x-xl in fullscreen mode
-fullscreen 1
;keep mouse focus in game window
-grabmouse
;skip CD ROM check
-nocdrom
;display multiplayer game messages from other players
-playermessages
;2: all movies (intro, cut scenes, ...), 1: only robot movies, 0: no movies at all
-nomovies 2
;0: show, 1: skip briefings
;-noscreens 1
;use bitmap reticle or drawn reticle (numerical value = line width)
-gl_reticle 0
;add your default player name here to make D2X-XL load it at program start
;-player default
;use the following screen resolution at program start (will be overridden by player profile)
-1024x768
;set the following value to a time in ms to enable menu fading (100 - 150 are good values)
-fademenus 100
;set the following value to 1 to enable sound rendering via SDL_mixer (enables midi playback on non-Windows OS-s)
-sdl_mixer 1
;specify the name of a custom menu background to use here
-altbg_name menub.tga
;specify the brightness of the custom menu background here (0.0 < brightness <= 1.0)
-altbg_brightness 1.0
;specify the transparency of the custom menu background here (0.0 < alpha <= 1.0; -1.0 to keep what's set in the image)
-altbg_alpha -1.0
;tell whether to convert the custom menu background to a grayscale image
-altbg_grayscale 0
;enable full screen anti-aliasing
-FSAA 0
;enable usage of hires textures if present
-hires_textures 1
;enable usage of hires models if present
-hires_models 1
;set model texture size
-model_quality 1
;use 22 khz (1) or 44 khz (2), 16 bit hires sounds
-hires_sound 2
;enable display of progress bars during longer lasting loading or computing operations
-progress_bars 1
;enable multithreading to speed up rendering
-multithreaded 2
;enable the German localization
;-altlanguage 1
;-text descent.tex.ger
;specify user songs for intro, briefings, credits and levels
-introsong .\Music\D2\Title.ogg
-briefingsong .\Music\D2\Briefing.ogg
-creditssong .\Music\D2\Credits.ogg
-playlist .\Music\D2\PL.txt
;-introsong d:\programs\d2\music\surviving.ogg
;-playlist d:\programs\d2\music\d2x-xl-playlist.txt
;make d2x-xl print diagnostic messages to d2x.log
-printlog
;freeze robots
;-nobotai
;allow to save and restore in secret Descent 2 levels
-secretsave 1
;preloaded level textures: 0 - don't preload, 1 - geometry, 2 - objects, 3 - explosions & effects, 4 - hostages, 5 - powerups, 6 - weapons
-preload_textures 5
;unload textures that have been passed to the graphics drivers - will massively slow down in-game screen resolution or full screen mode changes
-lowmem 0
;-use_shaders 0
-midifix 1
; specify the ase model file names of the ship models to be used by the game
-light_ship phantomxl
-medium_ship pyrogl
-heavy_ship wolf

[Alieo]

That is absolutely amazing that y'all did that remotely. Y'all did an excellent job. Great minds remotely coming together for the greater good of the Descent community. Kudos, man.

And yeah, that music is kickin' too!

Ok, so I compared our files and got the idea to update all the models, textures, etc; and WOW. Impressive. D2 looks great. It kinda screwed D1 up a little on the textures. On the grates, (the kind that is at the beginning of Level 7, if you go into the room to your left from the start with the medium hulk and a 1-UP), those grates appear a messed up "negative film" like color. You can still see through them, however, but just looks off kilter.

EDIT: One more thing... is it possible to change the exit music and the end game music?