(solved) Music jitter

Radiant · Sun 22/09/2013 10:59:08

When a character is speaking and has a voice pack, then skipping forward through this conversation (by rapidly clicking the mouse button to go to the next line) may cause music to jitter. Has anyone had this issue in the past, and know how to deal with it? AGS3.2.1 running in 32-bit mode; I've seen the suggestion in earlier threads that switching to 16-bit may resolve the issue, but running 16-bit has other issues on contemporary systems.

Radiant · Mon 30/09/2013 17:18:44

Anyone, please?

Crimson Wizard · Mon 30/09/2013 17:57:11

AGS 3.3.0 currently incorporates threaded audio (i.e. all audio run on a separate program thread, which may decrease load on the process) that JJS initially made for one of his ports (PSP?), although I don't know much details and how well it may improve audio perfomance on Windows. Maybe we could make a test?

Radiant · Mon 30/09/2013 19:13:12

We certainly could. I intend to compile the next build on AGS3.3, then send it to this tester again. Nobody else has reported similar problems, I suspect it's some kind of system load issue but I'm not sure. He's provided me a dump of about ten pages of system info that I'd be happy to send to you if you think it helps, too.

Radiant · Fri 04/10/2013 14:27:06

Aha!

The tester who came across this issue reveals that he was playing the game off an USB stick, instead of from his hard drive. Well, I suppose that it's predictable that if you play off a relatively slow storage device, the game becomes slow. Still, perhaps this is something that can be resolved by putting the current background music in memory? Apparently it's being streamed from the disk, but that doesn't strike me as necessary.

Crimson Wizard · Fri 04/10/2013 14:32:53

EDIT: removed, it was silly (and not true).

Also, I just remembered there was an issue with slow sound loading related to antivirus. Since AGS has all its data in exe (by default) it accesses its own exe every time it needs to open a sound clip. And antivirus does not like it, and continiously tests the process.

Radiant · Fri 04/10/2013 14:37:57

Interesting.

Is there a reason why sound clips are in the EXE? I would expect them to be in Audio.Vox.

Crimson Wizard · Fri 04/10/2013 14:44:23

Quote from: Radiant on Fri 04/10/2013 14:37:57
Is there a reason why sound clips are in the EXE? I would expect them to be in Audio.Vox.

Frankly, no idea.

monkey0506 · Fri 04/10/2013 23:49:10

Doesn't AGS 3.2+ allow you to define per-AudioType whether the files are built into the EXE or bundled into the audio vox?

Radiant · Sat 05/10/2013 11:09:37

Yes, there appears to be an option for that in the properties panel. I'll see if that makes a difference.

Incidentally, doesn't AGS also load sprites from its own executable?

Crimson Wizard · Sat 05/10/2013 12:59:51

Quote from: Radiant on Sat 05/10/2013 11:09:37
Incidentally, doesn't AGS also load sprites from its own executable?

Err... yes, it does.

You may set "Compiler -> Split resource files into chunks" option to decrease amount of things attached to exe.

Radiant · Sat 12/10/2013 16:34:32

Given the prevalence of continually-running virus scanners these days, is there a way to prevent a scanner from triggering each time the EXE is opened? Perhaps by keeping it open, or by putting all the resources in one big resource file (instead of 20 small ones)? Besides, I believe that if you split resources, then the sprite file is still part of the EXE, it's just the room files that are split out.