Hoyle 4: Sound effects not playing in ScummVM

[FredPJ]

Tested in ScummVM 2.1.0git722-gf7b467275a

My copy of the game's "VERSION" file reads:

---

2.000
Hoyle Classic Card Games
7.16.93
Disk 1
This disk (Dk.1) has been altered from the original
to correct\change the following:

Removed reference to TSN doco in game box.
Added patches to correct icon bar zone.
Upgraded Install to include support for MS-DOS 6.

---

Found bug:

Several sound effects are missing/don't play in ScummVM. For example, when you start a game of Crazy Eights and you'll notice that no sound effect is heard when someone plays a card, or no sound effect is heard after someone plays an 8 card and selects the suit. These missing sound effects are heard if you run the game in real hardware, DOSBox or PCem.

Some possibly noteworthy information as stated in the game's "README" file: "If you do not have a DAC you may (if you wish) delete the file "resource.aud"." This means that when the game doesn't detect resource.aud, when resouce.aud is corrupt or no DAC is selected in the setup, the game happily replaces the digital sound effects with Adlib/MIDI sounds effects.

[csnover]

Thanks for your report! In d6186789828e186c828a1909115296582ec20651 (from the year 2010), digital sound effects were disabled because “hoyle4 has garbled audio data”, so synthesised effects are always used for this game. Unfortunately there is no ticker or any additional information that I can find, like which specific digital sound effects were allegedly corrupt, so I can’t easily verify whether or not this is the case. I can remove the disabling code and see what happens, since you seem to be indicating that there isn’t such a problem in the original interpreter. Let me know that my understanding is correct. Thanks!

[FredPJ]

Removing the disabling code sounds good to me. Maybe back then was tested with a corrupt copy of the game? Thanks a lot!

[FredPJ]

Any updates on this? Are there any plans to remove the disabling code to solve this problem?

[bonki]

Would you be able to compile ScummVM yourself? If not, which platform/OS are you on?

[FredPJ]

Unfortunately, no. I'm using the Windows version. I'll be happy to help if some testing is needed.

[FredPJ]

It's been 5 months since this bug was reported and Hoyle Classic Card Games still doesn't have digital effects.

Since it's apparently a matter of enabling something that was previously disabled on purpose, maybe it shouldn't be too difficult or take too long?

By the way, the same version that I have has surfaced on the internet (although I have the original installer discs if needed), so it should be easy for you guys to test it.

[bluegr]

Thanks for your report! This has been fixed in commit 7cbd3782f198ddc48eb00cf021abacf6a34f0afe.

The initial disabling code was correct, so there was no reason to remove it, without further research. For some obscure reason, Hoyle 4 has two copies of each sample, and only the second one is correct - the first one seems to contain raw data that sounds like garbage even in SV.