no sound

nikivdd · Post by **nikivdd** » Tue Nov 08, 2011 6:51 pm

I think it was already posted that the T-34 is silent when moving.
In today's scenario i played, i managed to get the captured KV-1B(r) tank. It is also silent when moving. About firing i don't know yet, i had no target practice left in that part of the map.

deadtorius · Post by **deadtorius** » Tue Nov 08, 2011 10:52 pm

My T-34 is happily making noises now in its second scenario. The bug seems to hit when you first find it, then is gone when it is first deplyed

nikivdd · Post by **nikivdd** » Tue Nov 08, 2011 10:57 pm

deadtorius wrote:My T-34 is happily making noises now in its second scenario. The bug seems to hit when you first find it, then is gone when it is first deplyed

I will listen wery carefully in the next scenario

VPaulus · Post by **VPaulus** » Tue Nov 08, 2011 11:07 pm

It doesn't make much sense when the efx file is the same from scenario to scenario. Only if there is a "ghost" T-34, and the T-34 in the second unit is not the same T-34.

deadtorius · Post by **deadtorius** » Tue Nov 08, 2011 11:23 pm

I only have 1 captured unit so far, got it in Kiev T-34-40. when I moved it out of Kiev and for the few remaining turns of the scenario it made no sound. next scenario I deployed it and paid attention when it first moved, and it was happily blaring away with tank moving sounds. So far it has been in 2 Scenarios and it is still humming away. Shooting sounds were fine but I never got a chance to fire it when i first got it.

Rudankort · Post by **Rudankort** » Wed Nov 09, 2011 7:57 am

Confirmed as a bug, will fix.

deadtorius · Post by **deadtorius** » Wed Nov 09, 2011 11:04 pm

Not sure if this helps or not, but my T34/40 lost its sound again during the last scenario. I am pretty sure that early moves it was making sound normally but with about 6 turns left in the game I moved it and it was silent again. I did manage to get it into some combats the shooting was fine but the poor Russians did not realize it was coming till it opened up on them. Once it lost the movement sound it remained off for the rest of the scenario.

Razz1 · Post by **Razz1** » Thu Nov 10, 2011 5:08 am

Funny thing is I have been loosing sound before the game CTD's.

Rudankort · Post by **Rudankort** » Thu Nov 10, 2011 7:03 am

Razz1 wrote:Funny thing is I have been loosing sound before the game CTD's.

That's probably a different problem. Next time this happens (you lose sound), could you please use Task Manager to check how much memory the game has used and report the results to me?

VPaulus · Post by **VPaulus** » Thu Nov 10, 2011 11:22 am

Razz1 wrote:Funny thing is I have been loosing sound before the game CTD's.

It happened me once, yesterday, with 1.04. I was testing the sound mod, with a custom scenario. It had a lot of units.

Rudankort wrote:
Razz1 wrote:Funny thing is I have been loosing sound before the game CTD's.
That's probably a different problem. Next time this happens (you lose sound), could you please use Task Manager to check how much memory the game has used and report the results to me?

I'll do that.

VPaulus · Post by **VPaulus** » Thu Nov 10, 2011 12:43 pm

386.740 after loading the scenario.
At 950.000 didn't load one movement sound.
At 1050.000 stop loading new sounds.
At 1059.740 CTD. Microsoft C++ runtime error.

Tested with 1.04, a custom scenario and my sound mod.

Rudankort · Post by **Rudankort** » Thu Nov 10, 2011 12:49 pm

So the game eats up more than a gigabyte, that's a lot. It is not supposed to do that normally.

VPaulus · Post by **VPaulus** » Thu Nov 10, 2011 12:51 pm

Rudankort wrote:So the game eats up more than a gigabyte, that's a lot. It is not supposed to do that normally.

Maybe it's because of the sound mod. A lot of new sounds.
That's the limit 1GB?

Another question... if I use mp3 instead of wav, will consume less memory?

Rudankort · Post by **Rudankort** » Thu Nov 10, 2011 12:59 pm

1GB plus something is a standard limit for a 32-bit process under Windows. From 4GB available address space, 2GB are reserved by the system, and 1GB is used for system DLLs, so 1GB is what is left for the program data. Using MP3s might help, and if it does not, using WAVs with reduced quality should help. If WAV is not CD quality, but something more modest, it can be very small.

VPaulus · Post by **VPaulus** » Thu Nov 10, 2011 6:18 pm

Rudankort wrote:1GB plus something is a standard limit for a 32-bit process under Windows.

I thought it was 2GB...

I've tested further and it doesn't matter if it wav or mp3. In spite the file size is bigger with wav, the game still crashes at the same time (more or less).
Each time there's a call for a new sound, it seems that the game stores it in memory.
This custom scenario that I use, has a lot of different units, so different sounds and more memory.
The game doesn't flush out memory after each turn. So it will accumulate until the exiting the game.
Is my analysis correct?

Rudankort · Post by **Rudankort** » Fri Nov 11, 2011 7:58 am

VPaulus wrote: The game doesn't flush out memory after each turn. So it will accumulate until the exiting the game.
Is my analysis correct?

Yes. The game does not discard any data from cache, because all of its data set should fit in memory, so there is no need to play from disk every time. That was my line of thinking. But I guess, this approach does not take bigger mods into account.

Can you check how much memory the game consumes on your machine out of the box, with no mods used (should be easy with GME I guess)?

VPaulus · Post by **VPaulus** » Fri Nov 11, 2011 10:49 am

Rudankort wrote:Yes. The game does not discard any data from cache, because all of its data set should fit in memory, so there is no need to play from disk every time. That was my line of thinking. But I guess, this approach does not take bigger mods into account.

Can you check how much memory the game consumes on your machine out of the box, with no mods used (should be easy with GME I guess)?

I had tested it yesterday with the same custom mission and without the sound mod (I was only using it anyway).
At the place of the crash was around 650.0000. Which gives a window of 300.000 for bigger mods.

Anyway the custom mission I use to test, loads around 180 different type of units, which helps to stress the game with the sound mod. This means that the game will load more sounds during gameplay than what is supposed to be standard. And adding to it, I'm using different type units from different time frames at the same time(ex.: Panzer I and Tiger II).
Needless to say I cannot finish a turn without crashing.

So I decided to test how it would work, with my sound mod active, playing in the campaign mode. I've tested with the first two scenarios in a row (that's my limit of playing). At the beginning of the first scenario Panzer Corps was with 330.000 and in the end was already with 720.000. When I've stop playing, at the end of the second scenario, I was with 790.000. So no big increase from scenario to scenario but that was due for not having much more new units.

So there's the danger, if we combine bigger mods with bigger maps with a lot of units, to crash the game. It would help enormously, if the memory could be damped after each turn or at least after each scenario.
If that's not possible, or because this is not easily implemented or less important than other things, there's only way out.
The modders will have to work with that limit in count.
In my case I'll try to create a lighter version, but I'm not sure if it will improve much the whole situation.

I'll continue to test with different maps and checking the memory.
If you want me to test anything in specific, just tell me.

dgoldie · Post by **dgoldie** » Fri Nov 11, 2011 8:13 pm

I'm playing the leningrad41 scenario and have 2 captured T-34s. No sound when moving for either of them. Ive updated to the latest version og the beta.

VPaulus · Post by **VPaulus** » Mon Nov 28, 2011 5:10 pm

Rudankort wrote:1GB plus something is a standard limit for a 32-bit process under Windows. From 4GB available address space, 2GB are reserved by the system, and 1GB is used for system DLLs, so 1GB is what is left for the program data. Using MP3s might help, and if it does not, using WAVs with reduced quality should help. If WAV is not CD quality, but something more modest, it can be very small.

If I convert to mp3 or even reduce the quality from 16bit stereo to 8 bit mono (reducing thus the size of the file to 1/4), it doesn't alter Panzer Corps memory usage. PanzerCorps have exactly the same size with mp3, wav or reduced quality wav, in the same point of testing.
If it isn't the file sounds that are occupying memory, than what is it? The animation files?
Could it be a memory leak?

Rudankort · Post by **Rudankort** » Mon Nov 28, 2011 5:38 pm

Of course, any data which exists in the game uses up memory, animations included. Do you have a lot of custom animations in your mod too? In that case they would of course occupy memory.

Memory leak is always possible, but rather unlikely. After PzC has loaded all files (anims, sounds etc.) into cache, I've never seen its memory consumption rising any more. I used to play hundreds of games in a row (in AI vs. AI mode) to see if the memory would slowly grow, but did not notice anything alarming. Maybe a bug was introduced later though, so I need to repeat this test.

In any case, with mods like your one out there, I clearly need to do something about memory optimization. I'll try to find some time for this soon.