PTR Gamebreaking sound bug

[AmonIV]

• What is your character name in New World: PTR Celeria

• What server/world did you experience your issue on: EU PTR

• Is this a bug? (If this is an exploit, please dm Aenwyn or Luxendra) Bug

• (if a bug) How did the issue effect your gameplay: The game is not enjoyable without sound

• (if a bug) Were you able to recover from the issue: No (more details below)

• (if a bug) Please include a screenshot or video of the issue that you have experienced:

• What are the steps to reproduce the issue as you experienced: Play the game untill the first Isabella voice-over. (more details below)

• When did this happen? (Date and Relative time; please include your timezone) About half an hour after ptr launch (first one not the recent ptr patch)

Since the last PTR patch didn’t fix this bug I am making a separate post for it

• Describe the issue you are experiencing:
  After the first Isabella voice-over during the Windsward starting quests all sound in the game except voice-overs (NPCs and the other Isabella voice-overs) and cinematics no longer play. No UI sounds, no environment, no music etc.

Here are all the things I have tried in order to fix the bug (no success so far):

1: Click restore default setting in the audio settings.
2: Lower all sounds to 0 and then back up.
3: Lower all sounds to 0, close the game then start it again and put them back up.
4: Lower only voice-over volume to 0.
5: Verify files (all files verify successfully).
6: Restart my computer.
7: Uninstall the PTR and install it again.
8: Update drivers.

Here is my speculation:

First of all I think the bug is caused by the game stuttering (which started to happen after the Medleyfare patch) during the Isabella voice-over which causes the game to skip lowering the flag that makes other sounds stop during the voice-over. With the flag still up the audio settings are ignored and only other voice-overs and cinematics (which are likely not muted in the first place) continue to play sound. You can see similar behaviour to this with music performances and stuttering. If your game freezes and during that time you miss some notes they don’t count as missed in the calculation of the final score and other people don’t hear the fail sound effects.
If that theory is correct then we move onto another issue which is why the flag is not saved in the settings or any other part of the game that can be fixed by a clean install. I have done some digging and found that the PTR and Live game share the same settings file. My Live game still has sound though so the flag is not recorded there. That leaves only 2 other places I can think of that can store the flag. Number one is the steam cloud. Since it stays tied to your accout even a clean install won’t fix the problem. The second one is the windows registry. That would be quite a weird place to store a flag like this but who knows. The only way to test out those theories is to either get a new account and run the PTR to test theory number one and for number two it’s to clean install the OS and try the PTR again. For obvious reasons I won’t be testing either of those but if someone wants to please share your results here.

*Edit:
After looking around more and seeing other people talk about the bug I think it might be possible that the Isabella voice-over didn’t cause the issue but that is just when I noticed the sound missing. That means the bug just happens by default without you having to do anything which would explain why a clean install didn’t fix it.

[Hunkybud]

I have had this exact same buy, all I can hear is voice overs, all other sounds are gone. Have adjusted all the sounds I can. Already put in ticket in game.

[Centeotl]

Thank you both for reporting this, AmonIV and Hunkybud.

The development team is looking into this!

[andrew.miesem]

for the sake of being thorough, this is also reported here:

I have no sound on the PTR

****** Please make sure you fill out the following information before submitting a report ****** Don’t forget to check the Known Issues List to see if your issue is currently being worked on by the dev team. We also have existing workaround for some issues that you can find here To report a player or company for Code of Conduct violations, please do so here What is your character name in New World: Spux v2 What server/world did you experience your issue on: EU PTR 1 Describe the issu…

and here (by myself):

[Focus Feedback & Bug Reporting] Revamped Starting Experience

This issue still continues after the patch. I am also aware of a company mate in the live game who has not had any sound in his game, in a very similar way, for several months. This appears to be a very narrow-case issue, but it’s made the PTR experience much less fun than I’d hoped it would be.

@AmonIV

1: Click restore default setting in the audio settings.
2: Lower all sounds to 0 and then back up.
3: Lower all sounds to 0, close the game then start it again and put them back up.
4: Lower only voice-over volume to 0.
5: Verify files (all files verify successfully).
6: Restart my computer.
7: Uninstall the PTR and install it again.
8: Update drivers.

I have also tried all of these steps. My experience is that I have sound during the opening logo swish for AGS, then all sound is gone from then on, with the exception of voiceover narration.

Hopefully these details are helpful.

[Centeotl]

Thank you, every detail helps.

[Kuba77]

Me too, tried all of these…nope. I only got sound at the beginning (AGS swish and the Intro).
After the character creation it breaks immediately off and wont come back, only got NPC voiceover.

[AmonIV]

The new ptr has fixed the bug for me! Good job AGS!

[Hunkybud]

I can also confirm that this last patch fixed the issue. It is great to finally hear what sounds a GS make.

[Centeotl]

Glad to hear!

[Centeotl]

woot!