Possible oddities with The Dig music

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Avatrunei
Posts: 34
Joined: Thu Dec 20, 2012 3:10 am

Possible oddities with The Dig music

Post by Avatrunei »

Last time I played The Dig was around 10 years ago or more, and that was in DOS or DOSBox. Now I am playing it first time in SVM and I'd like to report these strange points I noticed, in case there are some bugs in the game file interpretation.

1. In the asteroid core, the music is an ambient cue with muffled sound of rumbling stones. Once you complete the square puzzle, the music fades out and a cutscene begins, showing the transformation of the asteroid and its arrival to the planet. Problem: In SVM the said music doesn't stop, i noticed it was still playing in very low volume, while the cutscene was playing, until the asteroid landed on the planet. Actually I noticed it the second time I was playing that sequence.

2. The music of the underground Nexus is actually composed of 6 or 7 short ambient cues, and the fade in and out, blending into each other, while you walk around and approach specific points, i.e. the doors. As a result, the background music of the Nexus is dynamic and random but seamless and enchanting. Problem: In SVM this change doesn't happen seamlessly because the cues don't fade in and out; instead, as I walk around, the cues are like stopping and starting suddenly, without blending.
Avatrunei
Posts: 34
Joined: Thu Dec 20, 2012 3:10 am

Re: Possible oddities with The Dig music

Post by Avatrunei »

Avatrunei wrote:In SVM this change doesn't happen seamlessly because the cues don't fade in and out; instead, as I walk around, the cues are like stopping and starting suddenly, without blending.
I noticed it generally in the game. When I originally played it years ago, the ambient music cues looped over and over fading out and started again fading in, without being possible to understand when the cue finishes and when it starts again.

But now in SMV, it seems that the iMuse engine doesn't work well and there is no fade in and out; when I stay long in a screen and the cue loops over, my ear notices exactly when that happens. Perhaps it's an issue that must be addressed????

I will try to play the game in DOSbox ASAP to verify the difference.
digitall
ScummVM Developer
Posts: 1172
Joined: Thu Aug 02, 2012 1:40 pm

Post by digitall »

Avatrunei: You haven't indicated what platform you are testing this on, and what version of ScummVM? The latest stable release is v2.0.0:
https://www.scummvm.org/downloads/

If you verify that this is a regression compared to the original interpreter under DOSBox, then please file a bug at:
https://bugs.scummvm.org/

It would also be helpful then if you could attach some MP3 examples of the differences to that bug, and savefiles to help.

Apart from that, it would also be good to check with the latest daily build of development master to check that this has not been fixed since v2.0.0 release:
https://www.scummvm.org/downloads/#daily

If this still exhibits the issue, then stepping back to earlier releases i.e. v1.1.0, v1.4.0 etc and seeing if this is a recent regression and exactly which version caused the issue as this will help track down the cause.
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