Eternity Music/Sound balance off loading with .bat

[Gregor]

I encountered the weirdest "bug" while playing BTSX1 through Eternity and it's driving me crazy and i need help: i load BTSX1 using a .bat file which contains nothing but the necessary paths. For weeks everything was fine until earlier today restarting the game suddenly threw off the music/sound balance to a degree that the sound effects are barely audible while the music is way too loud. Nothing had changed in the menus as far as i can see. The sliders are in their default position like before but the volume balance is completely wrong. Even with music to it's lowest and sound to max it's not even normal let a alone loud. And after that it was the same for all wads with eternity, whether i started them using a .bat or drag&drop. I checked the system.cfg and eternity.cfg but, again, all the settings concerning sound and music were exactly the same as in the menus (like it should be). But that obviously isn't right. Did a fresh install of eternity and at first running Doom 2 from the directory everything was fine again. Then i renamed the folder with the eternity.exe to what i had referenced in the .bat (C:\DOOM\Eternity\Eternity.exe etc...) and when i ran that the volume balance was messed up again.... it changed the balance back to crazy. I did another install and used the default folder name of the directory in the .bat path this time (C:\DOOM\ee-4.02.00-win64\eternity.exe...). It was fine. But changing it back to "eternity", messed up the volume balance again. Now i can use a different folder name but that's just a crazy thing to do. It seems to me like somewhere these weird sound levels are saved under the path of the original .bat file i used over the last weeks. Whenever i re-use that path aka name the folder the same the sound levels are reverted to messed up. Is that possible? Does Windows save game settings per .bat file somewhere?? Or are there some global settings that eternity saves somewhere where i can't see them? I deleted the eternity folder several times so it can't really be saved somewhere in that directory. I use Win 10 64-bit. I know this sounds pretty bizarre. Please help...

Edited April 22, 2021 by Gregor

[Altazimuth]

OK so the first thing is I'd suggest getting a DRDTeam build, since I made some improvements to midiproc since 4.02.00. The second thing is check Windows mixer when you run Eternity, as it likely has cranked it down.

[Gregor]

Thanks for the answer! I'll give the newest development build a try then. Didn't know the latest full release wasn't the only current one out there. I only got into using Eternity recently because of Heartland and i really like the engine overall. This sound issue only started happening yesterday. For now, i just refrain from using "Eternity" as the folder name containing the .exe for .bat path usage but that is obviously a weird solution. Funnily, just changing the name of the folder from "Eternity" with an uppercase 'E' to "eternity" keeps the balance shift from occurring when i load a wad by using a .bat file. Just weird. I doubt windows mixer is the problem here since it's not the overall volume of the game that is the problem but the fact that just the sound effects like gun fire, monster noises, etc. are extremely quiet while the music is very loud. Again, i checked the sound menu but everything was as it should be: all sliders in default position. At this point i'm scared to use the old naming for the .bat path even for experimenting, in case the issue reappears since it always required a complete reinstall to fix it and always having to re-configure my keys and settings is getting old quickly... I just don't see where those alternate volume balance settings could be saved to outside of system.cfg and eternity.cfg, which i both checked as well and found nothing peculiar. Oh well.

 

btw, is there a way to enable overlay mode for the map? Totally unrelated, i know, but since i have a chance to ask you i thought i'd slip it in. ;)

Thanx all the same!

[Altazimuth]

There's no default bind for overlay mode but if you go into map binds it's one of the bottom options.

[Gregor]

Well, i looked where you said but there is no such option... it allows you to overlay linked portals under Game Widgets\Automap of course but not normal overlay of the map during gameplay anywhere. Under key binds in the automap section there is no option to turn it on. Only "Show Full Map, "Follow Mode", "Mark Spot", "Clear Spots" & "Show Grid". That's why i asked. I thought maybe there's a console command i haven't found yet. I also checked in the newest dev build in case you added it there but nope.

[Altazimuth]

It's extremely recent, as in from today's devbuild. Highlighted in below image.

[Gregor]

I see. ;) Ok i'll check it out then. Thanx!

[Gregor]

Concerning my original question: since you said it seems likely the issue is related to midiproc i deleted the file just to see what happened. And the result was... nothing changed. The sound and music volume was the same with or without the file. How is that even possible? So whatever improvements you made to the midiproc.exe do not safeguard against this bug from occurring. And the sound issue is DEFINITELY tied to the directory path. I downloaded the latest dev build a few hours ago and initially the sound balance was fine. Then, as an experiment, i named the folder the same as my previous version (where the problem first showed up) and used a .bat to load a wad. The sound was immediately just as messed up as with the previous version! How can that be?? The two folders are not connected, and the .bat file only contains paths. It seems the engine suddenly changed the sound levels and then saved these settings at an unspecified location connected to the directory name though nothing changed in the options or related config files. I know that sounds crazy but i can't really explain it otherwise. I used a completely different version of eternity, in a different folder but gave the folder the same name as the previous version and... Voila! The sound is tiny and almost completely drowned out by the music. And when i change the folder name to anything else the sound is normal again. Otherwise there's seems to be nothing that will bring the normal sound/music balance back. I know you probably have no answer to this as well but i REALLY want to know what causes this issue. Maybe it's something Win 10 does but it seems so odd. And it's such frustrating bug. Pretty much a deal breaker for me at this point. You can't play the game when the sound effects are super quiet like this. And the bug seems to be triggered sooner or later anyways just by loading a safegame or using stopmus/idmus or something.

Edited April 24, 2021 by Gregor

[Altazimuth]

midiproc.exe exists as a separate process to play system MIDI files. Without it setting the MIDI volume sets the entire Windows mixer volume of Eternity.

The directory path thing doesn't make any sense unless one path has non-latin characters and the other does, and even then that doesn't make sense. More likely it's Windows mixer having cached the incorrect volume, and that caching is tied to the path of the executable.

[Gregor]

Yeah, that makes more sense. If it's Windows Mixer that causes the trouble it would explain the fact that the issue persists across multiple versions of the engine. Not that i would know anyhow. I don't suppose you know where win mixer caches all it's "stuff"? So i can reset/delete it? 

[Altazimuth]

Just open up Windows mixer and change EE's volume there.

[Gregor]

Well, there in lies the catch. If i change the volume through Windows Mixer the entire game volume decreases, not just the music even though it says midiproc there as well. The effect is even worse with Crispy Doom which also makes use of midiproc. There i can't even turn the music slider in the options to zero without muting the entire game. So i effectively cannot adjust the sound/music balance. Doesn't matter whether i try it in options or through Windows Mixer. Plus the same sound balance issue like with EE and the problem that Windows Mixer apparently saves the path to the exe with the messed up volume setting somewhere i don't know and can't reach so whenever the sound balance is upset i need to rename the folder to "fix" it at least shortterm. Not cool. I know at this point you probably don't know and don't really care anymore what to do but I've been looking around the forum and this uncorrectable sound balance issue with midiproc has crept up with several different people over time without anyone ever finding a definite solution. I don't think you recognize it as a real bug yet and think it's just a misunderstanding on the user's part on how to adjust sound levels correctly. Maybe most people who use Eternity are Linux users where it doesn't happen or it's do with the fact that i'm using a laptop but there's definitely something not working with how midiproc is functioning under EE and Crispy. And it's a shame because it basically means both Crispy and EE are somewhat broken when it comes to the sound balance which is really a deal breaker in the end when it comes to switching to EE as a default engine over shiny GZDoom with all it's deviations from vanilla.

I don't want to annoy you any longer with this topic. Maybe a future iteration of EE unintentionally fixes this issue. But for now, midiproc seems to be a bit too glitchy to function properly on all systems.

[Altazimuth]

Are you using CoolSoft VirtualMIDISynth?

[baja blast rd.]

On 4/25/2021 at 1:47 PM, Gregor said:

... Maybe a future iteration of EE unintentionally fixes this issue. But for now, midiproc seems to be a bit too glitchy to function properly on all systems.

 

Welcome to the forums! For reference, if you need any assistance with any software (or anything) in the future, breaking up large paragraphs into smaller ones through use of line breaks is very useful for increasing the readability of your posts, and might even make solutions easier to come by. 

[Gregor]

On 4/28/2021 at 3:06 AM, Altazimuth said:

Are you using CoolSoft VirtualMIDISynth?

Well, i have VirtualMIDISynth but don't have it setup with Eternity. Think that would help?

[Gregor]

On 4/28/2021 at 4:00 AM, rd. said:

 

Welcome to the forums! For reference, if you need any assistance with any software (or anything) in the future, breaking up large paragraphs into smaller ones through use of line breaks is very useful for increasing the readability of your posts, and might even make solutions easier to come by. 

Thanks for the heads up! I'll keep that in mind.

[Altazimuth]

VirtualMIDISynth for some reason messes with midiproc. Don't ask me why because I dunno, but something with VirtualMIDISynth is jank and bugs out programs like midiproc.

[vadrig4r]

On 4/25/2021 at 6:47 PM, Gregor said:

The effect is even worse with Crispy Doom which also makes use of midiproc. There i can't even turn the music slider in the options to zero without muting the entire game. So i effectively cannot adjust the sound/music balance. Doesn't matter whether i try it in options or through Windows Mixer.

Which version of Crispy Doom are you using? I haven't experienced the 'music slider affects sfx too' behavior since about 5.0 on my machine.

[Gregor]

On 5/19/2021 at 2:23 AM, vadrig4r said:

Which version of Crispy Doom are you using? I haven't experienced the 'music slider affects sfx too' behavior since about 5.0 on my machine.

 I use 5.10.1 on a Win10 64-bit notebook.