Reply to Music problems on all Dink games
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April 5th 2005, 02:58 PM
faster
I have this problem with Dink games and my sound card. Actually, two problems. The simpler and less irritating problem is that sometimes the game stops playing music. Period. Sound, yes, music, no more. I have to save, then restart the game, to get it back. Truly an obnoxious bug, and I've had it consistently for several years, only on Dink and its DMODs, even through several C: reformats.
The worst problem is that the music gradually "evolves" into the most noxiously atonal stuff possible - where the melody line is in one key signature and the harmony line in another. If you understand what that means, you know that it turns fine music into pure torment. In addition, something keeps changing the sliders on my volume controls for wave and midi sounds (the little speaker icon on taskbar). This may, or may not, have anything to do with the sound quality devolution, but is unrelated to the sound going off completely. Those changes occur, apparently at random, and are different almost each time. Wierd. The slider changes also happen with other games, though, whereas the two particular problems I mentioned are singular to the Dink games.
I cannot think of any other applications that use .mid files where I have had this problem, so perhaps it is something in the Dink engine. But a major contributing factor has to be my sound card, because the second problem only arose when I got a new motherboard with a terrible card - so terrible that I asked my expert to get me a true Sound Blaster. My old board had an SB16, which gave marvellous sound, even to the newest applications. This new SB isn't a true SB. It is an old Ensoniq "legacy" device, but is being sold by Creative with the official Sound Blaster label, when it is anything BUT. It uses a synthesizer, which is sometimes just fine, but for older stuff, it's patently inadequate. It's a Creative Labs CT4750 Sound Blaster PCI512 Digital Card. The Via Technologies card on my motherboard is the only thing that is worse. The way it puts the melody and harmony lines into two different key signatures, however, is something the card only does with Dink stuff.
Here's what doesn't help with the atonal music problem:
Quitting the game and restarting it.
Quitting the game and clicking my shortcut to restart Windows only. When I go back to the saved game, the atonal quality is still there, and in the same form it had been before. The atonal-ism has a variety of forms, some worse than others.
Here's what sometimes does help:
A complete reboot.
My non-expert guesses:
This tells me that something, perhaps in BIOS, is getting changed as the music is "devolving," and only a reboot can clear it up. But even if it's in BIOS, something in either the sound card's program or the Dink program (or DMOD)is causing the "devolution" to occur in BIOS, while I'm still playing the game. The best I can do, though, is guess about the cause.
I've scanned - it's not being caused by a virus.
But the problem comes back, even after rebooting fixes it. As for the sound going off, that happened sometimes even with my old SB16, and is probably a bug somewhere connected with the Dink Game engine. If anyone knows of a patch or a way to keep the sound from disappearing, I'd love to hear that, too.
Holly B.
The worst problem is that the music gradually "evolves" into the most noxiously atonal stuff possible - where the melody line is in one key signature and the harmony line in another. If you understand what that means, you know that it turns fine music into pure torment. In addition, something keeps changing the sliders on my volume controls for wave and midi sounds (the little speaker icon on taskbar). This may, or may not, have anything to do with the sound quality devolution, but is unrelated to the sound going off completely. Those changes occur, apparently at random, and are different almost each time. Wierd. The slider changes also happen with other games, though, whereas the two particular problems I mentioned are singular to the Dink games.
I cannot think of any other applications that use .mid files where I have had this problem, so perhaps it is something in the Dink engine. But a major contributing factor has to be my sound card, because the second problem only arose when I got a new motherboard with a terrible card - so terrible that I asked my expert to get me a true Sound Blaster. My old board had an SB16, which gave marvellous sound, even to the newest applications. This new SB isn't a true SB. It is an old Ensoniq "legacy" device, but is being sold by Creative with the official Sound Blaster label, when it is anything BUT. It uses a synthesizer, which is sometimes just fine, but for older stuff, it's patently inadequate. It's a Creative Labs CT4750 Sound Blaster PCI512 Digital Card. The Via Technologies card on my motherboard is the only thing that is worse. The way it puts the melody and harmony lines into two different key signatures, however, is something the card only does with Dink stuff.
Here's what doesn't help with the atonal music problem:
Quitting the game and restarting it.
Quitting the game and clicking my shortcut to restart Windows only. When I go back to the saved game, the atonal quality is still there, and in the same form it had been before. The atonal-ism has a variety of forms, some worse than others.
Here's what sometimes does help:
A complete reboot.
My non-expert guesses:
This tells me that something, perhaps in BIOS, is getting changed as the music is "devolving," and only a reboot can clear it up. But even if it's in BIOS, something in either the sound card's program or the Dink program (or DMOD)is causing the "devolution" to occur in BIOS, while I'm still playing the game. The best I can do, though, is guess about the cause.
I've scanned - it's not being caused by a virus.
But the problem comes back, even after rebooting fixes it. As for the sound going off, that happened sometimes even with my old SB16, and is probably a bug somewhere connected with the Dink Game engine. If anyone knows of a patch or a way to keep the sound from disappearing, I'd love to hear that, too.
Holly B.
