[Bug 11633] New: Blood 2: The Chosen Launcher audio bug

http://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=11633

Summary: Blood 2: The Chosen Launcher audio bug
           Product: Wine
           Version: 0.9.55.
          Platform: All
        OS/Version: Linux
            Status: UNCONFIRMED
          Severity: minor
          Priority: P2
         Component: directx-dsound
        AssignedTo: [e-mail]
        ReportedBy: [e-mail]
                CC: [e-mail]

Hi there,

I noticed another bug in the game "Blood 2: The Chosen", this time it's both
affecting the launcher application and the game engine. Something to this
difference:
- We have Blood2.exe in the game directory which is the main game launcher
which enables the user to select the renderer type, resolution and some
advanced settings concerning the graphics card.
- Then we have Client.exe which is the main game engine client. This one is
started by the launcher supplying some parameters like the game resources files
which the engine should use (so you can easily extend the game with additional
resource packages)

Currently tested version:
Blood 2 version 2.0

Now the problem:
- When starting the launcher it plays back some audio sample, there are like 5
audio samples which it can play (gunshot, scream, etc. - your know what I
mean).
- The samples are rather short and if the user waits for them to end the game
can be launched without problem (playing the game is another story)
- If the user does NOT wait for the sample to end and starts the game (by
clicking on the launch button) before it has ended the game engine won't
produce any sound, crash or mention that it couldn't initialize the audio
driver.

The results when launching too early are dependent on the audio setup of the
system. By audio setup I mean:
- Which audio driver is selected in the launcher option menu (I'm going to
supply a list)
- Is the direct use of the audio hardware enabled in wine?

List of Blood 2 (LithTech engine) audio drivers:
- Miles 2D Stereo Positional Audio
- Microsoft DirectSound3D software emulation
- RSX 3D Audio from RAD Game Tools
- No Sound (quite uninteresting)

That's the list that appears when doing audio driver detect through the
launcher.

Results (with direct HW audio access):
- When using "Miles 2D" the audio produced by the launcher hangs and repeats.
Sounds like the sample cache is repeated all the time. The game does start but
does not enable sound and displays the following warning message:
"The 3D sound provider is invalid"
The game engine does seem to disable sound now completly and continues.
- When using "MS DS3D soft emulation" the same as with "Miles 2D" happens, also
the same warning message
- "RSX" -> same results

Results (with non-direct HW access):
Getting the same results but the sound mutes (instead of hanging and
repeating). This applies to all available B2 audio drivers.

Another interesting thing:
Blood 2 version 2.0 (I'm not sure for other versions) has six different audio
drivers:
- Mssa3d.m3d: Aureal 3D (?)
- Mssds3dh.m3d: DirectSound3D Hardware (?)
- Mssds3ds.m3d: DirectSound3D Software Emulation
- Msseax.m3d: EAX (?)
- Mssfast.m3d: Miles 2D Stereo (?)
- Mssrsx.m3d: RSX 3D Audio
(MSS = Miles Sound System ??)

The reason for the ? are that the three other drivers don't appear in the
config menu. And I'm not quite sure why "Mssfast.m3d" should be the "Miles 2D
Stereo" driver.

So the engine (?) or the code that is accessed through the launcher only
detects three drivers. I'm especially worried since it won't detect DS3D
Hardware support.
Now another interesting thing is that when removing all sound option stuff from
the autoexec.cfg (the main configuration file the engine uses) another warning
message appears when doing an early-start of the client.exe.
I suspect that the engine uses DS3D hardware support when not been configured
properly.

I didn't succeed in crashing any application (launcher or engine) with version
2.0, but I'm still trying and I'm also going to step back to version 1.0 to
check if the crashes were appearing there.

Thanks,
Tobias