[0.12.5][slpwnd] Music hardly ever being played

[irbork]

.12.5 fix to the wind ambient messed up all the ambient tracks and the game is mostly silent now :/
Please separate ambient and music to avoid issues.

[Boogieman14]

Yeah, this really became much worse. I've played quite a few hours since 0.12.5, and I think I've only heard the new track once or maybe twice (and I liked what I heard, so not hearing it anymore makes it extra disappointing )

[Arumba]

It seems like the music is tied to activity, I've noticed that it turns on depending on what I am doing in the game. Also, the tracks have names like 'pollution', so it seems to be tied to the state of the factory as well.

Honestly I would prefer if it just played the music 100% of the time. The ambient tracks don't fit in well in my mind.

[irbork]

I can not bare it any more.I made play-list with all the good music of Factorio and silenced in-game ambient sounds.
Now I can have music being played by separate program to get rid of all the stupid randomness.

[slpwnd]

It seems like the music is tied to activity, I've noticed that it turns on depending on what I am doing in the game. Also, the tracks have names like 'pollution', so it seems to be tied to the state of the factory as well.

The selection of track doesn't depend on what the player does or what the state of factory is. Yes, one of the track is called "pollution" and others have factory inspired names as well ("automation", "the right tools", etc.), but those are only names. Internally they mean nothing. Originally we wanted to have some "smart" mechanism for music selection but in the end we just dropped it and went with a simple solution.

[slpwnd]

Maybe a silly question: Have you guys significantly lowered the "Ambient volume" in the sound settings? This setting actually controls the music (the name might be confusing).

It is true that we have increased the spaces between the tracks but that should definitely not result in no music being played. We will tweak the number for the 0.12.5 and maybe make it somehow configurable.

[Boogieman14]

I can at least confirm that I have the ambient slider in a reasonable position. I actually do hear music occasionally, but it's rare. Like I said, after the .5 update, I've played for quite a few hours on friday night (may easily have been 8-10) and I only heard the new track once.

[Vin]

I think I've also experienced this, but it's hard to tell because I perceive the ambient sound (not music) as being silent, so I can't say definitively that 0.12.5 is more/less music. I didn't report it because I thought the problem was with my ears.

For now, I open all the music in VLC and play it while I'm playing. Even if there's not a bug, I've found that I much prefer 100% music and no ambient tracks.

[slpwnd]

So actually there was a bug which occasionally could cause the next ambient to come close to uint32_t(-1) game ticks. Which is like ... never =) This will be fixed in 0.12.6 which is coming soon as it will be a hotfix for other issues.