How can I tweak the audio buffers?

LogicDeLuxe · Post by **LogicDeLuxe** » Mon May 05, 2008 7:13 pm

I noticed that Full Throttle runs fine directly from a DVD, but COMI stutters a lot then (runs fine from a harddisk). Is there a way to tweak the buffers? Maybe make it bigger with more read ahead and less re-filling?

filipetolhuizen · Post by **filipetolhuizen** » Tue May 06, 2008 5:48 am

That would be nice, Last Cruzade macintosh version does not buffer correctly making the sounds to suddenly cut off.

fingolfin · Post by **fingolfin** » Tue May 06, 2008 7:30 am

No, that's not possible, because there is no such buffer you could tweaks inside ScummVM.

filipetolhuizen · Post by **filipetolhuizen** » Tue May 06, 2008 7:36 pm

So I guess it's a matter of fine tuning then...

Longcat · Post by **Longcat** » Tue May 06, 2008 7:53 pm

or just copying the game to disk:P

filipetolhuizen · Post by **filipetolhuizen** » Wed May 07, 2008 2:10 am

Last Cruzade is already on disk since it's diskette based and has strange sound cut-offs.

md5 · Post by **md5** » Wed May 07, 2008 7:05 am

filipetolhuizen wrote:Last Cruzade is already on disk since it's diskette based and has strange sound cut-offs.

"Diskette based"?

LogicDeLuxe · Post by **LogicDeLuxe** » Wed May 07, 2008 7:26 am

Jonatan wrote:or just copying the game to disk:P

The original games support running from CD, so I see no reason why ScummVM should not have appropriate tweaked buffers to allow this too.

Also the reason is, that I like to have those games on a DVD, so that I can use them in several places without the need to actually install them on everyones computer.
This is a simple way to respect the copyrights, and since the ScummVM team is always concerned about copyright, it sure makes sense to support this.

Is there a way to easily tweak those buffers in the source code, then? Or is there more work to achieve this?

md5 · Post by **md5** » Wed May 07, 2008 7:48 am

LogicDeLuxe wrote:Is there a way to easily tweak those buffers in the source code, then? Or is there more work to achieve this?

As mentioned already, there are NO such "buffers" in ScummVM's source code, hence there is no way to "tweak" something that doesn't exist. There is much more work needed to support this. Perhaps you'd like to file a feature request

fingolfin · Post by **fingolfin** » Wed May 07, 2008 9:33 am

There are two completely different and totally unrelated subjects being talked about here:

1) Indy 3 / Last Crusade macintosh sound support: We only support this game partially, and with many problems, due to the many major changes and modified/new formats they used there compare to all other SCUMM games. In particular, sound support is incomplete / buggy, and no "buffer tweaking" will be able to fix that. Given that this is a rather rare version of the game, and that the PC version is easily available, there is no high interest in improving support for this from my side. That said, nobody on the team would object if the support for this variant of Indy3 was improved, but that requires somebody who owns the game to dedicatedly work on this project, may involved disassembling code, and do lots of other complicated things. So don't hold your breath.

2) Playing COMI direct from CD without stuttering. As md5 already mentioned, this would also require major code changes. Yes, in theory it should be possible to make ScummVM play back directly from CD just as good (or bad) as the original COMI .exe did. But it is *not* a simple matter either. If it was just a matter of "adding a buffer", believe me, we would have done it. Rather, it would require some deep changes to our iMuse Digitial implementation, which in itself is a complicated beast to put it nicely. Also, at the same time care must be taken to not make the game experience worse for other people, e.g. those who want to play COMI on a non-Desktop machine with limited RAM.

So, both improvements would of course *in theory* be possible -- but then, almost everything is, right?

. But neither is trivial or easy. So somebody who has the ability and the interest would have to dedicate major time to this. But we are not a company. I can't simply order an "employee" to go and work on this, because we don't have any...

filipetolhuizen · Post by **filipetolhuizen** » Wed May 07, 2008 3:05 pm

"Diskette based"?

Not a CD-Rom game, therefore there is no other way than running it from the HD.

joostp · Post by **joostp** » Wed May 07, 2008 4:25 pm

md5 wrote:
filipetolhuizen wrote:Last Cruzade is already on disk since it's diskette based and has strange sound cut-offs.
"Diskette based"?

"Diskette" is Dutch for "Floppy"

LogicDeLuxe · Post by **LogicDeLuxe** » Wed May 07, 2008 4:50 pm

filipetolhuizen wrote:Not a CD-Rom game, therefore there is no other way than running it from the HD.

Not exactly. Letting copying it to other media aside, some distributors actually rereleased floppy disk games on CD and added a TSR tool which redirects savegame access to a path on the harddisk.

Most German LucasArts games were released that way, including the floppy disk VGA version of Monkey Island. Curiously enough, the enhanced CD of Monkey Island was never released in Germany standalone, eventhough there is a multi-lingual version which includes the German translation.

Also Monkey 2 was released with this TSR tool on the CD, eventhough there is a modified EXE which allows you to choose any savepath. While this version starts right into the hard skill, the German CD starts with the protection screen and skill selector, just like the floppy disk version.

clone2727 · Post by **clone2727** » Wed May 07, 2008 7:08 pm

joostp wrote:
md5 wrote:
filipetolhuizen wrote:Last Cruzade is already on disk since it's diskette based and has strange sound cut-offs.
"Diskette based"?
"Diskette" is Dutch for "Floppy"

"Diskette" is also an English word meaning the same thing

DrMcCoy · Post by **DrMcCoy** » Wed May 07, 2008 7:19 pm

clone2727 wrote:
joostp wrote:"Diskette" is Dutch for "Floppy"
"Diskette" is also an English word meaning the same thing

...And a German one, too