Thoughts about the 32nd PLL in Korea

[Elamys]

Q: There are situations where the sound will not display when you're reattaching the sound device (headphones/speakers/motherboard sound device to dedicated sound device, etc) while in-game. Are there plans to improve and fix on this? A: This specification is done to ensure we're delivering the highest quality audio possible. If we change that, the overall sound quality will go lower than what's currently set.

I'm sorry but this makes ZERO sense to me. When I switch between audio devices in any other game, it switches fine. This includes other Square Enix games. It's not as if FFXIV has some super amazing sound quality. But if I even try to switch audio devices in FFXIV, the entire game crashes. I alternate between using a pair of Bluetooth headphones and a wired USB headset. Works in every other game. What a nonsense reason.

[Rokke]

Q: We'd like to change Demi Bahamut's size in PvP areas as well!
A: We deliberately not implement this function in PvP areas. The reason is due to doing so will create a visibility gap between those who know the method to and those who don't.

/makeyougohmmm

[uvuvwevwevweonyetenyevweugwemu]

/makeyougohmmm

Removing Tab Targeting? That sounds .. painfully fun!

[KisaiTenshi]

No one cares about what the game sounds like when it crashes from your cat pulling your headphone jack out of the computer. They just need to suck it up and fix that already. If you can do device swapping on stuff that does bitperfect output control like foobar then you should be able to do it in the game which I can just about guarantee has compressed audio. Even if it is lossless no one really cares since most headsets people use are awful sounding anyway and they probably can't hear the difference.

I'm sorry but this makes ZERO sense to me. When I switch between audio devices in any other game, it switches fine. This includes other Square Enix games. It's not as if FFXIV has some super amazing sound quality. But if I even try to switch audio devices in FFXIV, the entire game crashes. I alternate between using a pair of Bluetooth headphones and a wired USB headset. Works in every other game. What a nonsense reason.

Let met try to explain this, because I'm sure it was lost in the translation.

Presently, if you do something to "eject" the audio device, eg a USB headphones, HDMI (by turning off the TV/monitor), the game fails to recognize that it's been ejected, and crashes. This shouldn't be happening at all. But here is why:

1) The game sets a mixing rate compatible with the audio device. For Bluetooth (A2DP) headphones and some USB headsets this is always low quality and has to be recompressed to a codec that the headset supports, thus inducing more latency. For "7.1 virtual surround sound" headphones and real 7.1 home theater setups, the audio device needs to present 8 channels. There is actually a single 6-channel audio file in the game client for testing this.

If the motherboard (or an add-in PCIe card) is connected via SPDIF or via analog cables, it won't crash the game, because the connection is never "lost".

2) Windows 10 introduced "Windows Sonic for Headphones" and "Dolby Atmos for Headphones"


Having these enabled, turns on a software-based surround sound module.

3) Audio sampling and bit rates are highly dependent on your audio hardware, and setting different rates results in another transcoding step.


"Give exclusive mode applications priority" = whatever game/app demands exclusive access to the audio device, gets to make the rules.

4) The actual music in the game is "A: vorbis, 44100 Hz, stereo, 160 kb/s",, where as sound effects in the game are "A: adpcm_ms, 44100 Hz, 1 channels, s16, 192 kb/s"

So there is always a decoding phase, before it goes to your speakers or headphones.

The crash happens because the USB and Bluetooth devices "are ejected", and thus the game doesn't know what to do. Crashing shouldn't even be a thing. However the answer given appears to suggest that the game audio would have to be intentionally degraded to 44100hz 16-bit stereo and not support spatial audio in order to allow for hot plugging audio devices.

When really, this problem appears to be more Windows fault than the game. Windows should treat "ejected" audio devices as dummy devices until they return, rather than making them effectively uninstalled. Because there may be some hardware codec involved, this is why things crash, as windows can only throw away the audio, and if it's DRM encumbered, there's no way to re-initialize a handshake without having the software (Eg game) have a failure mode to start over with.

It's something the developers could fix without degrading anything. If they can make the game decide on which video card and monitor to run on, they can do the same with the audio. There is nothing wrong with telling the user to reload the game client when the hardware changes, and is preferable to unintelligible stack traces. Heck, you know what would be a huge improvement? Having the game be able to route specific audio to specific devices. eg route the music to the speakers so OBS can record it mixed with your voice, and have the audio also sent to a headset mixed in with the discord audio, so that the streamers don't hear the raid chatter.

[Elamys]

I mean that's a great technical explanation and all, but Final Fantasy XIV is the only game in existence that seems to have this problem. "We would have to lower sound quality to do this" seems like a nonsense explanation to begin with, but even if that's the case, the game is far from being known for its amazing sound quality.

This problem happens with any kind of device, not just USB or Bluetooth devices, by the way. My fiancee has this issue with the sound channel not switching with his speakers, it just doesn't crash. And since, again, FFXIV is the only game with this issue, it's not really a Windows problem. (My game also doesn't crash every time, just the majority of the time.) It's not so much the crashing I'm worried about as the game's inability to recognize when the audio device has switched.

[Iscah]

I also find his answer about Zenos hair strange..so its completely fine to walk around as a copy of the good guys, standing around with their hairstyle and even recent clothes but having a style that a enemy has is a no go? Why? Since when is hair something special that only one person can wear? How does it make sense that we cant just simply go to our dear NPC, show him a drawing of the hair and get that?

From what I've read*, though I don't have an original source for it, programming-wise Zenos is not an "NPC" generated in the character creator and equipped with specified gear and hairstyle, able to be switched around if needed. Instead he's a special model and technically an "enemy monster" - so I gather that his hair is simply part of that model and doesn't exist as a separately programmed object that can be made available to other characters (at least without having to rebuild it).

I'm guessing this is probably what Yoshi-P is talking about when he says it can't be done because Zenos is an "enemy" - not as in villain, but as in the character model being an 'enemy' rather than an 'NPC'.




* Things I've read: a discussion a little while back where we were talking about the Garleans' models, and someone posted a list of which ones used Hyuran or Elezen base models, that included Zenos being a 'monster' character. This seems to corroborate with the NPC list in Garland Tools, which does display model data for characters that only appear in cutscenes, but Zenos doesn't appear in that list. Basically I don't have a really solid source for it, but it makes sense with what I've observed.

[BillyKaplan]

I'm guessing this is probably what Yoshi-P is talking about when he says it can't be done because Zenos is an "enemy" - not as in villain, but as in the character model being an 'enemy' rather than an 'NPC'.

If that's the case, I'd like to know what sets him apart from Edda, whose outfit made it to the Mog-shop just fine. Every excuse that can be brought up to justify her assets being given to us sounds weak and very easily worked around, so I think it is about Zenos being a villain rather than an 'enemy'. Edda was a victim.

[Theodric]

If nothing else, they should be more aware that a significant portion of Final Fantasy fans favour the antagonists rather than the protagonists in many Final Fantasy games. This is often due to many of them being written to be sympathetic and/or rather memorable. They often also have excellent fashion sense, so not having access to iconic antagonist gear is rather disheartening.

[Remedi]

If that's the case, I'd like to know what sets him apart from Edda, whose outfit made it to the Mog-shop just fine. Every excuse that can be brought up to justify her assets being given to us sounds weak and very easily worked around, so I think it is about Zenos being a villain rather than an 'enemy'. Edda was a victim.

Edda is just a sligthly modified hyur in the end, they just gave her other mobs animations, but the model is the hyur. If I have to guess they can attach animations to existing models, which would explain how we can use certain emotes like megaflare and other things

[Iscah]

If that's the case, I'd like to know what sets him apart from Edda, whose outfit made it to the Mog-shop just fine. Every excuse that can be brought up to justify her assets being given to us sounds weak and very easily worked around, so I think it is about Zenos being a villain rather than an 'enemy'. Edda was a victim.

Edda was an NPC first though. They must have some way of applying NPC models as 'functional enemies' (and allies), so possibly the Blackbosom dress was modelled to fit on the preexisting NPC's form? (Although she doesn't seem to be in the database wearing that outfit - but it could be just because she doesn't get any lines in that form, as far as I remember, and that seems to be what determines whether characters show up in the list or not.)

But yes, it's possible that it is just about him being a villain... but then again we did get the Heavens' Ward armour.