Missing muzzle flash and shot sounds on certain areas

Models + Mapping, Computer & SOF Problems.
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Missing muzzle flash and shot sounds on certain areas

Post by godzilla »

So I'm having an odd issue where Soldier of Fortune 1's muzzle flash and shot sounds would randomly cut off when walking in certain areas of the opening level in Siberia, and I have absolutely no idea why. I'm using the latest version of the Community Edition, and even reinstalled it. I don't recall having this problem before, nor am I seeing any footage of this problem on Youtube anywhere.

I'm currently (as of this writing) uploading a video showing what I mean, and the video will hopefully be fully uploaded by the time people read this. https://streamable.com/dnphu" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

I'm honestly at a loss as to what's going on. I tried fiddling around with the settings, fiddling around with my sound, reinstalling SoF CE 6.2, and even tried reinstalling SoF CE 6.1, and all to no avail. I have absolutely no idea what's going on, and I've stayed up really late trying to figure out what's going on.

If anyone can help me, thank you very much.

EDIT: After messing around with the game a bit more, it turns out it's the tanks in the level that are causing the problem. When I blew up one of the tanks, it reduced the problem, and when I blew up the other tank, it completely went away.

What's up with that?
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Re: Missing muzzle flash and shot sounds on certain areas

Post by Sauron »

Before destroying the tanks put this on -> s_show "1".
See how many .wav's are played + repeated.
There is a limit that SoF can handle at 1 time, what limit good question.
Oversight from the dev's that overloaded the 'sound engine' I guess....

Some current settings may be handy to know as well, what are your settings for s_khz & gl_effectfill
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Re: Missing muzzle flash and shot sounds on certain areas

Post by godzilla »

Sauron wrote:Before destroying the tanks put this on -> s_show "1".
See how many .wav's are played + repeated.
There is a limit that SoF can handle at 1 time, what limit good question.
Oversight from the dev's that overloaded the 'sound engine' I guess....

Some current settings may be handy to know as well, what are your settings for s_khz & gl_effectfill
Thanks for the response. I entered "s_show 1" and there were a bunch of sounds that keep repeating, so I couldn't keep track of it. There's constant ambient noise, though, with wind and snow related stuff, though every other sound besides my muzzle flash/gunshots load fine.

As for the current settings, I currently have s_khz set to 44, though I've reduced it down to 22 and 11 before, and neither of those settings helped. gl_effectfill is 10000. Looks a tad high. Is that where my problem is?

EDIT: gl_effectfill isn't 1000, it's 10000. Probably really high, then.
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Re: Missing muzzle flash and shot sounds on certain areas

Post by Sauron »

Muzzle flash is missing cuz the fog+smoke around the map is taking up all the 'space' of the gl_effectfill.
gl_effectfill in menu's is locked from 100 till 10000 so you already have it on max (that is settable through menu's)
You could put it higher manually but if you do and go to menu "F4"/"menu scale" it will reset to 10000.

To see the impact of this change use "r_speeds 1" & "r_warnings 1" when the engine doesn't like something it fills the screen with a full colour.
I use 'something' because it's both imo still debatable what the colours mean + if setting a value higher than through the menu is possible is it actually working for the engine. I guess most just assumed because it was doable with cl_maxfps.
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Re: Missing muzzle flash and shot sounds on certain areas

Post by godzilla »

Sauron wrote:Muzzle flash is missing cuz the fog+smoke around the map is taking up all the 'space' of the gl_effectfill.
gl_effectfill in menu's is locked from 100 till 10000 so you already have it on max (that is settable through menu's)
You could put it higher manually but if you do and go to menu "F4"/"menu scale" it will reset to 10000.

To see the impact of this change use "r_speeds 1" & "r_warnings 1" when the engine doesn't like something it fills the screen with a full colour.
I use 'something' because it's both imo still debatable what the colours mean + if setting a value higher than through the menu is possible is it actually working for the engine. I guess most just assumed because it was doable with cl_maxfps.
So the best solution so far is to increase gl_effectfill to about 1000000 or something and just don't go to the menu? I'm a complete noob when it comes to messing with settings on Soldier of Fortune 1.

EDIT: I guess one more question I have is why I'm having problems now? I never had this problem before, nor did any video I saw on Youtube have it. It's odd.

EDIT 2: Well increasing gl_effectfill didn't fix it either.
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Re: Missing muzzle flash and shot sounds on certain areas

Post by Acadie »

Sauron wrote:Oversight from the dev's that overloaded the 'sound engine' I guess....
This. It's an issue from the map itself. Nothing we can do about it except destroying most entities in sight. (Remember the issue in egypt2003 with the flames)
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Re: Missing muzzle flash and shot sounds on certain areas

Post by godzilla »

Acadie wrote:
Sauron wrote:Oversight from the dev's that overloaded the 'sound engine' I guess....
This. It's an issue from the map itself. Nothing we can do about it except destroying most entities in sight. (Remember the issue in egypt2003 with the flames)
So what can I do? I never had this problem with the map before. It appeared recently.

Could I just delete the tanks from the level then? Would make it somewhat easier, but I don’t really care.
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Re: Missing muzzle flash and shot sounds on certain areas

Post by d3nd3 »

Nice observation, i confirmed that it is indeed the turret on top of the tank. There is one very close to spawn but you cant see it, thats why the bug also exists when u first spawn. At the moment i believe its related to too many temporary entities possibly overflowing a network buffer.

Strange that you say you never had that problem before, can anyone else confirm that they havent' had this before?

EDIT: I tested without sofplus and i still got the problem. So i doubt there was a time where it worked. Hm.
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Re: Missing muzzle flash and shot sounds on certain areas

Post by godzilla »

d3nd3 wrote:Nice observation, i confirmed that it is indeed the turret on top of the tank.  There is one very close to spawn but you cant see it, thats why the bug also exists when u first spawn.  At the moment i believe its related to too many temporary entities possibly overflowing a network buffer.

Strange that you say you never had that problem before, can anyone else confirm that they havent' had this before?

EDIT: I tested without sofplus and i still got the problem. So i doubt there was a time where it worked. Hm.
So you’re having the problem too? I never had it before and all Youtube videos I’ve seen of the level seem to not have it too, so I dunno. It’s weird.

Any idea how to fix it?
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Re: Missing muzzle flash and shot sounds on certain areas

Post by d3nd3 »

Thats a really valid point, I just watched a few on youtube couldnt' see the bug demonstrated there either. Thats left me wondering that there could be a simple solution to this.
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Re: Missing muzzle flash and shot sounds on certain areas

Post by godzilla »

d3nd3 wrote:Thats a really valid point, I just watched a few on youtube couldnt' see the bug demonstrated there either. Thats left me wondering that there could be a simple solution to this.
Could this be related somehow to some update on Windows 10? Or a driver update? If you see it as do I, then it's clearly not just a glitch on my end.
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Re: Missing muzzle flash and shot sounds on certain areas

Post by d3nd3 »

Okay so i have found the solution. In single player the fps goes bonkers for the server i think, and frame rate is tied with network usage, so the network is only overflowed when fps is above a certain point.

read this : https://sof1.megalag.org/wine/#sp_framerate

What fps do you like to play at? Use cl_showfps 1 or cl_showfps 2 to have a fps on HUD.
the number you put into _sp_cl_frame_delay is 1000 / fps.
Eg. 1000/30 = 33 ... set _sp_cl_frame_delay 33


For me the bug appeared at anything equal or less than 16, which equates to fps equal or greater than 60 fps.
17 seems to work, and that equates to roughly 59 fps.
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Re: Missing muzzle flash and shot sounds on certain areas

Post by d3nd3 »

Another way to do it is to run at 60hz fullscreen :
gl_displayrefresh 60
vid_fullscreen 1
And make sure vsync is enabled:
gl_swapinterval 0
gl_swapinterval 1

cl_maxfps has no effect in singleplayer, but vsync does.
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Re: Missing muzzle flash and shot sounds on certain areas

Post by godzilla »

Huh, simply turning on the framerate limiter in Nvidia Profile and setting it to 60FPS seems to work. I had a 75 refresh screen before when the bug happened. I must've not played the game for a while because I upgraded my PC a while ago and it defaulted to a 75Hz refresh rate.

Thanks for the solution.

EDIT: Nevermind, it mitigated it, but didn't actually fix it. When I get really close to a tank, it bugs out again. I'll try and see if other solutions help.

EDIT 2: Trying the stuff you said resulted in similar results. The effects are mitigated in that they only bug out when really close to the tank, but they still bug out on occasion. That is odd. Do I need to further decrease the framerate?

EDIT 3: One thing I'm noticing is I'm not able to run the game in fullscreen if I set the refresh rate to 60FPS. Odd.

EDIT 4: I even tried changing my monitor's refresh rate to 60. All the cases, it's the same: the problem is mitigated in the sense that places where it used to bug out no longer do, but if I get close to a tank, it still glitches up anyways. It does seem like there's some kind of framerate issue going on, but I'm not sure how to permanently fix this.
Last edited by godzilla on 23 Mar 2018, 18:46, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Missing muzzle flash and shot sounds on certain areas

Post by d3nd3 »

Probably when it starts firing and aiming the turret etc. then the network load increases, i'll try to find a better solution.
Last edited by d3nd3 on 23 Mar 2018, 18:48, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Missing muzzle flash and shot sounds on certain areas

Post by godzilla »

d3nd3 wrote:Probably when it starts firing and aiming the turret etc. then the network load increases
Yeah. In fact, it works perfectly fine until the tank rises up and starts shooting. So how do I decrease network load then? Framerate has helped, but not permanently fixed.

EDIT: I did enable some stuff through Nvidia Profile Inspector, like anistropic filtering and some anti-aliasing stuff like transparency supersampling and all that. Could that also be increasing network load?

EDIT 2: Well, turning all of those off made no difference. Hrmph.
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Re: Missing muzzle flash and shot sounds on certain areas

Post by d3nd3 »

best solution i have found so far is to remove a file from pak0.pak

Use a pak editor that works on large paks.

Find effects/environ/kf_exhaust01.eft and delete it.

EDIT: An even easier way to achieve the same thing is to place an empty file in your User folder.
User/effects/environ/kf_exhaust01.eft
You have to create the folders, but wait here, i try to upload an empty file with zip structure. Then its automatic for you.

WARNING: dont put empty file it will cause crashes, The deletion from pak method works tho. i think.
Last edited by d3nd3 on 27 Mar 2018, 18:49, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: Missing muzzle flash and shot sounds on certain areas

Post by godzilla »

d3nd3 wrote:best solution i have found so far is to remove a file from pak0.pak

Use a pak editor that works on large paks.

Find effects/environ/kf_exhaust01.eft and delete it.
Gonna be busy for most of today so I’ll let you know how it works tonight when I can get back to my PC.

Do you know why this works?
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Re: Missing muzzle flash and shot sounds on certain areas

Post by d3nd3 »

Well its workaround solution. There is some issue with too many effects at same time, but this particular effect (the smoke coming out of side of tank/exhaust) is very rapid and consuming. So when the file is not exist it cannot run that effect.
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Re: Missing muzzle flash and shot sounds on certain areas

Post by godzilla »

d3nd3 wrote:Well its workaround solution. There is some issue with too many effects at same time, but this particular effect (the smoke coming out of side of tank/exhaust) is very rapid and consuming. So when the file is not exist it cannot run that effect.
How will it affect aesthetics for other areas? Or is the exhaust just for the tank?
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