No sound on UT2004 !

[craigconrad]

Just loaded UT2004 a couple weeks ago . The game playes fine ,no crashes in video , plays for hours , I just dont have any sound . The game says it uses OpenAL for a driver , which should have come with the game . I couldn't find it in my system , so I found an RPM for it and installed that , but still no sound . I'm running fedora core , nvidia Gforce fx5600, onboard audio AC97? , the driver that shows up when I sound test is i810 . I don't think I'm looking in the right place to change my sound card driver .

Thanks in advance
Craig

[SkyNet]

Are you running this game in KDE? If so, I believe that artsd thing causes alot of problems, try switching to ALSA or some other sound daemon.

[craigconrad]

I'm running Gnome . How would I switch to ALSA ?

[babbing]

I believe that yarrow comes with OSS for sound. To get alsa go to:

http://yarrow.freshrpms.net/

and download and install alsa-driver, alsa-lib, and alsa-utils

There is an alsa wrapper for OSS, but i don't see it there. Maybe it is included in one of the above.

[trommaster]

you also need the kernel-module-alsa package for your kernel.
I would recomend setting up yum for freshrpms (see http://ayo.freshrpms.net ) and use that.

Babbing: OSS/alsa module is in the module package

[craigconrad]

Installed ALSA driver,lib,utils . no change still no sound . I can play my Ogg tracks on music player when i start my computer , then I play UT2K4 (with no sound ) then try to play music player again , and get
" dev/dsp error in use ?" .

[SkyNet]

Well since no one else wants to take this one up, or probably doesn't have the game, I'll plod along with you.

I think the first thing we need to do is start collecting information. For example try starting the game then Alt + Ctrl + F1 to the terminal window to see if you can see any errors upon game start. Also check your dmesg for any errors, and /var/log/XFree86.0.log for any errors.

If all else fails I have the game, and I'll try to install it on my Linux installation, and see if I can figure out what might be happening.

Okay last thing, while in the game there is options for Audio, are you just using regular 3d Audio?, because if you've bumped it up, that could be a reason for no sound since On Board sometimes can't do EAX, and such, but usually the newer boards are capable of this. I've also noticed with EAX and surround sound that it's not quite as loud, so you might need to turn the volume up.

[craigconrad]

Thanks for hanging in with me Sky Net .
I am getting an error in my modprobe log , "sound device 0-0 not found 6 times " . The game has an audio options page with a listing for sound drivers , but the dropdown menu lists only open AL . I have turned my volumes all the way up . I can play music before I run the game , but when I exit the game and try to play music I get that error "dev DSP in use ? " . I restart my computer and music plays again . Am I compiling my Kernel wrong for sound ? Thanks

Craig

[SkyNet]

Well that's good news that you know how to compile your kernel. Make sure that you are using ALSA in your kernel. It's in the sound section when you setup for compile.

Moving onto ingame stuff. Yes my Sound menu in Windows only show's OpenAL, and that's a good thing because that's an Open Source standard. What I was talking about was switching from 3d Audio to 3d Audio + EAX, that option.

When you exit the game, open up a terminal and run the command ps -aux and see if Unreal Tournament might still be running, and that is probably the issue with your sound card being tied up. To stop the proccess without having to reboot, simply find the PID then issue kill -9 PID The PID is a number btw, so place the number inplace of PID. That should prevent you from having to reboot.

Okay in your kernel, you're going to want:
Advanced Linux Sound Architecture
Sequencer support
OSS Mixer API
OSS PCM (digital audio) API
OSS Sequencer API
RTC Timer support
Under PCI devices simply select your sound card.

I'm going to get around to getting ALSA sound working on my computer, and then I'll install UT2k4, and I'll walk you through the proccess I took. I don't normally use sound on this computer because it's mainly an Office type PC for me, so I'm going to have to get everything working real quick.

[SkyNet]

Okay, I just got my sound working. I did what I told you to do up there. I compiled all of that stuff into my kernel, then after I had the new kernel booted. I had to go into /etc/ and edit the modules.d/alsa file. This might be a little different on your system, but the file contains things such as this in it.

# ALSA portion
alias char-major-116 snd
# OSS/Free portion
alias char-major-14 soundcore

## ALSA portion
alias snd-card-0 snd-intel8x0

## OSS/Free portion
alias sound-slot-0 snd-card-0
##

# OSS/Free portion - card #1
alias sound-service-0-0 snd-mixer-oss
alias sound-service-0-1 snd-seq-oss
alias sound-service-0-3 snd-pcm-oss
alias sound-service-0-8 snd-seq-oss
alias sound-service-0-12 snd-pcm-oss

alias /dev/mixer snd-mixer-oss
alias /dev/dsp snd-pcm-oss
alias /dev/midi snd-seq-oss

# Set this to the correct number of cards.
options snd cards_limit=1

Your file should look very similar to that. If you have everything matching, and uncommented like mine, then you're set. Save the file. After that for my particular distro I had to run modules-update then run the command /etc/init.d/alsasound start to start ALSA. I also have to unmute ALSA since it's muted so I do that with amixer like so:

amixer set Master 100 unmute
amixer set PCM 100 unmute

That's that, now my sound is fully working. This was a Gentoo geared write up, but I'll do some research on your distro as well, to see what I need to modify.