Sound & Config Issues (v 1.1.2)

[mentis]

Greetings,

Been playing Aquaria since right after xmas ^_^.  Love the game, but I keep running into a couple of issues.  It's been happening regularly enough to get annoying...

1.  Sounds get distorted when it appears that to many sound fx are being played at once, and everything starts to crackle heavily.  At other times, and this is more random, when sound effects are triggered (usually as a result of killing a creature) an extremely high-pitched (and loud) sound will start playing and stay on for up to several minutes.  This has not occurred to me using any other software before.

2.  The in-game config menu allows you to switch the input buttons, which I have come to prefer.  I check the box and the setting will take effect, but will be reset when I exit the game.  So, every time I start up Aquaria I have to check this box.

I am running Win XP, using the latest drivers for my hardware.  Here's my specs...

Athlon 64 X2 (2.2Ghz)
2GB Ram
GeForce 8600 GTS
Realtek AC'97 Audio (onboard)

I'm using digital out on my card running to a receiver and good quality speaker setup.  While the onboard card isn't great, I know, using the digital signal and my audio equipment has always produced good results.  Any ideas as to why Aquaria's sound file cause distortion when played simultaneously in larger numbers?

I saw the suggestion of adjusting Wave output levels down to compensate, though I'd prefer not to have to mess with my levels at this point, since they are configured well.  However, I'm not sure that this would eliminate the problem anyway...

[mentis]

Anybody...?  Oh, and I forgot to mention that this was a Steam purchase...not sure if that makes any difference since it seems like there are others with this sound issue.

[Stalfos]

I kinda can't think of anything that would cause that... I'm also with AC97 sound (on steam too), and never had any problem of any kind....

Try tweaking the wave output (screenshot your previous settings if you wanna put it back like that later), see if it affect the game...

It may be a ram problem... but I kinda doubt it.
Maybe installing audio driver for OGG support... I really dunno! :S

Not much help, but will keep your topic alive!

[mentis]

Thank you for the reply ^_^.  Perhaps the issue is more with the fact that I am running a digital signal out, instead of analog.  I will try adjusting wave levels I guess...

Also, still wondering whether there's a fix for the flip input button problem.  Maybe I'll go digging in the game folder for some config file...

[mentis]

Okay, so I found the "usersettings.xml" file which had a lot of stuff in it.  I tried switching the left/right parts in the lines which controlled the input buttons...

<Action name="lmb" input="MOUSE_BUTTON_LEFT KEY_SPACE 0 JOY_BUTTON_0 " />
<Action name="rmb" input="MOUSE_BUTTON_RIGHT KEY_LCONTROL 0 JOY_BUTTON_1 " />
<Action name="PrimaryAction" input="MOUSE_BUTTON_LEFT KEY_SPACE 0 JOY_BUTTON_4 " />
<Action name="SecondaryAction" input="MOUSE_BUTTON_RIGHT KEY_LCONTROL 0 JOY_BUTTON_5 " />

...first just the first two, then just the second two, and then all of them to have the mouse buttons flipped.  Unfortunately that didn't quite work.  It only sort of worked, but then the input would only work some of the time, and conflicted with the keyboard inputs for swimming and such.  So no go.

I also tried changing the setting named "WarpKeys," which was the only thing that sounded like that might be it.  No effect there either.  The good news is that playing around with my volume levels did help with the sound issue.  Funny that this doesn't happen in any other application though...

[mentis]

Okay, so I finished the game ^_^.  Which means that I guess these issues won't be issues for me anymore...  however, during the final form of the final boss, the high pitched sound came back, drowning out much of the in game sound.  While still audible, it was pretty annoying.

The high pitched sound didn't go away until after the ending and exiting the game altogether.  So the ending was a little less enjoyable because of this sound problem.  While I seem to be in the minority as far as this problem is concerned, I would love to see a fix for this so that others don't have the same issue.