I needed to perform manual corrections to the audio streams, in order to get sound at all.
Symptoms:
- OS on both my desktop (gaming beast) and laptop (streaming receiver) is OpenSUSE tumbleweed, updated to state 2023-08-26, with steam installed via package manager (including steamtricks).
Notably, this distro uses pipewire+wireplumber for Audio. - before remote play, X4 works flawlessly.
6.20, English, build number 511811
(and also always before that, going back to at least 4.00)
I run heavily modded, from both steam workshop and nexus mods. No executable modding though, so I think audio handling is "vanilla". - when starting X4 from the laptop, via the "stream" option, X4 launches successfully, but no audio is played. Neither on laptop, nor on desktop.
- after stopping streaming, audio is gone, even after game restart, game+steam restart, and even full desktop and laptop reboot.
- to fix it, I had to manually reconnect the audio streams. For this I used QJackCtl. X4 presents itself as a JACK source named "alsoft", that had zero outgoing connections. Rewiring the R+L channels to my motherboard chipset sink restored audio (including headphone switching)
- using the same trick, I could also get audio forwarding working for remote play. When streaming is started, a new JACK node named "steam" appears. Inputting the "alsoft" channels into this steam-node starts audio playback on the streaming receiver.
I'm not sure if this is an X4 problem or a Steam-remote-play problem, but I wanted to at least write it down publicly somewhere, since I couldn't find anything online during my searches.
Per the rules sticky, I plan on adding technical details and screenshot, but must beg some patience, there's a baby sleeping literally on my belly.
Update: sleeping baby success, screenshots here:
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/ ... sp=sharing
- qjackctl-desktop-rhythmbox.png = steam opened, no game launched, rhythmbox music player playing "return to kingdom end" in the background (as comparison/default reference)
- qjackctl-x4-no-audio.png = started X4 locally, but no sound plays; the "alsoft" node appears wsith X4 launch
- qjackctl-x4-manually-wired-with-audio.png = manually dragging wires from "alsoft" to "starship" (=AMD mainboard audio codename) starts audio playing.
- qjackctl-x4-streaming-with-audio.png = steam remote-play "connecting" to the already-running-game-with-manually-fixed-audio succesfully plays audio on the laptop too.
Note how the "monitor" channels wire up to the "steam" node", and not directly to the "alsoft" node; steam taps into all sound, as tested by rhythmbox playback and some random system sounds (like the screenshot photo-shutter) also emitting from the laptop. - qjackctl-x4-streaming-no-audio.png = closing streaming, and exiting X4 on the desktop, then initiating game-launch as "stream" from the laptop, results in no-audio.