Lord of the Rings Online Forum

since the f2p update & adding directx modern to the bottle lotro to even get lotro to launch now it no longer shows a sound device, it used to show "ALSA Software on default" (no pulse installed). Funny thing is that voice/mic works just as well as normal and show dmix0 and dsnoop0 as selected devices.

checked the tips and tricks but as I don't have pulse on this system so skipped that part and not sure where else to look so any idea would be appreciated

Only thing I can think off is taking a backup of your UserPreferences.ini file, the delete it and let LotRO do it's initial hardware configuration. It could be that installing directx modern alters the way the game is seeing the sound so it can no longer see it the old way. Chances are that is nothing but pure guesswork and so far off the mark that it is at right angles but it is the only theory I have, other than LotRO eventually driving me insane :)

hello Alan

that what I thought also so I started fresh:

• new bottle
• added pylotr 1.14
• added C++ runtime 2005
• setup the sound to alsa in config panel, can hear the test blop
• started the whole thing and lotro would not start as expected since f2p
• so I then added d3dx9_36.dll (as mentioned on the tips and tricks for another issues)

started the whole thing again and lotro works like a charm, new ini file the whole lot, voice/mic works, sounds from the intro movies but not a single device in the sounds device list.

I got another PC also with opensuse 11.2, did a clean install there so no copying over !, exact same effect. Checked yast just to be sure and no pulse audio installed, only alsa.

So I am lost, why do mic & voice work, I hear others speak just fine, they hear me.

so we can rule out directx install as the cause as I did not need that, just the d2dx9_36.dll and doubt that is sound.

lotro... always an adventure when a new update comes out :)

In that case it was agents of Sauron :)

its probably something alsa/suse/lotro/wine but gone be nightmare to find the cause I think as there seems to be no error message anywhere so for now I play amarok to get some background music and if my health drops I know I am being attacked ;)

Just so ya know, at least with OpenSuse 11.1 there was a pulseaudio issue, I'm not sure if it has been fixed or not with 11.2, I kinda doubt it as it was in 11.0 as well. Even when disabling pulseaudio through YAST it isn't taking effect because it's a kernel setting. Unfortunately I cannot remember how to properly disable it. Do some searching and you'll find it. I had so many sound issues in OpenSuse when I was using it, it's eventually why I switched. Too many incompatibilities.

hi James

thank you for your post, it got me investigating a bit further and the problem is solved.... here come my steps and questions :)

• been playing lotro on suse 11.2 since it been out, just since the f2p update by codemasters lotro simply no longer shows any audio devices to select from, so it's not showing pulse which would mean I have a wrong selection... there is nada to select.

• what has changed in this area since monday when f2p came out:

rpm -qa --last
mozilla-xulrunner191-gnomevfs-1.9.1.15-0.2.1  Tue 02 Nov 2010 06:18:24 PM CET
mozilla-xulrunner191-1.9.1.15-0.2.1           Tue 02 Nov 2010 06:18:21 PM CET
mozilla-nspr-4.8.6-1.1.1                      Sat 30 Oct 2010 08:48:26 AM CEST
wine-1.3.6-1.1                                Sat 30 Oct 2010 08:48:25 AM CEST

answer: nothing

• so would it be also/pulse with opensuse 11.2 then, checking what is installed:

rpm -qa | grep -i alsa
alsa-devel-1.0.21-3.2.i586
alsa-utils-1.0.21-3.1.i586
alsa-oss-1.0.17-25.2.i586
alsa-1.0.21-3.2.i586
alsa-plugins-1.0.21-3.3.i586

rpm -qa | grep -i pulse
libpulse0-0.9.21-1.2.1.i586

there is a libpulse which can't be removed as it has 125 dependencies under which kde base :)

• KDE multimedia shows HDA Intel, analog and digital, no pulse

• checked out http://en.opensuse.org/SDB:Pulseaudio and did the suggestion:

cd /usr/lib
md HIDDEN mv *pulse* HIDDEN 
ldconfig

and the result is we got a filled audio device list again in lotro f2p europe !

KDE multimedia (after a reboot) now shows ALSA default output and OSS default output with the popup saying "the platform plugin failed this is a fall back", no longer HDA Intel analog and digital

questions / remarks:

• what changed in lotro f2p europe to no longer even get a list of sound devices from wine as there has been no system change in this respect.
• mplayer no longer works as it needs libpulse.so.0, so need to manually build it to not use pulse
• opensuse 11.2 & KDE might show no pulse in use... its there
• welcome to the wonderful world of audio drivers :)

I think am gone make a small script which solves the lotro issue but keeps my system as it was, moving the libs to hidden is sort of crude I think.

small update: for now I changed the crossover pylotro launch script to sudo chmod 700 libpulse.so.0 at start and back to 775 once finished, issue solved. Dont like it but for now it has to do.

Just a small update in case someone is having similar sound issues, thanks to Caron Jenson suggesting openAL I now have sound working without any other tricks, small recap on the whole thing:

• default lotro since F2P no longer a sound device in the list for normal sound, however Microphone has dmix0 as playback and dsnoop0 as record device listed and they work.

• hiding libpulse.so.0 before starting lotro, alsa software on default shows up as sound device and Microphone has dmix0 as playback and dsnoop0 as record device listed and they work.

• installing openAL into the lotro winebottle, generic software audio dmix0 shows up as sound device and Microphone has dmix0 as playback and dsnoop0 as record device listed and they work

So for now I am gone stick with this setup using openAL, still not sure why it is needed but hey, it works !