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Frictional Games Support / Windows - Penumbra: Overture / Sound / Audio / Music - Overture /

Some sounds do not play in Penumbra: Overture. Examples: A thrown object creates no impact sounds, walking creates no footstep sounds.
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Posted: 16 Feb, 2007
by: Nilsson J.
Updated: 25 Feb, 2007
by: Nilsson J.

On certain sound cards there are some problems that will make the sound playback faulty. There are two solutions to this, one quick and simple and one more complicated.


Solution 1:
When running Penumbra: Overture, in the Main Menu, go to Options and select Sound. In the menu that appears, if Use Hardware is "on" set it to "off". This should make the sound play as it should, however this option does not support Surround Sound, if you have a Surround Sound setup use the next solution.


Solution 2:
There is a settings.cfg file for Penumbra: Overture located on your Windows harddrive: My Documents\Penumbra Overture\Episode1\
Open it with a text editor, such as WordPad found in the Start menu/Program Files/Accessories/, locate the entry <Sound and then the two settings MaxMonoChannelsHint="0" and MaxStereoChannelsHint="0". 0 means that the game auto configures this setting and it can cause problems, try setting it to a number like 12, 24 or more for MaxMono. For MaxStereo you should set it to 4 or more, but over 5-6 it's no point as the game should never have more than 5 stereo sounds playing at the same time.

An example: If you have MaxMono set to 8 and MaxStereo set to 4, that would result in a total of 16 audio channels as 1 stereo is 2 channels. To make the modifications properly, you should not have more channels than your audio card supports.

What settings you can have depends on how many audio channels your audio card supports. You can check this by opening another file created by Penumbra, the hpl.log file which is also located in the My Documents\Penumbra Overture\Episode1\ folder. You use a text editor for this file as well. At the almost beginning it has a section called Initializing Sound Module, below that you should find a Number of channels:

If you have quite few channels, for example it says Number of channels: 16. Then the problem might be caused by MaxStereoChannelsHint="x" being set to high, try setting it to 2 or even back to 0 to allow the game to auto configure the setting.

Most soundcards today have between 24 and 32 sound channels, more expensive and powerful cards have anything from 64 to 128 or even more.
Also read
document How can I find out what sound/audio card I have?
document Sound/audio card manufactures

Others in this Category
document I have no audio in Penumbra: Overture
document In Penumbra: Overture I experience audio defects, distortion/stuttering/gaps etc
document Voices are cut at the end, a split second to early. Other audio might be cut as well in the same way
» More articles


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Current News
Before looking at this support site please review the following information, it will save you some time!


PENUMBRA: REQUIEM

Requiem 1.0.1 Update
A small update to Requiem has been released, it will mainly improve performance in levels 03, 06 and 09. Get it here.

Requiem Hotfix - Sewer
If the game crashes when loading Level 4 - Sewer, use this hotfix. It will not fix anything else nor include the 1.0.1 update. Get it here.

General Info
If you are having a problem, check the Penumbra: Black Plague articles as Requiem is an expansion for that game, if you do not find the answers you seek look at the Penumbra: Overture articles as that is the first part in the Penumbra series and has most articles with solutions.


PENUMBRA: BLACK PLAGUE
Rare crash bugs - Full version & Demo
In the original US & EU retail CD release there is a rare crash problem in Level 4, Level 13 & Level 16. On picking an object it could also crash with certain configurations & some users with ATI cards had severe graphical glitches. Please download this update to correct the problems.

Finding the right answer to a problem
As Penumbra: Black Plague is the sequel to Penumbra: Overture and also using the same engine, most of the technical problems you might have are covered in the Penumbra: Overture topics.


COMMON PROBLEMS
Question: The game is crashing when I try to run the game or shortly after the intro movie.
Answer: Make sure you meet the minimum requirements and that you have properly updated the drivers for your graphics card. Take note that the game requires ATI or NVIDIA graphics cards, any other graphics card might or might not work and it is not something we are trying to add support for.

Minimum Requirements(Overture)
OS: Windows 2000/XP
Processor: 1Ghz
Memory: 256MB
Video Card: Radeon 8500/GeForce 3(GeForce4MX not supported)

Question: The game crashes and displays a message about my graphics card not supporting shaders.
Answer: Same as above, make sure you meet the minimum requirements and that you have updated your drivers properly.

Question: The game crashes, I have latest drivers & meet minimum req.
Answer: Make sure you uninstall the driver first, then reboot and then install the new drivers. It could also be that the new drivers are causing problems, try downgrading to an older more reliable driver.

Question: This support site isn't helping me, what do I do?
Answer: Contact the publisher according to the instructions that came with the game. If you bought a digital download, contact the site where you purchased the game.


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Last Updated: 24th November 2008.