Gorky 17 problem with voices. SOLVED

After buy and install Gorky17 for PPC AmigaOS4 from Hyperion website I check that voices not always play and usually when they are played, the sentences are unfinished. I'd test it in with spanish and english voices with same results.

Some of these issues are of the translation (and actually already in the PC version). Myselves I do not know of any in the english version myselves, but I know for example of one in the german translation (which I now fixed in the 68k version).

Basically the whole system works like this: the voice.dat is basically a pak file which contains a ton of ogg files (or in the 68k version wav files). For every "scene" the files for this scene are numbered starting 00, 01, 02, ... and are then played in this order, in the length of these files.

If the files present are ordered wrongly (as in the german version in the scene were this russian npc appears) then the voices play wrongly.

So it is most likely not a principial problem but one of the datafiles. Of course without knowing the exact location where you noticed this, hard to say.

@TheMagicSN

When you start a new game at first prologue, when the characters arrive by boat, fail. You can see texts without voices until second or third sentence that voices start but next sentences continue without voices. During gameplay sometime voices works sometimes no.
If you need I can grab a small gameplay.

As a first step, it would be good to know how to depack the dat file to verify that the voices are complete and well listed.

The problem seems more like it is having a hard time accessing the voices and depack and when it starts playing them it ran out of time allotted for them and cuts them off.

I'd test with CD and install and with Hyperion Gorky17drawer.lha for PPC OS4 with same results.

I have to admit I am only the author of the 68k version (though I have the OS4 version source code as well, the OS 4 version does not compile on my setup though, OS4 version was done by Entwickler-X - for Hyperion).

I just tried out the intro sequence with my 68k version and there nothing is cut off, the samples play perfectly.

What I could imagine - the OS4 code used a method which heavily relies on message port messaging, maybe this causes some sort of problems, maybe even something depending on OS version and hardware ? (In the 68k version I completely scrapped the audio code and rewrote it from scratch, and especially completely removed the msgport based audiocode, as this caused problems with certain 68k AmigaOS versions).

The other possibility is that it might be related to language, the test I did was in the German localization (but actually the German one is one of the worst-done ones - one dialog I had to shift/rename voice files a lot to make the voice-stuff work correctly in the German version -, from the original datafiles, so I doubt the english version will have any issues which don't appear in the German version).

Programs to depack Gorky17 dat files are available on the net though only for Windows.

Thanks for your help. Maybe it's a problem with my config, I'll try more test with a clean install.

I found the stupid problem. In Sound settings prefs of AmigaOS4.1 I have AHI output with only 2 channels, changed to 128 channels and now works perfect.
Ambient music sound continually tried to cover the voices with only 2 output channels.

@TheMagicSN

I'd check Hyperion web site for buy your version of Gorky17 for 68k but not found. I'm only found to buy in Alinea shop but sell PPC version with 68K version, not found where to buy only the 68K version or update. I own PPC version I'm no need buy again.

Thanks for the info on the AHI Settings. Great that it has been resolved!

The 68k version is not available solo. The alternative would have been selling empty DVD Box+manual+USB Stick for exactly the same price. We felt leaving the OS4 version "in" felt better than delivering an "empty" box.

An update is not available due to the OS4 version was done many years ago, in 2015).

@kikems

Not sure how mixing is done, but its software mixing, so if you increase channels, you also increase cpu usage. It can possibly also degreed sound quality.

I believe this why its configurable.

Typically, it’s something like:

amplitude = (wave1 + wave2) /2
so if it’s 128 channels is (wave1 + …. + wave128) / 128.

let’s say that wave2 to 128 has no sound, this means that
amplitude = wave1 / 128

however there are smart mixing methods, weighted waves, this could reduce loss.
if it’s not averaged out at all you will to easily get clipping, so that’s not good.

I believe the channels are, actually stereo channels,
that means 128 channels is actually 256 channels left and right.

@LiveForIt

Suggest dropdown to 16 channels, 8, 4?

@kikems

maybe 16 or 32, depends on the program, and what you’re doing.

Mixing for G17 is done quite different depending on if 68k or OS4 version (as I mentioned I reimplemented sound code from scratch for 68k version as the method used in OS4 version caused trouble when used on some 68k OS versions - main thread could end up performance starved).

As it is 68k version uses SDL_MixAudio (inside the magicsoundsystem.dll which is OpenSource). Samples for the 68k version use always WAV and always 22050 Hz, 2 channels, but the magicsoundsystem.dll principially can handle on-the-fly conversion (just I found that on some systems this caused stutter, when music and speech output was active at the same time, so I changed the datafiles to all use the same frequency and channel number). The SDL Thread is implemented "as small as possible".

I also changed the file format for sound streaming from OGG to WAV (magicsoundsystem can actually stream normal,non AIFF WAVs - or select that you don't stream and load the whole file, Gorky17 offers both options though for a Pistorm or Vampire V4 system I would go with the default streaming setup as this loads faster, and those systems are fast enough to handle Gorky17, even if Music, speech and samples play at the same time.

OS4 version instead uses an AHI Soundthread, and communication through message ports (first Beta of 68k version used that too, but could lead to that performance starvation causing the game to "hang" in specific situations which is why I completely reimplemented the sound system from scratch).

On slower systems also the new sound system had noticably higher performance (on OS4 it does not really matter ^^ The AHI method is fine there and no trouble whatsoever).