CD audio tracks

[Antrad 37]

I suggest under audio settings to add a marker for games that came with CD audio tracks/CD music.

[Garrett 214]

Do you have a particular situation in mind where this information would be useful?

[Antrad 37]

Do you have a particular situation in mind where this information would be useful?

 

1) This Wiki lists a lot of technical aspects of games like DRM, graphics and sound API, physics middleware, etc... so listing that the game uses CD audio tracks for music and/or sound effects would make sense.

2) Some older games can have issues playing CD tracks on modern Windows, so you need to use a custom winmm.dll, then rip them to OGG format and then put everything in the game installation folder (some old games are re-realeased like this on digital platforms, for example Extreme G-2). This info would be useful on pages of games with that problem.

[Antrad 37]

I am bumping up this thread, not sure if anything was done about it in the meantime.

CD music playback is broken since Windows Vista:

https://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=36870&p=643220&hilit=HardwareAudioMixer#p643220

Not only do people have trouble getting the music to play, but once it does you have no control of the music volume, changing the music volume in the settings changes other sounds as well. I experienced that in several games now. And it gets worse than that, I am currently playing a game on Windows XP, because the game changes CD music volume during gameplay, so on my new Windows 7 computer when the CD music goes silent all other sounds go silent, it is completely broken game now, because of the changes in Windows audio mixer.

Just like there is a note now about broken DRM, there should be a note for games using Red Book CD Audio and we need some flag/marker in audio/middleware section for it.

[tremirodomi 1]

Yeah, it should be pointed out if a game uses CD audio or not. It wasn't unusual back in the day, and quite a lot of them are affected in newer Windows versions, so it wouldn't be an bad idea to have a marker for them. 

[Mirh 103]

Many pages already have a fix for the issue.

It would be good to have a general how-to (in addition to these petty issues) before putting a scare point.

And in addition to ogg-winmm (and its forks), it seems like even DxWnd is into the game.

Maybe @Suicide machine is gonna be able to tell more.

[Antrad 37]

The way I would like this to be handled is like the DRM warnings, where you have a note/warning that the Cd playback may be broken in Windows 7 and later with a link to a page with possible fixes. So, there should be a flag in audio settings or in middleware section for "CD audio" or something like that.

[Luigi master89 12]

I've seen a few games (a lot of Puzzle Bobble games) suggest the use of _inmm.dll and ripping the game's music, but I've had no luck when I tried it with Earthworm Jim Special Edition (no audio; music or SFX) or South Park 1999 (game hangs at the warning screen).  Perhaps this could help, for someone who knows how exactly to do it?

[tremirodomi 1]

8 hours ago, Luigi master89 said:

I've seen a few games (a lot of Puzzle Bobble games) suggest the use of _inmm.dll and ripping the game's music, but I've had no luck when I tried it with Earthworm Jim Special Edition (no audio; music or SFX) or South Park 1999 (game hangs at the warning screen).  Perhaps this could help, for someone who knows how exactly to do it?

Yeah, when I tried it with Earthworm Jim, it didn't work for me either.

[Luigi master89 12]

Considering it forces the game to read the music tracks from a different location than the CD. I wonder if it's possible to hack the games to instead look for the music from the PC.  I know you can edit a registry key to make Final Fantasy VII read FMVs from the PC instead of the CDs, perhaps other games have something similar.

[Antrad 37]

It's has been almost 2 years already, it is surprising to see nothing has been done about this.

[Garrett 214]

14 hours ago, Antrad said:

It's has been almost 2 years already, it is surprising to see nothing has been done about this.

There is no time like the present. 🙂 I have made a sample implementation which you can see examples of at Development:Audio settings/Sandbox.

The row is hidden when false (without a note), unknown, or missing/empty. The row is shown when false if a note is supplied because there can be special cases where this applies (e.g. the game has CD audio tracks but doesn't actually use it in-game). Hackable and limited are supported and require a note (as usual).

I have also added a special placeholder note for Windows/Windows 3.x games when the row is true because many (most/all?) Windows games will have problems playing CD audio on modern versions of Windows. As with other placeholder notes this is overridden when a note is provided.

I used the "Red Book" naming here because this is the term that seems to be used most often on forums etc. (the tooltip mentions Compact Disc Digital Audio and briefly explains what CD audio is).

Anyway, see what you think.

EDIT: I used the word "audio" instead of "music" because there are non-music uses (e.g. from memory, Conan the Cimmerian's CD version uses the CD audio tracks for recorded voices whereas the actual music is done just like the non-CD version of the game).

[Andytizer 269]

This is a really cool implementation, thanks Garrett.

However as a 'normal user' I think I'd be confused by the term Red Book, it would be better IMO to use a generic term CD audio with Red Book in the tooltip or in brackets. 

[Mirh 103]

Mhh.. I like this automatism, but for some reason having it in the audio settings doesn't really "check" in my mind.

Yes, of course it is audio-related, but it so much out of tune with the "semantic area" of the other rows.

...

Perhaps, is there the possibility this could be pegged to the use of a specific API?

[Garrett 214]

On 5/8/2020 at 1:10 AM, Mirh said:

Mhh.. I like this automatism, but for some reason having it in the audio settings doesn't really "check" in my mind.

Yes, of course it is audio-related, but it so much out of tune with the "semantic area" of the other rows.

...

Perhaps, is there the possibility this could be pegged to the use of a specific API?

There was a previous discussion about removing "settings" from the headings. Some of the templates already have information which is a feature rather than an actual setting (e.g. input settings has "Steam Input API support"), so a row for CD audio would not be the first case like that.

Listing it under API would lead to implementation problems and some vague/incorrect data. There is no such thing as an API for this under DOS, for instance, and even under Windows some games might have chosen to read the data with some built-in method for whatever reason rather than relying on the OS. There is also the problem of what an unknown state would mean (does this mean it's not known whether the game uses CD audio at all, or it definitely does but it's just not known how it is handled?)