[Solved] [Linux] Build 258 no sound.

EzdineG

Soon after the update to 258 I seem to have lost in-game sound. This didn't happen immediately; I was able to play a few days ago long enough to notice the acknowledged gradually increasing volume issue detailed elsewhere on this forum.

Of particular note is that looking in the options screen always shows "Game Restart Required" on the bottom left, even if I make no changes and check immediately after starting the game.

I've deleted the "./.config/Natural Selection 2" folder. Starting the game recreated the folder and reset the all options to default (low resolution, lowest graphics settings) and all mods are removed. I still get the "Game Restart Required" error, even after setting options and restarting the game to note that they did take effect.

Verifying the game cache comes back okay. System sounds work fine, as does sound in all other Steam games. I can even hear the Steam "ding" when I'm messaged by Steam friends from within NS2. Pavucontrol shows the Realtek Audio as the only enabled sound system in Linux.

Perhaps this is pertinent (config.txt:)

Date: 10/17/2013
Time: 08:22:03 PM:

---

Build 258
Linux
Steam initialized
Num displays: 1
OpenGL 4.4.0 NVIDIA 331.13 initialized (NVIDIA Corporation GeForce GTX 780/PCIe/SSE2)
GLSL version 4.40 NVIDIA via Cg compiler
ARB_texture_storage extension present
Error: eventSystem->init (Error initializing output device. )
Error: SoundSystem::Initialize - Failed to initialize FMOD event system
Sound disabled
Error: Mod '' wasn't available
Error: Mod '' wasn't available
Error: Mod '' wasn't available
<snip>

Thanks for your help!

Confused

Ahh linux sound.

Are you using pulse or alsa?

I might try removing/renaming your options.xml file and having it be regenerated. It should not be spamming that Mod '' was not available error. so it might be the file is screwed up

(~/.local/share/Steam/userdata/<steamid>/4920/remote/options.xml)

EzdineG

I use Pulseaudio.

Thanks for the feedback, although unfortunately it didn't solve the problem. I persevered, however and eventually found a solution.

I'm using Gentoo Linux 64-bit ~unstable, and the solution was to roll-back from the latest emul-linux-x86-* packages dated 20131008 to the previous 20130224. Either this is a packaging issue, or there is a bug in a newer revision of x86 compiled libraries that are soon to give us all headaches. This being Gentoo, I can hold them back and compile around them without issue.

Running Steam from the command line and launching NS2 allowed me to see errors that were occuring before the log.txt in the .config/Natural Selection 2/ folder.

This is what I was seeing (with the newest emul-linux-x86-soundlibs-20131008):
ALSA lib conf.c:4687:(snd_config_expand) Unknown parameters CARD=PCH,DEV=0
ALSA lib conf.c:4687:(snd_config_expand) Unknown parameters CARD=PCH
ALSA lib conf.c:4571:(parse_args) Unknown parameter DEV
ALSA lib conf.c:4704:(snd_config_expand) Parse arguments error: No such file or directory
ALSA lib confmisc.c:1286:(snd_func_refer) Unable to find definition 'cards.HDA-Intel.pcm.front.1:CARD=PCH'
ALSA lib conf.c:4241:(_snd_config_evaluate) function snd_func_refer returned error: No such file or directory
<snip>

With NO x86 soundlibs [pure 64-bit] I saw all of that but preceded with:
ALSA lib conf.c:3314:(snd_config_hooks_call) Cannot open shared library /usr/lib64/alsa-lib/libasound_module_conf_pulse.so

The end result was that ALSA was not loading the PULSE plugin when launching NS2. I tested a handful of games in my Steam inventory and only NS2, Oregon Trail and FTL ended up being affected. Now that this is fixed, all of the offenders show Alsa-Plugin as the audio source where most show SDL or the name of the EXE directly in PAVUCONTROL.

Again I thank you for your help, and find it incredibly interesting there are so many ways to go about audio in Linux!