Project Reality Forums

First thing i've noticed after rebasing to 1.3 build is... sound!
Unlike previous releases, 1.3 seems to handle audio configuration in improper manner.

I'm using 5.1 configuration and both windows and driver parameters are set to use 5.1 conf.
In-game settings are set to Hardware -> High quality.

But what really happens - ingame configuration is set to stereo, regardless of what speaker conf you're using.
There is no sound from both center or rear speakers.

Seems like in-game settings fail at recovering wmd settings.

ATM i'm using Realtek HD audio codec with latest drivers.

How to reproduce:

Buy 5.1 speakers ( ), set your conf. to 5.1 and go into game.

In Hardware mode, BF2 uses DirectSound3D to provide 3D positional audio. As of Windows Vista, DirectSound3D is no longer supported so with Hardware sound, you will only have stereo 2.0 sound.

Many soundcard companies released some small pieces of software that was able to resume support for games that use DirectSound, like Realtek's 3D Soundback or Creative's ALchemy. Since 1.3 is installed in a new location, you may need to go through the software to point to the new PRBF2 executable.

Natively, BF2 uses OpenAL to render sound, and its behavior is controlled by the BF2OpenAL dll file. You may have replaced this with a modified version that either allows your soundcard to access the OpenAL calls, or had a third party software that interpreted the OpenAL calls to a 3D sound format that Windows Vista/7/8 can handle (e.g. OpenALSoft, Rapture3D). Again, since 1.3 is a fresh install in a new location, you will need to replace the BF2OpenAL file again to re-gain 5.1 sound.

I never did any replacements, nor i had any of software to "bridge" directsound layer to my sound card.
I've tried both hardware and software, and it seems that problem is only with this release.
I've had 5.1 with previous release without any custom actions, out from a box.

Software emulation doesn't work either.

Sadly, nobody paid attention to this bug.

Nothing changed regarding this in v1.3...

Well, fixed this with Soft AL, but this really sucks comparing to quality that was before.
Still not sure why it was working before, i took a look at my old HDD and there was no Soft AL at all.

How did you fix it, by adding files to folder or summat ?