Does anyone else sometimes get wierd static/distortion with certain spells?

[Guest Dirty Uncle Bertie]

When a male mage casts an evocation spell he says something like "Incantus pulcher imperium", and the end of "pulcher" always has some kind of distortion. I'm almost positive that this file is _CAS_PM6M.wav, which plays without any distortion in Near Infinity.

 

However, there are a number of ambient files that have distortion in-game, and also in Near Infinity; AM1600E4.WAV and AM1600E5.WAV are two such examples. Why on earth would these files have distortion in them?

 

Does anyone else have the same issue?

[Icendoan]

Partially loaded from the game biffs? I'm not sure. If you run it in NI while playing BG2, does it have the same distortion? If yes, it is simply RAM usage.

 

Icen

[Guest Dirty Uncle Bertie]

I don't understand what "game biffs" means, sorry. And I thought it wasn't wise to have an editor like NI running when you play the game.

[Icendoan]

No, having NI while running the game is fine. What is NOT fine, is editing/saving a file while playing.

 

The game is usually shipped in BIFs, a file type made for compression, that the game can read and decompress. Your override folder overrides the data in the biffs, making bugfixing little more than throwing files in the override.

 

The game may take a tiny bit of time to decompress the biffs, possibly making the distortion.

 

On the other side, having everything biffed speeds up area loading times and so on.

 

Icen

[Guest Dirty Uncle Bertie]

I see. I alt-tabbed out of the game, loaded NI and played those two ambient files, with the same results. The distortion always occurs in the same place.

[Guest Dirty Uncle Bertie]

I used NI to "Export & Convert" the two files, played them in Winamp and they have the distortion. I've closed everything down on my PC so my RAM usage is at a minimum (my PC has 2GB) but the distortion remains. I don't know what else to do.

 

Shall I upload the files to Rapidshare or something so you can have a listen to what I mean?

[Icendoan]

Hmmm. Do you have any mods that might affect it?

 

Icen

[Guest Dirty Uncle Bertie]

Oh, good point. I'll do a fresh install and then check.

[Guest Dirty Uncle Bertie]

Right, done this, not installed any mods but the problem is exactly the same. I guess I'll just have to see if anyone else reports the same issue.

[Icendoan]

Hmmm, _CAS_PM6M you say? I will check it now in NI for you.

 

NI doesn't like it, I used WeiDU to extract it and it won't play for me, so I can't check for you.

 

Icen

[Guest Dirty Uncle Bertie]

_CAS_PM6M sounds fine in NI but not in-game when casting an Evocation spell (I recommend Chain Lightning, with its long casting time). Well, I'm pretty sure it's _CAS_PM6M that's played when casting such a spell with a male mage.

 

The two that don't sound okay in NI or in-game are AM1600E4.WAV and AM1600E5.WAV (there may be others). The version of NI I'm using has an "Export & Convert" function, which makes the wavs playable.

 

Oh, bugger, I forgot to mention that in order to play them in NI you need something called acm2wav.exe. I got my copy from Sorcerer's Place.

[Guest Guest]

Just put acm2wav.exe in your NI folder and you'll be able to listen to the wavs in NI, as well as extract and convert them.

[Guest Dirty Uncle Bertie]

Hey, have a look at this clip, and at the 17 seconds mark you'll hear the "Incantus pulcher imperium" distortion:

 

[Icendoan]

I can't actually hear any distortion there.

 

Icen

[Guest Dirty Uncle Bertie]

What, in that youtube clip? You don't hear it about half-way through "pulcher"? It's like a loud static noise.

 

I've also discovered that "Praeses alia fero" (Alteration spells) has a similar static noise on "Praeses". You should be able to hear that around 1:19 of the same clip.

 

Playing CAS_PM8M ("Praeses alia fero") in NI sounds fine.