EAX not working in King Kong (2005)

[TyrannoWright]

I've tested this across both Signature and Gamer's Edition of the game's PC ports. Both use EAX 3.0, but any sort of EAX effects are not heard. I tried it with EAX turned off and the software reverb enabled only for the game to hit an error on starting a level. (Signature only, Gamer's Edition worked but had no reverb) The log provided was ran with both enabled and in a cavern level that heavily used reverb in other ports.

alsoft_error.txt
dsoal_error.txt

[kcat]

Looks like the game has a habit of making bad calls. It properly queries EAX 1, 2, (2.5,) and 3, and seems to use it, but passes bad values. The alsoft log shows a few instances of:

[ALSOFT] (EE) EAXSet [EAX_REVERB_EFFECT] Decay LF Ratio out of range (value: 0; min: 0.1; max: 2).
[ALSOFT] (EE) EAXSet [EAX_REVERB_EFFECT] Environment Diffusion out of range (value: 85; min: 0; max: 1).

which appropriately return an error like real hardware. If the game never manages to set a proper reverb environment, you won't hear one (with hardware, it may instead default to a generic reverb that doesn't change until a reverb property is successfully set). Also of note is how it's trying to set the environment diffusion to 85, when it ranges from 0 to 1; I'm pretty sure some versions of FMOD used a reverb struct that had environment diffusion and density parameters that ranged from 0 to 100, where 85 may make more sense, but that's not what EAX accepts.

The dsoal log is also interesting, showing a lot of warnings about:

Buffer::SetPan Invalid parameter: 10330065

That value is definitely outside of the acceptable panning range, which is -10000 to +10000. Not sure where that value comes from or why it's trying to set it, but it returns an error and doesn't change anything, like native DSound would. Also some, but not all, 3D buffers specify the DSBCAPS_CTRLFX flag, which is for the DSound8 FX API that DSOAL doesn't implement. Kind of odd for an app to use both the DSound8 FX API and EAX, and without debug logging, I don't know whether it's trying to use the FX API effects or not beyond simply setting the flag.

[TyrannoWright]

Odd. What about how other Jade engine games that use EAX behave;? Beyond Good & Evil? Prince of Persia? Rayman: Raving Rabbids? I'm not familiar with the former two but I sort of recall Rayman having working EAX, even if it was subtle.

[mirh]

FWIW Rayman Raving Rabbids (actually it's a 2006 build of the jade engine) has sources available if you search. In fact it even supposedly used to crash dsoal (though you might be right it has no eax, because while the usual eax libs are present they are pretty much unused).

There's a lot of FX calls then (including related to *SetPan), so maybe it's linked to #107?