Something is destroying the music system, and I can't track it down.

[spacefiddle]

This is driving me nuts, and I can't find the root cause. I can't "see" enough of the music system, it doesn't log anything, etc....

 

Here's the deal:

 

Sometimes while playing, Music goes dead. And only music. Sounds play, voices play, Ambient sounds play - and all respond to the slider.

But no music works, and once it dies, it never comes back - no saving / reloading / slider twiddling / fast travel / sleeping / waiting / picking my nose / nothing.

 

Messing with radio stations (which still work) does nothing.

 

Only reverting to a much earlier save will restore the music. And then, eventually, it breaks again.

 

When loading a save with dead music: the main menu music plays.

Pick the save, and music plays while it starts to load... but then as it finishes loading, it rapidly fades out - and never comes back.

All types of music are dead at this point: area markers, exploration, etc.

 

The behaviour on load - being faded out as the file finishes loading - leads me to believe something is ducking or muting it, that shouldn't be / playing dead air and thinks it's doing something. But once it's broken, it stays broken forever - so it's not like there's, say, a dead--air music track playing.

 

Going to places like the Airport, the RRHQ, or the Castle - which plays its theme music 100% of the time - results in silence, in a broken save like this.

 

Now,

 

I know what the culprit is; there's a certain mod that, if I disable and load, restores music.

But I cannot fathom WHAT in this mod is causing it.

 

Does anyone have reference material, docs they dug up, anything AT ALL on the music system that would let me troubleshoot this? I'd really like to fix the mod that's breaking it, but hours of staring at both xEdit and CK have turned up no rational reason why it should just randomly break. And the lack of logging pertaining to the background music ain't helping.

 

Any assistance at all appreciated.

 

Edit: I see references to a command

ToggleAudioOverlay TAO Toggle the Audio Debug Overlay.

 

but it does nothing :(

[DanteRedfield]

What mod is it

[spacefiddle]

Deliberately not calling out the mod, that's why i didn't mention it. The specific mod isn't important; I'm looking for more info on the music system, so I can fix it. Or at least track it down and see if I'm capable of fixing it.

 

Have narrowed it down to the Radio system in game, or some part of it - when music dies, you can turn on a (vanilla) radio station, save the game, exit, load back in, switch off radio -- and music is restored. Which confirms my suspicions about the Music channel being muted / ducked as the reason - but I stil don't know what trail to follow, or if i can set some kind of logging, or SOMETHING, to trace back over when and how it's being incorrectly ducked / what's invoking the "radio is playing so we should mute the music channel" effect.

[LarannKiar]

Something overwrites Musics. Maybe with this function? Well, most likely it's caused by a mod so it's important which one of them.

[spacefiddle]

No, that's not it at all. Nothing is overwriting Music records; it is muting or ducking the channel that Music plays in.

[Ondrea]

There's one certain large quest mod that was causing this. From what I read it had something to do with custom credits music playing at the end, and forgetting to re-enable the ambient and combat tracks afterwards. One person mentioned verifying integrity of the cache on Steam restored the game music. Does the mod you're using have it's own music that plays at some point?

[LarannKiar]

Something overwrites Musics. Maybe with this function? Well, most likely it's caused by a mod so it's important which one of them.

 

I didn't mean the mod overwrites your music with a new record, music can be overwritten by scripts. And most importantly, that's not visible in FO4Edit or in the Creation Kit either.

[Balx2]

Music and sound in FO4 is a pita. There is no uniform way it's applied. LarannKiar points out the most important thing though, you need to look at all scripts with the suspect mod and decompile the scripts if source wasnt provided, which is easy enough to do with the tools for FO4.