0023166: Audio/Sound is never initialized if there is literally no audio devices plugged in at game start (Not even later). - Arcen Idea Tracker (Bugs and Features)

ID	Project	Category		Date Submitted	Last Update

0023166	AI War 2	Audio Issue		Apr 23, 2020 4:46 pm	Apr 24, 2020 2:32 pm

Reporter	ParadoxSong	Assigned To	Chris_McElligottPark
Status	closed	Resolution	not fixable
Product Version	Beta 2.029 Journal And Faction Edit Framework

Summary	0023166: Audio/Sound is never initialized if there is literally no audio devices plugged in at game start (Not even later).
Description	Enabling/disabling individual sound settings and saving it generally works in games to fix this, and I suggest having any of those (or all settings under sound) cause the game to check if it is/can start playing audio. Alternatively, loading a savegame/starting a game could do this. This is likely to become more of a problem when multiplayer is in, and people are plugging in/taking out speakers/headsets more frequently. Thanks for all your hard work!
Tags	No tags attached.

BadgerBadger Apr 23, 2020 6:31 pm manager ~0056936	Does restarting the application resolve things?

Chris_McElligottPark Apr 24, 2020 12:05 am administrator ~0056937	This is part of fmod inside unity 3d, and we can't access it or alter it at all. Short of restarting the application, there's nothing we can really do. The lack of ANY audio device strikes me as really unusual, though. Basically every motherboard, laptop or desktop, has built in jacks for audio that would show as registered even if nothing is plugged in. Maybe some OSX laptops don't now? But in those cases, they have built in speakers, which exist even if they are muted, unless you don't have the drivers installed somehow or have disabled the hardware at the OS level, which would be a really unusual thing to do. So far as I know, FMOD will start up on any OS as long as there is some audio device in existence, even if it is muted or has nothing plugged in. If you're on windows and you've disabled it in device manager, I'd recommend against that frankly as that can cause strange things with many programs. In windows, when you plug in headphones or new speakers of any sort -- windows 10 at least -- you become able to switch to them with the little speaker icon in the bottom right of the taskbar. On windows and OSX, when plugging in a new audio device it immediately asks you if you want to use it. On linux it might be slightly more complicated, depending on your distro and hardware, but with my System 76 laptop I've never had a problem switching between sources. If I had to guess, the game or OS is routing sound to the wrong source, or FMOD didn't start if there were literally no devices on start (highly unusual, as noted). This is either an OS configuration thing, or simply a toggle you need to engage in your OS, or some sort of issue way down deep in the engine. The extent of access we have to FMOD via unity is to say "play a sound," which can be music or sound effects. We can put filters and other things on it, and use spatial sound, but it's all at the level of sound playback. As far as initializing FMOD itself, or checking its state, we can't do those things at all even to detect what the state is, let alone alter it. Hopefully there is an easy workaround in your OS.

ParadoxSong Apr 24, 2020 2:32 pm reporter ~0056938	I'll just be vigilant about making sure to plug in an output device before starting the game, FMOD must think an output device exists contrary to windows (or is getting stuck on a jack I'm not using), and thus gets attached to something that doesn't exist and since it's behaviour is never to automatically change audio devices when one already exists, it's doomed. It won't show up in mixer, can't change it etc etc. Luckily just restarting the game works so don't worry about this anymore. Thank you for the writeup bughunter, I got to learn quite a bit about FMOD going down the rabbit-hole!

Date Modified	Username	Field	Change
Apr 23, 2020 4:46 pm	ParadoxSong	New Issue
Apr 23, 2020 6:31 pm	BadgerBadger	Note Added: 0056936
Apr 24, 2020 12:05 am	Chris_McElligottPark	Assigned To	=> Chris_McElligottPark
Apr 24, 2020 12:05 am	Chris_McElligottPark	Status	new => closed
Apr 24, 2020 12:05 am	Chris_McElligottPark	Resolution	open => not fixable
Apr 24, 2020 12:05 am	Chris_McElligottPark	Note Added: 0056937
Apr 24, 2020 2:32 pm	ParadoxSong	Note Added: 0056938
Jul 30, 2024 10:28 am	Chris_McElligottPark	Category	Audio Work => Audio Issue