[ FF7 ] SFX sound bug

[satsukiyatoshi]

In the game SFX sounds are randomly played
The SFX sound volume is not applyied too

[myst6re]

Is it related to the "escape sound only played once" bug?
The original PC game always had this bug?

[satsukiyatoshi]

Not this bug but sfx sometime play, sometime not, seems realy random.
And yes i think pc version always had this bug

[myst6re]

I heard something like this once, it was like two sounds cannot be played at the same time.

[Rumbah2]

For me it's in the original game, too, and dependent on the SFX volume I set in game.
For different setting different sounds disappear. With set to 100 I have all sounds.

Reproducible for me:
Set SFX to 30
completely exit the menu
enter the menu
menu cursor sounds are gone

when setting the sfx back to 100 you'll notice how the cursor sound slowly comes back but stays quiet
completely exit the menu again
enter the menu
sounds back to normal expected volume at 100

[myst6re]

Dunno if it is related, but on the original game (without music plugin) about volume changes when there is a music fade out, the volume is globally modified, and can be muted completely. For example the prelude in credits, after the fade out you cannot hear anymore the sound of the start / load menu, because the application volume is globally muted. Since we moved music to directsound with the external_music plugin, this problem is fixed.

[myst6re]

For me it's in the original game, too, and dependent on the SFX volume I set in game.
For different setting different sounds disappear. With set to 100 I have all sounds.

Reproducible for me:
Set SFX to 30
completely exit the menu
enter the menu
menu cursor sounds are gone

when setting the sfx back to 100 you'll notice how the cursor sound slowly comes back but stays quiet
completely exit the menu again
enter the menu
sounds back to normal expected volume at 100

This bug is not related to the SFX bug in this issue (or maybe the "The SFX volume is not applied too" part?). The game doesn't change the SFX volume dynamically when you set it in menus. But it does save it in the register when you quit the main menu. If you close and restart the game after your change, you will hear the modification.

I can fix it, in fact I already made a patch. We'll see if the PR is relevant or not :)

Is it related to the "escape sound only played once" bug?

This bug is also not related to the current issue. Bug I found how to fix it aswell. The sound is started in a loop at the end of the battle, so a flag is set to prevent the sound to be played several times at once. The problem is that this flag is never reset.

[myst6re]

In the game SFX sounds are randomly played
@satsukiyatoshi

This is not fixed. I didn't reproduced this myself, but I have a theory: I think in some cases that's possible to unpause a previously played sound. But when unpause happen, the played SFX is not what was paused initialy, but some SFX from battle module! That's possible because the battle module share few sound buffers with the field module, and don't restore sound data after the battle.

@Rumbah2 your bug is fixed now, feel free to try the last canary :)

[satsukiyatoshi]

Maybe the bug have been fixed with the whole sound modification.
Donc have much time to test ATM but i'll do some game run asap and report you if it's happening again (with log, place,...)

[Rumbah2]

I can confirm that it fixes it for me in German Steam version (and those are improvements over vanilla steam as it is bugged there, too):

The volume selection ingame works instantly
The ratio of ambient and the sfx volume stays the same over the whole sfx volume range
The volume levels in menu, field and fight are the same

[myst6re]

There are two more locations in the code where the SFX does not apply the master volume. When you summon in battle for example. I'm on it.

[myst6re]

About remaining bugs:

• In the game SFX sounds are randomly played: not reproduced yet Fixed. See [ FF7 ] SFX sound bug #35 (comment)
• Cait Sith roulette sound doesn't stop on cancel: I know where the sound is started, but not where it should be stopped
• Leviathan ending sound is muted: the game does not play any sound at all (Edit: false!), I need to know more about the original behavior. Fixed
• Multiple ennemy death: the game plays death sound (with panning) for each ennemy, on the same channel. So if you kill three ennemies at once, you will hear one death sound, others are muted, even if the game try to play three sounds. That's not an issue
• Cloud "sheen" sound in Omnislash: Investigating

[julianxhokaxhiu]

Thank you for this brief report. I hope others may hopefully hop in and help us in tackling this!

[satsukiyatoshi]

In my recent play test i wasn't able to reproduice "SFX sounds are randomly played"
So we can set this part as solved ^^

[myst6re]

Still two known issues:

• Cait Sith roulette sound doesn't stop on cancel
• Comet2 sound is stopped early

[julianxhokaxhiu]

Maybe related? #83

[daedrixxx2]

I don't know if it's related, but do you know the sound effects that play immediately after Tifa falls in the lifestream with Cloud, where she "speaks" with the "voices" (the field with the black background)? The sfx (i.e. the radio interferences, Kefka's laugh, the Bio sfx and Barret's Machine Gun) are played too quietly, some are played randomly and sometimes not at all.

[julianxhokaxhiu]

@myst6re Do you happen to know if the remaining issues in list are fixed by now?

[myst6re]

I don't think it was fixed, see the last list I have posted for the remaining issues.

[julianxhokaxhiu]

Only one bug left:

• Comet2 sound is stopped early

[daedrixxx2]

I don't know if it's related, but do you know the sound effects that play immediately after Tifa falls in the lifestream with Cloud, where she "speaks" with the "voices" (the field with the black background)? The sfx (i.e. the radio interferences, Kefka's laugh, the Bio sfx and Barret's Machine Gun) are played too quietly, some are played randomly and sometimes not at all.

This one too.

[julianxhokaxhiu]

I don't know if it's related, but do you know the sound effects that play immediately after Tifa falls in the lifestream with Cloud, where she "speaks" with the "voices" (the field with the black background)? The sfx (i.e. the radio interferences, Kefka's laugh, the Bio sfx and Barret's Machine Gun) are played too quietly, some are played randomly and sometimes not at all.

This one too.

As much as I recall I never had this issue personally so it could be related to sound volume settings in game. I think we discussed this already elsewhere and, as far as I can remember, I wasn't able to replicate it nor @myst6re.

So, for as much as I am concerned, only one bug is left.

[daedrixxx2]

This is how the scene should sound: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ih7s1e55tZI (from 1:36 to 2:22)

This is how it sounds on PC, and on my end: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A53Xc_0HA-M (from 2:30 to 3:16)

No matter the sound settings, this has been a well known audio bug on PC, documented on Qhimms, and I think DLPB fixed it in his Reunion mod.

So for you that scene sounds like in the PSX version? In that case, could you give me your settings in FFNx?
Or maybe it's because I'm using the vanilla sfx, while you're using a separate sfx folder?

[julianxhokaxhiu]

This is how the scene should sound: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ih7s1e55tZI (from 1:36 to 2:22)

This is how it sounds on PC, and on my end: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A53Xc_0HA-M (from 2:30 to 3:16)

Ok my bad, I always compared FFNx to the vanilla PC so basically sounded ok, but compared to PSX looks like it's broken. Most probably it requires an flevel fix though, so nothing I could code. I'll try to investigate and report back.

[julianxhokaxhiu]

I tested the scene in both vanilla and with external SFX:

• Vanilla: The SFX effects are like in the video ( PC version ) you linked, so buggy
• External SFX: Working correctly like on the PSX version, on top of Bonez Cosmo Memory pack

This means that the bug is only present in vanilla, and as I overwrite the behavior of the SFX playback, it could be I'm not inheriting some logics from the engine, which are on the other hand triggered by the engine through flevel ( field ID 111 - Id 0 - S0 Main ).

Therefore, I'd say that if you don't want to patch the flevel, you can easily use the external SFX layer.

Finally, if you want you can open a new issue mentioning only the Tifa Lifestream issue, so we can flag that as "external fix required". Because of this, I'll therefore close the current issue as all the left known bugs, that could be fixed via code, are fixed.