by David Dunham
This time out I'm taking on an issue I should have explored further a long time ago. When OS 8 was released I had a few reports of our games blasting people out of their chairs with the sound volume. I checked it out on my machine and didn't find a problem. Well, I was a bad tech support person, I was lazy and didn't update to OS8 for a loooooong time. What can I say? 7.6 was doin' the trick for me.
When it came time for this month's Eeeek a Bug I was looking for ideas. Jason remembered being awakened from his dreamy slumber by Bubble Trouble's soundtrack at about a gazillion decibals. The perpetrator/player said, "Hey, it's your game, you fix it..."
He mentioned it to me, and that reminded me of those reports I had gotten of similar problems.
Users opened Bubble Trouble with the sound in the Monitors and Sounds control panel set to a reasonable volume. As soon as BT opened, the sound blasted through their speakers. Very bad when you're trying to sneak in that midnight record breaker.
I did some testing here, and found that I could reproduce the problem here. I found that if I paused the game, and went to the Monitors and Sound control panel, the volume was set to an ear warping maximum.
Further testing revealed the problem manifested itself in Apeiron -- only during the game, Bubble Trouble -- also just in the game, and in Chiral and Maelstrom as soon as the game is launched.
The only workaround I've come up with is to pause the game with the Caps Lock key and then go into the monitors and sounds control panel, turn down the volume and then return to the game.
Also this month, I'm happy to report that Matt Burch has been working on the update to EVO. Unfortunately, I gave him a big ole list of issues he hadn't been aware of. Hopefully we'll begin testing soon.
Until next time...