ogg files and WB 1.151 (improved PoP sounds link included)

[Treebeard]

It looks like WB 1.151 has fixed the crashes when having many ogg files, so I'm going to upgrade PoP 3.42 and revert it back to ogg files. Ogg files will improve the sound quality for all sound lovers

(I tested by running PoP 3.204/5 with WB 1.143 many times and it crashed. Then I upgraded to 1.151 and now it no longer crashes)


Edit:
See bottom post (http://forums.taleworlds.com/index.php/topic,226397.msg5427126.html#msg5427126) for the new improved sounds download and install instructions. The new sounds have been converted from ogg to improved wav files because the ogg files are taking up more RAM than the improved wav files and quality is the same or better with the improved wav files.

[Hinkl]

Nice.

[Treebeard]

I've made a tentative update for anybody who is running WB 1.151 to try out.

This will bring your PoP3.42 version to PoP 3.43 beta so to speak.

This update includes:

- All sound files have been brought back to .ogg format
- PoP 3.42 Sep21 has been ported to WB 1.151
- The menu click sound volume has been fixed
- An unmatched (try_end) has been removed from a prisoner dialog.


This update is save game compatible with PoP 3.42.
Do not update if you have the OP Code 1783 error in battles, as this version uses Dynamic Groups.

Link to PoP 3.43 beta:
http://www.2shared.com/file/wd5JVvTB/UpdatePoP342_to_PoP343.html

Post anything buggy in regards to this particular PoP 3.43 beta in this thread.

Regards,
TB


Edit:
Install instructions:
- Back up the text files in your PoP3.42 folder prior to extracting and over writing the 5 text files contained within the rar file. (actions.txt, conversation.txt, menus.txt, sounds.txt, tableau_materials.txt)
- Rename your Sounds folder in your PoP3.42 folder to Sounds(old)
- Extract the rar file into your PoP3.42 folder


Edit 2:

Nullpat has analyzed the memory usage between PoP3.42 with 22KHz audio and PoP 3.43 beta.

His findings reveal that with 22KHz audio sounds PoP 3.42 uses up 1.5GB RAM. When we use .ogg files, PoP3.43 beta is using up 1.9GB RAM. When the ceiling of 2GB is reached, the program will crash. So this beta only leaves about 100MB free before the game will crash.

Thanks to Nullpat for doing the research with Sysinternals Process Explorer!

[MitchyMatt]

PoP beta 3.43? Lol wut. And what do u mean by 100mb allowance left? For anything? Or sound only?

[Treebeard]

PoP beta 3.43? Lol wut. And what do u mean by 100mb allowance left? For anything? Or sound only?

This is just to test 1.151 compatibility and sound quality and its effect on performance and crashes. It was relatively quick to do

Those 100MB is how much room before PoP would crash at start-up (with 100% texture details).

I've updated the sounds.txt file to use a flag named stream from hd (thanks MV and Vincenzo for suggesting) that is new for WB 1.151. This will off-load memory usage by not storing such sounds in memory. The drawback is a noticeable delay before the sound starts playing. So I only did it for voice-overs for now.

Here is a replacement sounds.txt (to overwrite your sounds.txt if you have the PoP 3.43 beta installed) that makes use of more hd streaming (for all dialogs with companions and lords):
Link to modified sounds.txt (for beta PoP3.43):
http://www.gamefront.com/files/21598147/PoP343beta_sounds%28txt%29.rar

Install by overwriting the existing sounds.txt in your PoP folder (for PoP3.43 beta)

32 bit systems are welcome to test this too because 32-bit systems are most vulnerable to crashes with this beta. For example normal Windows XP systems.

Edit:
After more insights from Nullpat, it seems best to convert the ogg sounds to 44KHz wav sounds which will be done in the next beta. For now, feel free to use this beta until the next beta comes (in a few days or perhaps earlier).

[nullpat]

Basically Treebeard and I have been trying to get nice full 44,100hz sounds back into PoP 3, without sacrificing stability. We noticed that after the 1151 update, vorbis ogg sound files no longer caused PoP to crash on load, because they were handled by the game more efficiently. But after a closer look, ogg files were still detrimental to system stability for players with less system RAM in their computers.

So we have decided on using 44,100hz wave files instead of 44,100hz vorbis files. The one small drawback to this decision, is that wave files are uncompressed and so larger.

[Treebeard]

Here's a new update using just improved wav files ...
http://www.gamefront.com/files/21599023/PoP343beta_sounds%28wav%29.rar

Install instructions and changes are otherwise the same as the original post.
One downside is the increased hard drive space (but they take up 200MB less RAM than the ogg files did).

[Fel1]

Don't get too comfortable with these oggs, new wavs could come soon...

[Treebeard]

Don't get too comfortable with these oggs, new wavs could come soon...

Indeed, the improved wav version for PoP 3.43beta (WB 1.151) is linked to in the post above yours (and in my sig now)
Feel free to try it out and check how it sounds and runs.


More info about this update:

This is save game compatible with PoP3.42.
Change log:
- All sound files have been converted from ogg to higher quality wav
- PoP 3.42 Sep21 has been ported to WB 1.151
- The menu click sound volume has been fixed
- An unmatched (try_end) has been removed from a prisoner dialog.

Install Instructions:
- Back up the text files in your PoP3.42 folder prior to extracting and over writing the 5 text files contained within the rar file. (actions.txt, conversation.txt, menus.txt, sounds.txt, tableau_materials.txt)
- Rename your Sounds folder in your PoP3.42 folder to Sounds(old)
- Extract the rar file into your PoP3.42 folder

Link:
http://www.gamefront.com/files/21599023/PoP343beta_sounds%28wav%29.rar

If you have PoP 3.42 and WB 1.143 and do not want to update any text files (- for example if you have the fix for OP Code 1783), then you can still use this update. Just extract the sounds folder in that case.

[nullpat]

Who is known to have the opcode 1783 error? We should test if that is still an issue with 1151

[Fel1]

Don't get too comfortable with these oggs, new wavs could come soon...

Indeed, the improved wav version for PoP 3.43beta (WB 1.151) is linked to in the post above yours (and in my sig now)
Feel free to try it out and check how it sounds and runs.

I was talking about something  else, ask Nullpat!

[Treebeard]

Who is known to have the opcode 1783 error? We should test if that is still an issue with 1151

The most recent OP Code 1783 is this:
http://forums.taleworlds.com/index.php/topic,225735.0.html

I believe Pravenstern and some others also have this issue. Agent_set_division just generates unrecognized OP Code on some computer systems. The cause is unknown so far.

[MadVader]

Who is known to have the opcode 1783 error? We should test if that is still an issue with 1151

The most recent OP Code 1783 is this:
http://forums.taleworlds.com/index.php/topic,225735.0.html

I believe Pravenstern and some others also have this issue. Agent_set_division just generates unrecognized OP Code on some computer systems. The cause is unknown so far.

Pirated versions? It's got to be in the .exe.

[Treebeard]

Pirated versions? It's got to be in the .exe.

It's happened to several people and I'm pretty sure they have legitimate versions of WB. It's very hard to find the cause of that bug though because it shouldn't logically be possible for it to happen.

Here's another two links to this issue:
http://forums.taleworlds.com/index.php/topic,147708.msg4661018.html#msg4661018
http://forums.taleworlds.com/index.php/topic,147708.msg4476017.html#msg4476017


It all started after WB 1.134 was introduced:
http://forums.taleworlds.com/index.php/topic,147708.msg4410810.html#msg4410810

[MadVader]

Hmm.. maybe different .exes distributed through Steam and Taleworlds - can be even different exes between a full and an incremental patch version (careless patch creation). Did anyone check if their Warband executable is the correct one (size, timestamp..)?