Thursday, January 6, 2022

Sound issues inventory

Hello,

I figured out that sound issues on Raspberry Pi and more generally Linux installations are often a difficult problem to deal with and the reason is that the causes vary much. The goal of this post is to answer your sound issue according to its cause. This post will be regularly updated as I notice new causes.

Using HDMI

  • in /boot/config.txt make sure to set
    hdmi_drive=2
    dtparam=audio=on
  • Avoid this fix if you are using jack audio it will have a reverse effect

RetroPie

  • Make sure pulseaudio is not installed as it conflict with RetroPie setting.
    sudo apt-get remove pulseaudio
  • Make sure that Audio_Card (should be default) and Audio_Device (should be HDMI if you have an HDMI cable or PCM if you are using a jack) are set correctly in /opt/retropie/configs/all/emulationstation/es_settings.cfg
    • You can change these settings also through RetroPie context menu

Alsa, devices and drivers

  • If you lost /dev/snd/ this is the worst case as actually I haven't found any other way than reinstalling your OS through PINN. However you can always try removing and reinstalling alsa-utils and libasound2:
    sudo apt-get remove alsa-utils pulseaudio libasound2
    sudo apt-get install alsa-utils libasound2
    speaker-test

Wine

  • Failed to initialize DirectX Audio
    • This often happens in RPGMaker games
    • It's actually a misleading message. When reading this and searching internet you often find that DirectX is missing. This is not true. This message can actually happen:
      • If DirectX is missing
      • If the version of DirectX is incompatible with your executable (might be actually too new for your executable and not too old)
      • If your sound system can't make a pipe (test it with aplay or paplay)
      • If you are cross-executing your Wine binary on another user with "su -l xxxx" from LXDE.
    • Solutions:
      • Make sure aplay/paplay work (eg type speaker-test)
      • Make sure Wine output sounds on other games
      • Make a pristine Wineprefix and don't upgrade DirectX with winetricks.
      • Install your game on that pristine Wineprefix and only the exact needed dependencies
More to be added :-)
 
The pi gamer

 

Wednesday, January 5, 2022

A teaser for 2022 and for the birthday of this blog


Dear readers-players,

Happy new year to you all and happy birthday to this blog (I opened it Dec 30, 2020 exactly)

I haven't been publishing new posts lately for mainly 4 reasons:

  • I've been working on my MMO page
  • I've started a new job
  • I've failed installations 😢
  • I've been playing Darkeden like a hardcore gamer. I mean, I've been playing Darkeden like a hardcore gamer.

That said, the blog has been going well and I'm happy to see how many you are reading my posts ☺ so I'm going to tease a little bit. The next posts will be ...

Nah, first, I'll bore you all with the failed projects here. Let me be a real marketer: failed projects are interesting because they can either give you a challenge or warn you that it will be very difficult if you try it yourself. It's always interesting to know 😉. Nevertheless, you will find teasers just afterwards.

The failed projects

Life as a hobby blogger is not like "define goal and go to it", especially when it's a technical hobby blog. Those articles will "never" see light, well unless someone really requests it. Those are failures which asked hours of work for nothing:
  • Anbox: I didn't find a kernel source which packed the necessary features for Anbox for my Raspberry Pi 3. I planned to add Anbox to my multi-purpose system that already gives Kodi, RetroArch and RPD but it will unfortunately be a no-go. Maybe it will change when I get my hands on a more modern Pi but as everyone knows, the prices are going on fire and some people even resort falling back to buy a Pi 3 instead of a Pi 4 because it has become so damn expensive.
  • Ryzom: If you are a guy like me who loves experimenting, don't step in the trap Ryzom. To keep it short it will take you 2 weeks elapsed to compile, almost 20GB of disk space, a lot of retries and all that to get it running until character creation then freeze to the death. So yeah, there is a sadly zombie post in my draft which is damn long and complete but won't be published because it is useless 😢.
  • Native Meridian 59 and Daimonin: The dependencies are deprecated. Daimonin has a solution through emulation, Meridian 59 is really too difficult (did I say that?). Well there are better games than Meridian 59 anyways and I find it not worth the time for a result which might be on the same wavelength as Ryzom's.
  • Windows on ARM: The sad part with Windows on ARM is that you need a Windows PC to format the SD Card and install it. All my Windows PCs are professional PCs except my girlfriend's and Windows on ARM installer can destroy your hard drive if you misclick. I don't want to take that risk 😞.
  • DietPi and basic xserver: I gave up this one but might return to it in a distant future. Somehow a basic startx wine on Dietpi will not provide driver descriptor and Wine refuses to start. So for now the most minimalist proposition I have is Raspberry Pi OS Lite + minimalist xserver.

Already there: new inspiration sources

When I notice a source that gives me more information and more resources to make the games run and to guide my readers, I always add it to the link page. Don't forget to check the links on a regular basis. All my input is from there. I've also added the amount of links that are listed on that page in its title.

The next posts

The next posts will not be very technical. I plan to give hints to people who just are looking for fun games to play with their friends. This will be the next post as it is almost finished and only needs images and a proofreading. 

And afterwards?

While the Quake III question is quite easy to answer, I plan to make a quick guide "Follow this and you will have fun" about installing Quake III and Fortress 2.2, along with a few recommendations for decently populated servers. And of course I will continue to work on my MMO list. For now I've almost finished the x86 standalone MMO games. I plan to add the browser games afterwards and finally Android games. While Android games are install and play it will be necessary to highlight those that run fine on Raspberry Pi and those who don't.

Stay tuned and don't forget to read (yeah even other sources 😉)

The pi gamer

 


Play ET: Legacy on Raspberry Pi [FPS]

🕐🕐 Duration: A few hours 🔧 Difficulty: Easy 🌟🌟🌟🌟 Interest: Hours of fun