Broken Hydrophone

[Palladius]

Hi,

I don't know if I'm doing something stupid here, but it looks like the sound files on my hydrophone aren't working.

My crew still pick up sound contacts, I can still take control of the hydrophone set and, if I point the needle where I know a ship to be, it still registers the contact, but I can't personally hear the background sea and propellor noises, which is a bit annoying as I remember hydrophone operators as being almost criminally incompetent.

I'm running GWX and Thompsen's sound mod, in the hope that it would replace missing sound files, but no joy, unfortunately.

Any ideas on what could be going wrong?

Cheers very much...

[Tinman764]

Have you tried turning the ambient noise switch on/off? It's on the right side of the hydrophone station I think, near the bottom.

[Palladius]

Ah, yes, I meant to mention that.... that may be a large component of the 'Doing something stupid' part...

I saw the switch, but click all I like, it doesn't seem to do anything. Doesn't move or animate, and doesn't switch the sounds on.

[Jimbuna]

Try putting a pair of earphones on, turn up the sound and try adjusting the switch.

Failing that turn up the sound in the options page when you are loading the game.

[King_Zog]

The ambient volume control is a bit of a weird one and a total pain to operate. You have to kind of hover your mouse pointer over it in exactly the right place, and then just keep your left mouse button held down to cycle between gradually increasing and decreasing volume, it doesn't animate.

It's a good thing to check out, as SH3 tends to default with it set to quietest and you can't really hear any propellors that way unless the ship is right on top of you.

[Missing Name]

Remember, sailing vessels don't make noise. How the AI can figure out they're actually there, I have no clue.

[Jimbuna]

Remember, sailing vessels don't make noise. How the AI can figure out they're actually there, I have no clue.

I dissagree.....the sound of the water disturbance rewbounding off the hull would leave a sound signature.

[Missing Name]

I dissagree.....the sound of the water disturbance rewbounding off the hull would leave a sound signature.

The game doesn't model that... yet. I'm working on it.

[Jimbuna]

The game doesn't model that... yet. I'm working on it.

Crack on.

[Osmium Steele]

Remember, sailing vessels don't make noise. How the AI can figure out they're actually there, I have no clue.

Tell that to DaVinci, he'd disagree. They creak, they groan, the men talk, yell commands, their hulls slap and/or impact waves.

Just because they make less noise, doesn't mean they are silent.

[irish1958]

To make the volume switch on the hydrophone useful, go to the command_en file and assign a key to the hydrophone volume.
Then, when submerged, go to the hydrophone station and test the volume with the sound of your engine until you get it as loud as possible.
Then turn off your engines and listen.
You can use setkeys to assign a key: http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/downloads.php?do=file&id=1016
As an aside, perhaps the Thompson sound mod screwed-up the hydrophone sound files. You should check and see if it did.

[Palladius]

Thanks very much for all your suggestions. I tried everything I could to turn up the hydrophone volume, and installed the SetKeys mod (thanks for pointing me to that, Irish, it's a great app!), all to no avail. All my other sounds are fine, but as soon as I go to the hydrophone station, dead silence, even pushing my amplifier to the max.

Seems likely to be a bad or missing file, to me at least. Can anyone tell me where they're stored and how I'd check if they're OK?

[irish1958]

The sound files are in the folder under data/sound
See if you can play them (they are ogg files so windows may not play them; you may need windamp or some other program.
If they play, deactivate all your mods and see if just SHIII/GWX plays works;
if not you may need a reinstall; if so, they you need to reactivate each mod to see which has screwed things up.
Most of us have reinstalled many times.