X-BTF No Sound After First Session

General discussions about the games by Egosoft including X-BTF, XT, X², X³: Reunion, X³: Terran Conflict and X³: Albion Prelude.

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Gelatinous_Pile
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X-BTF No Sound After First Session

Post by Gelatinous_Pile » Mon, 24. May 21, 18:53

I am playing X: Beyond the Frontier on Steam. The first time I loaded the game up, everything (including sound) worked just fine. That said, every time since then that I have tried to play the game, there has been absolutely no sound at all.

Here's what I've tried so far:

1. Double-checking that sound was enabled in the in-game settings
2. Double-checking that sound was enabled in the volume mixer
3. Restarting my computer
4. Verifying the game files via Steam
5. Reinstalling
6. Running the runme.exe and x.exe as adminsitrator
7. Running the runme.exe and x.exe in various compatability modes

I am really eager to play more of this game, but I would rather not do so without sound. Also, because there are no captions, I'm concerned that I wouldn't be able to experience the in-game dialogue in any way. Does anyone have suggestions for anything else I can try? Thanks.

Alan Phipps
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Re: X-BTF No Sound After First Session

Post by Alan Phipps » Mon, 24. May 21, 21:38

It is possible that playing a different game in the meantime has changed your speaker layout setting. X-BtF is such an old game now that it probably will not play with a surroundsound setting (eg 5.1, 7.1 etc). It should play OK if you choose a stereo or quadraphonic layout. Also make sure that EAX is disabled in-game as that is no longer supported.

The other thing to suspect is a codec issue but that would need a link to a DxDiag for us to to be able to check that.

Have a browse through this Sticky thread in case anything else occurs to you. Good luck.
A dog has a master; a cat has domestic staff.

Gelatinous_Pile
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Re: X-BTF No Sound After First Session

Post by Gelatinous_Pile » Tue, 25. May 21, 03:55

Thank you for your quick reply.

I've now tried changing the setting to mono, stereo, and headphone. That didn't make a difference. I don't see any option in the settings for EAX.

Here are my dxdiag results: https://pastebin.com/3t3VwD1Q

Alan Phipps
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Re: X-BTF No Sound After First Session

Post by Alan Phipps » Tue, 25. May 21, 11:25

Thanks. The codec situation looks OK but you have 3 different sound devices and drivers working at the same time (Nvidia, Realtek and Steam streaming) and I don't know which one the game is trying to use and which are affected by your game and layout settings. I suspect that your headphones (if USB) will probably also load a USB sound driver when plugged in. You can easily and safely test with different (or no) combinations by going into Control Panel, Device Manager, Sound/Audio Devices where you can right-click on a device in the list and a disable/enable pop-up appears.

You will have to restart/reload the X game after each adjustment though to see if there is any effect. Good luck.
A dog has a master; a cat has domestic staff.

Gelatinous_Pile
Posts: 3
Joined: Mon, 24. May 21, 18:28
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Re: X-BTF No Sound After First Session

Post by Gelatinous_Pile » Tue, 25. May 21, 21:12

I tried enabling and disabling different configurations of the sound devices. None of the combinations worked. That said, after trying about 10 different combinations, the game refuses to load anymore.

I'm now getting the "Error opening video. Check your display settings! Further Information can be found in the manual or readme.txt" message whenever I try to load the game. The game will load to the main menu if I load it in windowed mode, but won't then load the game proper. Interestingly, if I load the game in windowed mode and go to the graphics settings, the in-game graphics menu no longer seems to properly recognize my graphics card. It's entry in the graphics device drop down is garbled and if I choose it, all options in that window turn blank and don't turn back.

I've tried trouble-shooting the error message using the methods described in the sticky thread you linked above.

I can't for the life of me think why it randomly decided to stop working in between two attempts to load the game that were only seconds apart. The only different was in which sound devices were enabled. I set them all back the way they were and that didn't make a difference.

Not sure what to make of it. :?

Alan Phipps
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Re: X-BTF No Sound After First Session

Post by Alan Phipps » Tue, 25. May 21, 23:28

Well at the risk of stating the obvious, the game code will not have changed from load to load (unless it has become corrupted or quarantined - have you tried verifying the Steam installation?) The most likely scenarios are that either your system settings or options have changed (quite possible if you have been experimenting while trying to fix the sound), or that some AV or protection app/device has decided the game is a potential risk and is shutting it down as a false positive detection. These are far more benign and easier to check possibilities than an obscure system/hardware/OS issue which we would hope is not the cause.

I'm afraid I can't help you much with any further investigation from here. Good luck though.
A dog has a master; a cat has domestic staff.

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