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FIX THOSE TRIBES2 RED JACKS!
by Joe Dopp a.k.a. "Dopper". April 11/2000. I have found a temporary solution that improves tribes2 game play a ton and removes the red jack problem quite a bit as well. I discovered it wasn't actually my video card or network card settings, it was my sound card. After a clean format and tweaking out everything and a tip from a buddy I discovered how to fix most of my problems with red jacks. (Asmo notified me that when he disabled his soundblaster live it stopped his redjacks...so he gets credit for that!) Anyhow after he notified me about the sblive disabled I tried it and yes, it stopped the redjacks, but of course I couldn't play with no sound! So here's the best solution I could find to make the game playable/without constant redjacks as well as acceptable sound. (Although nowhere near the quality sound as using full EAX / environmental audio hardware support) The system I tested this
on was as follows: It's also been reported to work on at least 4 other peoples systems as well and they were very pleased that I let them know about this so I figured I'd post publicly and let everyone in on it. ;) I managed to improve the redjacks quite a bit by going into start > control panel > sounds & multimedia Properties. Then click the Audio Tab. Click advanced properties for sound playback.
Set the hardware acceleration
to basic acceleration. (1 notch over from the left) Set sample rate
conversion to "good". (far left notch) Then click "Apply"
and "OK".
Click advanced properties for sound recording. Set the hardware acceleration to basic acceleration. (1 notch from the left) Set sample rate conversion to "good". (far left notch) Then click "Apply" and "OK".
I tried disabling my "Sounblaster Emulation" which is what it's labeled as on win9x in device manager, but referred as "Legacy Audio Driver" in win2k. Unfortunately I couldn't find a way to disable my legacy audio in win2k. I can disable my Creative SB Live! (WDM) but then I get no sound. (of course)
Here's the Legacy Audio Drivers properties....nothing to disable it...
And the properties tab in properties...still nothing to disable it...
Here's audio settings
in tribes2 that seem to lag me the least in the game. However the sound
quality is poorer than using full EAX support & 16/32-bit but the
game runs much smoother and the redjacks are reduced a ton!
Also if you're using teamsound or any other recording apps go into voice and disable "Microphone Enabled". I've been told this has caused some problems with certain peoples configurations.
If anyone else has any one else has any other suggestions please e-mail me and I'll add it to this site. I want to eliminate any choppiness in the game I can, especially when there is large #'s of players because the matches are going to have 32 players. Any new info I receive will be posted here.
Update: 6:30pm April, 11th, 2000. I was extremely surprised and flattered to see that we're averaging about 1 new visitor every 10 seconds on this page with a total of 2500 unique visitors during the last 7 business hours (don't you people work?) :D. I've been checking the sites people have been referenced from and the forums people have been posting on regarding this and some people are still uncertain as to what is meant by "red jacks". So I've borrowed an image of the red jack icon from starsiege-tribes.de that they used in their news post and displayed it here. Basically it is a lockup in the game either from connection problems or the system. This particular fix has been verified to work for lockups caused by sound drivers for soundblaster live users running windows 2000. I've seen posts that it works in some other OS's as well as some other hardware configurations too. (16-bit instead of 8-bit apparently is still acceptable) This is basically a guideline to get you into the right direction, I didn't think it could possibly be the sound card causing a "red jack" until I tried tweaking it myself. The sound quality degradation isn't all that bad and it's worth it until a patch is put out to fix it. I've also received an e-mail regarding disabling soundblaster 16 emulation with winME sblive drivers. I'm aware that that solves stability issues in some games but as far as I know there is no way to disable it in win2k as shown in the screenshots above. ("soundblaster 16 emulation" is called "legacy audio drivers" in win2k) Also someone mentioned after they disabled their mic recording in game, when they bound "X" to their record voice key, every time they pushed "X" tribes2 would say it is recording despite the fact it was disabled. This is a known issue as well because it happens with myself and other people as well. I've notified Sierra Support about the problem so hopefully Dynamix can put out a patch for that as well, although it's not quite as crucial to game play. I'll keep posting any info regarding this fix and if I find any others I'll post a Separate section for them.
Update: 11:30am April, 12th, 2000. Doh! Last night the webserver that fragtopia.com is on went down at about 10:00pm until sometime this morning. GRRRRR! Sorry about that guys it was out of my hands. Also I got an e-mail from Mike Means about a fix for win98 users, I haven't actually tried it or verified if it actually works but I'm going to post it just in case you want to try. Let me know if it works for anyone. Good Luck! :) from Mike Means for win98SE: ---------------------------cut---------------------------------------------
I also received a message from Akira saying it worked on his soundblaster pci 512, here it is: ---------------------------cut--------------------------------------------- Thanks
Update: 12:00pm April, 12th, 2000. Also forgot to post this note someone sent in about their force feedback mouse. ---------------------------cut--------------------------------------------- RjM3 iamrjm3@hotmail.com |
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