Black Market droid voice clip crash

[Kainzorus Prime 205]

I have encountered a rather strange issue with 1.5.1. The game crashes at every instance of attempting to speak to the Black Market Droid in the Central Zone. The dialogue attempts to start, then there is about a second of static when the game attempts to play the corresponding audio file, which seems to be either corrupted, or simply unreadable by the game, before crashing. I've discovered that removing the audio files themselves let the dialogue play out smoothly and without incident, and even attempted to manually convert the files from stereo to mono in a possible fix, but without any luck.

 

EDIT: Further testing seems to have revealed the issue - the original voice files are 48000 Hz 320 kbps stereo files. Converting them to joint stereo with the same setting seems to sort out the files, allowing the voice clip to play without crashing.

[JCarter426 1,214]

When you remove the audio and the dialogue plays muted, is there any lip movement with it? The droid might not have physical organic lips, but the equivalent would be flashing lights on the photoreceptors or something like that. It sounds like it might be a case of the model's talk animation being bugged, and removing the audio would possibly circumvent that.

At least, that's the only thing I would expect to cause a crash in normal circumstances. Usually if there is a problem with the audio file, it simply doesn't play. If it is an audio issue, though, it could something weird in the dialogue file, like if it's trying to play both generic droid VO and a specific VO file at the same time.

[Kainzorus Prime 205]

I've checked this, and no, with the audio files removed, there doesn't appear to be any lipsynch during the conversation, the optics do not "blink", so to speak. But then again, tweaking the joint stereo setting of the files themselves seems to sort the issue, but I'm not convinced this is the only case, with the heavy amount of custom dialogue in the mod. I will report my further findings of such glitches here, if I encounter any along the way.

A little bit of further research reveals that the older set of voicefiles for this particular droid from previous version of the mod does not have the crash present. Those files are Wave PCM unsigned 8bit, 44100Hz, 352kbps, mono files, however. I assume the re-recorded lines were somehow badly encoded, and it's what causes the crashes.

 

A similar screeching static, possibly due to a bad encoding, was found in one of IS-43's files in the Industrial Zone. It's his system overload warning performed by a female voice. However, this particular file does not seem to cause the game to crash.

[Obi Wan Pere 121]

In my last Playthrough of TSL -and my first time with M4-78- I found exactly the same problem trying to talk with the black market droid, a short sound like static noise and the game crashing.

I found the same issue talking with another droid, the same static noise but the game didn't crash never at that point (sorry but I don't remember the name of the place and the droid, I think by the industrial zone, after the test droids rooms, in a large room filled with computers and screens).

Add: This last droid must be IS-43 mentioned by KP

PS: At that time I assumed was due the different language versions... Long to explain and this is not the correct place but, anyway I was able to finish M4-78 and TSL with my spanish version of KotOR 2.

[Kainzorus Prime 205]

Another update, it seems all of the voice clips of the six-armed maintenance unit in the R&D/Manufacturing Department in the Rogue Employee quest, are broken. Static screeching comes out with every single line of dialogue, although it doesn't result in a crash.

[Sith Holocron 2,477]

PM me one of that droids (the six-armed maintenance unit, that is) files?  I could then check it against one of my copies. 

[Sith Holocron 2,477]

Your sample seems play just fine in GoldWave, but that's outside of the game.  Have you attempted converting these to joint stereo as well?

[2mg 0]

I'm having the same issue here, TSLRCM 1.8.5 and M4-78ep 1.5. GoG version of the game.

[Obi Wan Pere 121]

On 1/28/2019 at 10:54 PM, Kainzorus Prime said:

I've discovered that removing the audio files themselves let the dialogue play out smoothly and without incident, and even attempted to manually convert the files from stereo to mono in a possible fix, but without any luck.

EDIT: Further testing seems to have revealed the issue - the original voice files are 48000 Hz 320 kbps stereo files. Converting them to joint stereo with the same setting seems to sort out the files, allowing the voice clip to play without crashing.

Can you tell us the name of the exact files to be avoided/edited? or must be avoided all the files related with this droid? I think I've found its correct folder with the path ' ...\SWKotOR2\StreamVoice\802\blackmark ' but it has 49 files.

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Checking the install directory of KotOR2 I've found an error log file created with the crash (AR_ERROR.LOG) that says: "Names Differ: C_DrdProt l_drdprot". Searching for the files I've found in the Override folder:

C_DrdProt.MDL
C_DrdProt.MDX

l_drdprot.MDL
l_drdprot.MDX

...but I have no idea what can I do with them and, at least tonight, I didn't want start renaming this kind of files to see what happens...

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Thinking about avoiding the sound files I've disabled the sound of the game in the KotOR2 Launcher/Config and it has worked fine, no crash talking with the Blackmarket droid,  I can see the balloon text saying "No offence, but I usually don't interact with other droids" (I'm still at the begining of M4-78) ...but, obiously, no sound in game, even music and menus.

The next step test has been (enabling again the sound of the game) rename the 'blackmark' folder avoiding the entire folder itself and it has worked fine aswell. The game, music  and voices "sounding" normally except the Blackmarket droid, with no voice and no crash of the game talking to him.

Cause I'm still at the begining of the planet I hope can continue the plot with no further crash problems.

 

BTW!! Someone can identify the other sound files that no crash the game but sound as statics?

 

Soon, new news

P.S.: This time I'm using the english version of the TSL