Background sound

[Corean Alkorda]

Anyone know any sort of console command that will enable sound in background - AKA still hearing the game's sound while in another window? Or is this restricted because of the engine?

[Alehk Thol]

I've always wanted something like this. If there's a way, t'would be awesome.

Managed to find the original thread!
viewtopic.php?f=84&t=6732

[Corean Alkorda]

Good call, I hadn't seen that. This thread may be deleted!

[Oberon]

I would have thought having sound come from a minimized window would be a setting in the operating system.

[Dajo Yalthik]

I would have thought having sound come from a minimized window would be a setting in the operating system.

It's controlled most basically at the operating system level. However, applications run on top of the OS level. So, if the application has a setting (which some do) for controlling sound in/out of game, that's applied first. If it doesn't, then that setting defaults to however it's set in the operating system (you should be able to find that in Control Panel->Sounds, I think). If your OS, for some reason, doesn't have a setting for sounds when an application is minimized, then the setting defaults to the kernel. Also, you should get an operating system that's newer than Windows 3.1. If the kernel doesn't have a setting, it defaults to the sound card - and you should consider buying a computer that didn't come out in 1982. EDIT: Come to think of it, if you're running an OS that doesn't tell applications what their default sound properties are, you probably aren't even running one that supports multiple applications at once, much less minimizing them.

Today you learned an application of the OSI model. I think I may also have answered that question a little bit too deeply.

[Kieran Orion]

So...Can it be done or not? Lol, I'm also curious about this because it'd be nice to hear some of the music when I'm on their alone and looking through my web browzer, especially when writing journal entries. That'd be nice.

I had a look in control panel>sounds and found what I thought it might have been but it was already ticked, something about applications using the sound drive or speakers exclusively. I don't know, didn't work either way.

[Dajo Yalthik]

I think it's set off in the JKA client itself, because I've never gotten it to turn on when minimized. Probably a setting in a .ini or .dll file somewhere. I could look up some possible lines and get back to you.

[Syrena Exan]

I'd be interested in having this as well. I hope you can figure it out!

[Motoko]

I'm wondering, considering the age, if it wasn't some hold over from some legacy sound engine components. No one really expected at the time you'd multi-task like that, and there was some overhead that was put on the engine by this and they decided to just save the cycles.

John Carmack is the goddamn Wizard of Code and all should worship at the Open Source Altar. I'd almost be certain buried in there is some "Turn this on to enable sound to play while not active window" line or function.