[Bug 40898] New: Mass Effect (Steam) has no sounds with native OpenAL ( except for cutscenes)

https://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=40898

Bug ID: 40898
           Summary: Mass Effect (Steam) has no sounds with native OpenAL
                    (except for cutscenes)
           Product: Wine
           Version: 1.9.13
          Hardware: x86
               URL: http://store.steampowered.com/app/17460/
                OS: Linux
            Status: NEW
          Severity: normal
          Priority: P2
         Component: -unknown
          Assignee: [e-mail]
          Reporter: [e-mail]
                CC: [e-mail]
      Distribution: ---

Created attachment 54990
  --> https://bugs.winehq.org/attachment.cgi?id=54990
audio debug log
(+tid,+seh,+mmdevapi,+winmm,+driver,+msacm,+midi,+dsound,+dsound3d,+xaudio2,+xapofx,+dmusic,+mci,+pulse,+alsa,+timestamp)

The problem sounds similar to bug #40833: audio works in the cutscenes, intro
videos, but not in the menus and in the main game.
The differences are:
- Mass Effect doesn't make use of Xaudio/Xaudio2 but Openal (the game comes
bundled with native openal32.dll and wrap_oal.dll)
- the proposed patch from bug #40833 doesn't fix the problem.

I reproduced the problem with ALSA and Pulseaudio as well.

Possible workarounds:
- force Wine to use the built-in openal32. Audio works with that (the game
recognizes the audio device as 'Generic Software').
- when using the native openal32, edit BIOEngine.ini and change the line in
section [ISACTAudio.ISACT.AudioDevice]
DeviceName = Generic Software

For some reason, the game always tries to use 'Hardware acceleration' for sound
when using native openal32.dll that comes with the game.

FWIW, audio used to work in the game before

commit 7d6c6025923c039ac6a2458ca466290621238c36
Author: Andrew Eikum 
Date:   Fri Oct 2 09:02:56 2015 -0500

openal32: Prefer native version.

Because openal contexts are global per-process, applications that use
    openal will conflict with Wine DLLs that use openal like xaudio2_7 now
    does. Windows does not ship an openal32, so all applications that use
    openal will ship their own copy of it. According to Chris Robinson,
    Windows native openal32 works fine in Wine, so we should just use that
    to avoid the problem.

Fedora 24 x86_64
Audio device: NVIDIA Corporation MCP61 High Definition Audio (rev a2)
Pulseaudio 8.0 / Alsa 1.1.1
openal-soft-1.17.2

[Bug 40898] Mass Effect (Steam) has no sounds with native OpenAL ( except for cutscenes)

https://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=40898

[e-mail] changed:

What    |Removed                     |Added
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
                 CC|                            |[e-mail]

--- Comment #1 from [e-mail] ---
Possible dupe of https://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=40833 ?

[Bug 40898] Mass Effect (Steam) has no sounds with native OpenAL ( except for cutscenes)

https://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=40898

--- Comment #2 from [e-mail] ---
(In reply to fjfrackiewicz from comment #1)
> Possible dupe of https://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=40833 ?

Please disregard my previous comment.

[Bug 40898] Mass Effect (Steam) has no sounds with native OpenAL ( except for cutscenes)

https://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=40898

Adam Bolte  changed:

What    |Removed                     |Added
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
                 CC|                            |[e-mail]

[Bug 40898] Mass Effect (Steam) has no sounds with native OpenAL ( except for cutscenes)

https://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=40898

--- Comment #3 from Adam Bolte  ---
Confirming this issue in 1.9.14.

[Bug 40898] Mass Effect (Steam) has no sounds with native OpenAL ( except for cutscenes)

https://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=40898

tokktokk  changed:

What    |Removed                     |Added
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
                 CC|                            |[e-mail]

[Bug 40898] Mass Effect (Steam) has no sounds with native OpenAL ( except for cutscenes)

https://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=40898

[e-mail] changed:

What    |Removed                     |Added
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
                 CC|                            |[e-mail]

--- Comment #4 from [e-mail] ---
Confirmed with 2.11-staging.

Additionally, there was a workaround for the problem (setting openal32 to
"builtin"), but apparently, Origin's licensing checker caught onto that, and
produces an error: "Invalid license.  Reason code = Missing DLL: [OpenAL32.dll]
Error: 0x7E"

[Bug 40898] Mass Effect (Steam) has no sounds with native OpenAL ( except for cutscenes)

https://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=40898

mirh  changed:

What    |Removed                     |Added
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
                 CC|                            |[e-mail],
                   |                            |[e-mail]

--- Comment #5 from mirh  ---
https://pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Mass_Effect#No_surround_sound
IIRC the game is very picky about audio device. 
And no sound should just happen when there are no suitable outputs. 
In Windows indeed, worst case scenario is fallback to Generic Software.. In
your case I wouldn't know what's the specific matter - maybe "output device
name" doesn't match OAL's native implementation one?

CCing a person very knowledgeable of this kind of problems.

[Bug 40898] Mass Effect (Steam) has no sounds with native OpenAL ( except for cutscenes)

https://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=40898

Robert Munteanu  changed:

What    |Removed                     |Added
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
                 CC|                            |[e-mail]

[Bug 40898] Mass Effect (Steam) has no sounds with native OpenAL ( except for cutscenes)

https://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=40898

[e-mail] changed:

What    |Removed                     |Added
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
                 CC|                            |[e-mail]

[Bug 40898] Mass Effect (Steam) has no sounds with native OpenAL ( except for cutscenes)

https://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=40898

pattietreutel  changed:

What    |Removed                     |Added
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
                 CC|                            |[e-mail]

[Bug 40898] Mass Effect (Steam) has no sounds with native OpenAL (except for cutscenes)

[WineHQ Bugzilla]

https://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=40898

Anya  changed:

What    |Removed                     |Added
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
                 CC|                            |[e-mail]

--- Comment #6 from Anya  ---
still a problem

[Bug 40898] Mass Effect (Steam) has no sounds with native OpenAL (except for cutscenes)

[WineHQ Bugzilla]

https://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=40898

--- Comment #7 from mirh  ---
So.. I just checked, and I think the problem is with the Generic Hardware
device.

When you use built-in, you bypass entirely all the openal router and wrapper
logic, and you are just "forcefully" using OpenAL Soft. End. 
When you use native instead, you get all the aforementioned stuff, and since
there's no special device implementation inside of wine you get the usual
Generic Hardware > Generic Software priority.

Generic Hardware is reported available, therefore that's what the game uses by
default (you can see this in the logs inside your saves path). But "audio init"
never happens.

I can just speculate this is because Generic Hardware in wine is pretty
special.
For starters: it is reported even on windows versions above XP, despite the
fact that there should be no directsound3d behind (but this is just a
cherry-pick, it shouldn't damage anything, and indeed XP is still broken)
But more importantly, I think it's broken. It has no EAX 2 or EFX (as can be
seen in ALCapsViewer32.exe), and I'm not sure lack of either of those was ever
expected here.

And even when you enable EAX in wine-staging (which makes both being flagged
supported), if you use openal-info32.exe you can see no actual filter or effect
is available at all. 
Now, I'm not super clear on what you should expect there, but "at least
*something*" seems like a safe bet. 
http://openal.996291.n3.nabble.com/EFX-Clarifications-td2620.html

[Bug 40898] Mass Effect (Steam) has no sounds with native OpenAL (except for cutscenes)

[WineHQ Bugzilla]

https://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=40898

mirh  changed:

What    |Removed                     |Added
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
                 CC|                            |[e-mail]

--- Comment #8 from mirh  ---
Extrapolating from the latest proton changelog, this should have been fixed
here with 6806954251d0c8c37a5aa9f749b918aa0da98c8d (I had almost guessed
correctly about directsound hardware).

But even though this shouldn't be a problem anymore (haven't really tested
anything, but I expect ME1 and LE1 to be identical on this aspect), I'm afraid
this probably regressed bug 11764.

There's a reason if the buffers had been lowkey enabled (and further bumped in
bug 38548) even after getting gutted between 1.3.30 and 1.3.31. 
I get that you are faithfully trying to replicate the Vista+ audio pipeline,
but there's absolutely also a place for the XP way of doing things.

[Bug 40898] Mass Effect (Steam) has no sounds with native OpenAL (except for cutscenes)

[WineHQ Bugzilla]

https://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=40898

soredake  changed:

What    |Removed                     |Added
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
                 CC|broaden_acid002@simplelogin |
                   |.com                        |