Zandronum

Hello ladies and gentlemen,

I have a slight issue which I would like some help resolving.
Occasionally, when a certain sound is played in-game my fps will drop to 0 (game completely freezes) for a small amount of time no longer than a second or two. It used to happen when i had medals on so i turned those off. But even now for example playing d5m7 when i run over the secret sector in the middle and the game shows 'you have found a secret' and the game plays that secret chime, the same thing will happen. The freezes are almost certainly to do with text popping up on screen or sound being played.

If need be i can recreate this and record it using fraps and put it on youtube etc. Hope somebody can help!

Shad.

weird, maybe youre sound drivers are bugged or you have a crappy pc D:

Sounds like the game is freezing until the sounds is loaded into memory then played...

I have this exact problem too, it drives me nuts. I believe it to be the sounds not loaded into the memory because when I get a sound played for the first time, it pretty much halts my game for a random time (sometimes it can last a second or two) and then plays the sound.

Sounds like you guys have crappy soundcards or buffers that are too small. Usually my game only "halts" for a second when switching the track to an MP3 (or some other "big" sound file). It should really never happen for ingame sound effects.

How can I find out if my soundcard sucks or my buffer is too small?

Watermelon wrote: How can I find out if my soundcard sucks or my buffer is too small?

Well for the card, you'll have to check your hardware. Control panel, etc.

For the buffer, which is probably part of Zandronum's sound code itself, you might need to check the values of snd_buffersize and snd_buffercount. I'm not sure what they're supposed to by default. I think the default values are 0 for both. At least, that's what's on mine.

Before any 'your pc is too crap for doom lolz' starts:

AMD Phenom II Quad Core 3.2Ghz
8Gb DDR1333Mhz RAM
1Gb Nvidia GeForce GTX 560Ti
Asus M5A78L-M LE Motherboard (Socket AM3+, DDR3, Micro ATX, 5200MT/s, Turbo key)
120Gb, 500Gb and 1Tb HDD's
Windows 7 x64 Ultimate

Im using the onboard sound card which is plenty good enough for gaming these days. It's an 8 channel HD card capable of 192KHz/24-bit audio output - Zandronum certainly shouldn't be too much for it.

Is there nothing that can be done about this then? If you're having the same problem Watermelon it can't be a hardware dependant problem on my side surely?

I get this too, I got it only when Zandronum came out, when it was ST I never got this. Personally I ain't ever been too bothered but as I see you guys get it too might aswell add my post

My spec is
AMD Bulldozer 8 core 3.2ghz 4ghz overclocked
8GB 1600Mhz DDR3 RAM
128GB 6gb/s SSD
1GB GeForce 250 GTS

It isn't too do with how shit your pc is though, as this never use to happen. It happens when I get my first excellent in a game or any medals. Also happens with secrets. But after the first few times it settles weirdly enough.

Crazy idea, might not work, but you could try diagnosing your sound card issues with the Direct X Diagnostic tool that comes with Windows.
Open your run prompt and type dxdiag
Once that is open, there should be a Sound tab, or multiple ones, just find the Sound tab that applies to your actual sound card/playback device. When there it should have a box labeled "Notes:", if there are problems/issues they are disclosed there, otherwise it will say "No problems found."

If you see any buttons to test your audio device, try using those and seeing if they pass, otherwise just refer to the Notes box.

Play with the sound options in zandro.. change settings a lot, usually it takes me some time to get the fastest settings with highest quality.. some settings utterly slow my fps though :(

Fluffles wrote: It isn't too do with how shit your pc is though, as this never use to happen. It happens when I get my first excellent in a game or any medals. Also happens with secrets. But after the first few times it settles weirdly enough.

I know. It has to do with the way sounds are loaded in Zandronum. It's the same with hi-resolution textures. The first time your client looks at a hi-res texture in a map, you'll get a noticeable FPS drop for a second or two. Then every time after that, you can look at it with no issues. Sounds are the same way. When you hear a sound for the first time ingame, (i assume) the sound gets added to some sort of cache so that it's already loaded and just needs to be recalled the next time the sound is supposed to play ingame.

EDIT:
Might it have something to do with the fact that all of the announcer sounds are in .FLAC format? I'm pretty sure the "secret found" sound is a FLAC too.

Here, load this and see if the game lags when you select the chainsaw:
http://www.mediafire.com/?n7w5qzu9afbe91l

I replaced DSSAWUP with a reversed version of the same sound which I converted to FLAC.

ShadowForce wrote: Im using the onboard sound card

From my experience even modern onboard sound cards are still pretty bad.

Fluffles wrote: I get this too, I got it only when Zandronum came out, when it was ST I never got this.

Can you double check that you still don't get this in ST now if you are using the same announcer as in Zandronum?

Ænima wrote: Might it have something to do with the fact that all of the announcer sounds are in .FLAC format? I'm pretty sure the "secret found" sound is a FLAC too.

That's an interesting theory, but the announcers are in encoded in Ogg Vorbis, aren't they?

Torr Samaho wrote:

Ænima wrote: Might it have something to do with the fact that all of the announcer sounds are in .FLAC format? I'm pretty sure the "secret found" sound is a FLAC too.

That's an interesting theory, but the announcers are in encoded in Ogg Vorbis, aren't they?

Nope. I just looked. They're all FLAC.

IIRC, FLAC has a compression method similar to LZMA (whereas all zeroes are removed). Could this mean that it also requires more processing time to load the sound initially?

I'm currently trying out different announcers in zandronum to see if it still does the same cuz I gotta feeling it might be something to do with the new announcer which came with zandronum, the one which sounds like hes about to shit himself

EDIT: nevermind it isn't anything to do with the announcer

Ænima wrote: Nope. I just looked. They're all FLAC.

Weird, ZanGeneric.pk3 and ZanACG.pk3 in my Zandronum dir only contain .ogg files and IIRC I installed them with the official installer.

Ænima wrote: IIRC, FLAC has a compression method similar to LZMA (whereas all zeroes are removed). Could this mean that it also requires more processing time to load the sound initially?

Yes.

Could also be a case of a severely fragmented file and/or a slow harddrive.

Having two 5400rpm drives in my laptop I know this scenario all too well - mainly if I don't keep a clean drive.

Is the sound database emptied or something between maps? I got a MEGA KILL sound on Map X, then Map (X + 1) I got it again but it lagged for me.

Watermelon wrote: Is the sound database emptied or something between maps? I got a MEGA KILL sound on Map X, then Map (X + 1) I got it again but it lagged for me.

Correct.

Using developer mode ("developer 1" in the console) will tell you when a sound is loaded for the first time (and specifically, what sound that is).