Vanilla Radio Stations Not Working After Honest Hearts DLC?

[NotEverNerevar]

Exactly as the title says. After completing Honest Hearts, I realized that all three vanilla radio stations were no longer working and just producing static. I began disabling mods like crazy to try and fix this, but none of them gave me my radio channels back. To experiment, I attempted to load a save made prior to the DLC and whaddya know - they work like a charm. This leads me to believe it's not an active mod problem, but outside of that I'm stumped. How do I get my radio channels back short of losing that five hours spent in Zion? Thanks for reading.

[dubiousintent]

Not seen a solution to this. Note there is a distinction between "sounds" and "music", and it goes even further. (See the "Music & Sounds" section of the wiki "Getting started creating mods using GECK" article if you want more detail.) However, given your description I have a suspicion that HH used a "FadeSFX" command when playing a Bink video file (i.e. a "cut scene" or "slide show"), which disabled all music. (Probably upon entering the Northern Passage and leaving Zion.) "FadeSFX" is reversable, it appears, by simply playing a Bink video file. As soon as the video ends, sound is restored. As far as the poster of that statement can tell, it is still irreversible without playing a video.

The Bink video has to be on disk and not in a BSA. The only one on disk by default is "Data\Video\FNVIntro.bik". So try the console command: 'playbink "FNVIntro.bik" 1 1 1 1'. You can use the <ESC> key to interrupt the video, which should restore your music if "FadeSFX" was what disabled it. If not, I have been researching other possible solutions but they all assume something was changed or corrupted in your Windows system, which does not appear to be the case as your prior save plays fine.

 

-Dubious-

Edited February 13, 2018 by dubiousintent

[NotEverNerevar]

See that's interesting, because I did further experimentation based on the idea that whatever trigger "turn off" the radio channels for the DLC didn't get flipped back when I exited. Music on the Strip, for example, still played, but basic radios and the pip-boy radio wouldn't play vanilla radio stations anywhere. I gave myself the transportalponder in an attempt to "trick" the game into believing I'd entered and exited a DLC, but that also failed. I hadn't considered the cinematic being the trigger. I'll test this and report back.

 

EDIT: No such luck with the base game's intro. What is the trigger point to reactivate music when returning from Honest Hearts?

 

EDIT 2: After some testing, I believe this issue is solely related to the radio stations rather than sounds or music, as every* other sound or music plays correctly as far as I can tell. Is there a flag for the radio stations being "on" or "off"?

Edited February 13, 2018 by ElAhrairaha

[dubiousintent]

The radio station playlists are called "songs". What I know about them is detailed under the "Music & Sounds" section of the wiki "Getting started creating mods using GECK" article.

 

So far all I've found are JIP NVSE Plugin music functions: (parameter in brackets is [optional])
* "(musicState:int) IsMusicPlaying [musicType:form]". The musicType argument may be either a Music Type form, a Media Location Controller form, or it may be entirely omitted. Omitted parameter returns currently playing music (if any).
* "SetMusicState 2" to resume Playback.

However, as these are "functions" and not "commands", I don't think you can just enter them from the console. They would need to be in a script, and vanilla/DLC code won't include NVSE functions. Functions added by NVSE/JIP are often not available in the GECK. So I dn't see how they are going to immediately be of help. You might ask jazzisparis in the JIP LN NVSE comments about a console command for those functions or just a way to implement music playing again. Depending upon the complexity of the request he has been quite responsive.

Rather than leave you hanging while waiting on someone else, here are those "fixes" I have collected related to "no music", in no particular order and pretty much as straight plagiarism from various internet sources:

My Realtek drivers were set for 5.1 sound properly, except that there was a "speaker fill" setting that was unckecked and this little setting apparently turns stereo-only signal into 5.1 signal.
So yeah, everything (ambient sound, footsteps, dialogue, radio announcer) was working fine except the radio music.
So, if you have a Realtek you might want to check that setting and even if you don't.... there might be a similar setting for your sound card too.

Turns out it's not really a bug.

 

Sometimes the music is there, but the volume (even with the settings to max) is so low you can barely tell it's there. This is likely a "codec" problem. If you have "FDDShow" appearing in the Windows taskbar, then you may need to uninstall the "K-Lite Codec" pack. Otherwise, you may need to do the reverse and install it.

 

possibly your no sound issue is speaker related.

For example I have 7.1 sound speakers.. after testing them in control panel I found 2 of them werent working so set it to 5.1.

Additionally I plugged in my Headphones leaving it as 5.1 and couldnt hear walking or speech, unplug them and speech was fine. Had to set speaker config in control panel to stereo so I could play wearing headphones.

 

This a a codec issue. If you have a codec pack (most peopla use K-Lite), then go to the options of FFMPeg and blacklist New Vegas executables.
Also go to Windows Control Panel and make sure your speaker configuration is set to 2.0 stereo.
Do not, I repeat, DO NOT follow the advice you can find on the internet about installing AC3 encoder and configuring it… two of us in the forum lost *all* sounds because of that.
The last resort is trying to reinstall the drivers of your sound card. Either the latest one or the one that it came with on cd or manufacturer site. This will put the default codec up top in the Windows preferred codecs list.

Also, the game doesn't like USB speakers/headsets and non-stereo setups. It is always worth a try to set your audio setup to 2.0 stereo in WIndows control panel.

 

It's the headphone and a known problem with the audio in this game if you have that Razer driver installed that lets you hear surround on the headphone. Since it is an incompatibility issue, you cannot use both: either remove the Razer drivers entirely and use the headphone as 2.0, or get another speaker/headphone that plugs into the standard audio-out jack.

Tutorial - Fallout New Vegas Radio Fix video.

 

Perhaps one of them will be of assistance to you. If so, I would like to hear back about your test results.

-Dubious-

Edited February 13, 2018 by dubiousintent

[NotEverNerevar]

I'm going through the suggested fixes as we speak (thank you for all of the helpful input, btw it's appreciated), but a few things suggest to me that this isn't a technical issue with my computer or drivers:

• This issue suddenly occurred after accessing DLC content for the first time, which doesn't have access to the vanilla radio stations without modding.
• Saves loaded prior to the DLC have radios that function flawlessly, suggesting that this isn't an active technical issue but an internal engine settings issue with all saves made during and after the DLC.
• No changes were made to my computer software between the time I started the DLC and completed it, and my mod list did not change either.
• Music like background music, music assigned to certain areas like The Strip's song broadcast, and all other sounds work.
• The only nonfunctional sound elements are the radio objects which normally play music and the Pip-Boy radio. Both of these actively play the "off-air" static when any of the three default radio stations are selected or one stands within hearing distance of a radio prop rather than being completely silent or simply not playing songs. All of the DLC radio stations work normally.

Edit: After I go through the suggested solutions you provided, I'm going to use a "working" save made prior to the DLC and console command speedrun the quests in Zion to see if I can replicate this issue.

 

Edit 2: I went through the above solutions and none of them seemed to help. I loaded my save with a working radio made prior to Honest Hearts and used console commands to complete all of the quests in Zion and skipped right to the ending sequence, finishing it out in the exact same manner as I did the first time. The radio stations work afterwards on this save, but my original save with my full completion of Zion is still suffering from the no-radio blues. On top of that, I have no way of telling when a save is going to "inherit" this broken radio status after another DLC which makes me hesitate from spending all that time on a larger one. At least now we can rule out technical issues and we know it's specifically a problem with that instance/ how it handles DLC transitions

Edited February 14, 2018 by ElAhrairaha

[dubiousintent]

Thanks for reporting the test results. Can't say I am surprised as, for the same reasons as you, I had suspected it was a "coding" rather than "technical" problem. I really had my hopes on the FadeSFX/Video solution, but it looks like it's something else. (The others were just to cover all bases.) That you successfully got your music back after the speed run through Zion suggests it was a "glitch" (technical term for "who knows why but we can't reliably get it to repeat"). However, like you I would like to see a reliable way to restore the music. Did you make a request of JIP?

 

Next point of investigation is the section of code in HH where it triggers the exit: both just before it starts the slideshow and just after (if any). That means not only the HH quest script, but also the "result scripts" of any dialog there at the end. Look for "imods" as well as "FadeSFX". I'll try to take a look but can't say for sure when I will get around to it.

 

-Dubious-

[NotEverNerevar]

According to Roybatterian on the JIP LN NVSE page, "[this] would be a bug in the game, [you] should report that on YUP. Radios are controlled by talking activators and nothing to do with playmusic." So it seems we have another lead. I'll go ahead and submit it on YUP's page, then.

[dubiousintent]

Roy is much more knowledgeable about the game internals than me.

 

Thanks for keeping me informed.

 

-Dubious-