Movies playing in HUD cause game to pause

Hey guys, I'm having the same problem, and I think I may have found a solution.

I ran the wav files in the speach dir through the GSpot codec analyzer...it identified their codec as 'Morgan Stream Switcher'. I didn't have that in my list of codecs under XP, so I dug around and found it:

www.morgan-multimedia.com/mmswitch/

It is a codec that allows switching between multiple audio streams.

I just ran the installer, and so far no more stuttering. It might be too soon to tell, but usually the problem starts after a distress call on my system, and so far it seems fine.

I hope it helps for others as well.

Cheers
DS

Nice one! DarkSyd. I hope this is an end to an ongoing irritation for a lot of users. We await your feedback with great expectation

Nope still no good. Just delete the speech dir.

Someone HAS to find a solution to this. I've tried everything mentioned: renumbering the priority of codecs, disableing non-needed audio codecs, removing DivX and DVD software, removing anything that installed codecs, removing EoC defragmenting the drive then reinstalling EoC, updating all my drivers/directx, turning down the hardware sound acceleration. Everything short of a clean WinXP install.

The problem is most assuredly NOT the video in the HUD, it's the audio stream being played. It seems to start randomly, sometimes after a few minutes of play, sometimes after an hour or more. Restarting the game seems to solve it for awhile. It didn't start occuring until the middle of act one, and now in act 2 is is much worse. If I play an old act 1 or 0 save, it doesn't give me any problems. I think it has to do with the number and frequency of audio streams the game is playing... audio messages are more fewquentas the game progresses, especially since the Marauder attacks and distress signals in mid act 1.

My setup: P4 1.6, 512mb, WinXp, GeForce3 (latest video drivers), TB Santa Cruz (latest official drivers), DirectX 9, latest media player. I had the problem when I was running the old media player and Dx8.1

If there is no solution to this besides renaming the audio directory (disabling the speech), I may just give up on this game; even though I like it. This is very discouraging.

I got a reply from Infograms tech support stating that they claim only that EoC will run on XP, but some things may not work correctly on any NT based kernel. So, it looks like they are telling me to run Win98 or put up with the speech problem Perhaps if enough people write asking for help with this, they will release a new patch. We can only hope!

I'm sorry but there is NO chance of any future patches being released for any of the I-War games, as the people who worked on the games have now been re-assigned to other projects.

In any case I-War 2 should work on an NT based kernel as it was developed primarily under W2K.

The problem you're having is a codec configuration problem, and it seems that Microsoft's Freelancer seems to suffer from similar problems for similar reasons, and that there are some fairly detailed fixes for Freelancer that may work with I-War 2.

Here's some details I borrowed from the space-sim news group:

If you've installed
another MP3 codec, or the "Pro" Fraunhofer MP3 codec, you'll lose
sound in some areas. It seems that the games only like the default
Fraunhofer codec. If you've installed one of the movie playing codec
packs or updated your mp3 codec, you may have this issue.

Assuming you're using windowsXP (not sure of the steps if you're using
win9x)

First:
=====

Look at Control Panel > Sounds, Speech, and Audio Devices
> Sounds and Audio Devices > Hardware tab

Select "audio codecs" from the list and click "Properties".

Select the "Properties" tab.

Click on the "Fraunhofer IIS MPEG Layer-3 codec"

Click on the "Properties" button

Make sure the "Use this codec" is selected.

---

Second
======
Run Regedit or regedt32. This involves editing the registry, so you
might want to avoid this and wait for a patch if you're not sure.

Drill down to:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ Software \ Microsoft \ CurrentVersion \ WindowsNT
\ Drivers32

Look for a key called msacm.l3acm

If the value of the key points to a file called L3codecp.acm

you need to change this to point to a file called L3codeca.acm

This file is found in your windows\system32 directory.

minor change, just a change from p to a, but it basically forces the
system to use the original default fraunhofer mp3 codec which the game
is having trouble finding.

---

Thanks

MCheu

Had problem with missing sounds/music in some areas. Same prob with
loads of space games really. Anyway probably you need the right
codecs. This snipped from the readme (btw the uninstall freelancer bit
was unneccessary for me):

Missing Game Sounds
If you experience missing game sounds throughout Freelancer then a
different audio codec is probably being used rather that the one
provided by Freelancer.

" Please follow these steps if some sounds and speech are still
missing after installation:
" Uninstall any 3rd party codec pack or the Nimo Codec pack from your
system.
" Uninstall Freelancer.
" Go to the following directory, C:\WINDOWS\system32 and delete the
file "l3codecp.acm". If there happens to be another file named
"l3codeca.acm", delete this too.
" If your system is Windows 98 or ME, open the system.ini file located
in your system folder; C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM. Delete ONLY the line that
starts with "msacm.l3acm=". In the case of the Nimo codec pack, this
will read "msacm.l3acm=l3codecp.acm"
" If your system is Windows 2000 or XP, open the system registry
editor (regedit) from the RUN command window.
" Locate and delete the following key:
\HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\WindowsNT\CurrentVersion\Drivers32\msacm.l3acm
" Load the Freelancer installation CD and locate the REDIST folder.
Within the REDIST folder, double click on the file named
"WMFADist.exe" and follow on-screen instructions.
" Install Freelancer.


unless you need any codecs for another particular purpose you should
be ok.

---

BTW, I gound the "WMFADist.exe" file on these sites:

www.acoustica.com/plugins/wma-install.htm
www.share2.com/public/WMFADist.exe


-- Steve
Stephen Robertson
Particle Systems
Independence War Website