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BUG: Portions of journal entry narration are missing/skipped.
Ryblade Offline
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#1
Not Solved Bug  BUG: Portions of journal entry narration are missing/skipped.

I've noticed that there's missing dialogue during the journal entry scenes, in particular ones that take up more than a single page.

Entire paragraphs can be missing compared to what's written in text, causing me to miss out on many key elements of the story unless I check the journal every time I get an entry to make sure the game didn't skip anything.

This, for me, breaks immersion slightly. Also, since I can't hear them read in Daniel's voice, I'm missing out on a lot of the emotion and inflection that would be present in these narrated portions.

I've played up to the journal entry titled Daniel's Diary - Revelations (1/3) and did a save and quit right after I went to the journal and read what hadn't been spoken. Hopefully this will make your search up the hpl.log file less time-consuming.

The text that was NOT read out loud by Daniel is the following quote:

Spoiler below!
I received a letter today from the Algerian governor's office disclosing the fate of Herbert's expedition. About a week after my departure,

After that, the rest of the journal entry is narrated properly.

Here is my hpl.log file:

.log   hpl.log (Size: 25.64 KB / Downloads: 237)

There's another Steam user who has been experiencing this issue as well. I found this thread on the Steam community forums, and it worries me because apparently flashbacks are affected, too:

https://steamcommunity.com/app/57300/dis...788550264/

This is my first playthrough, so I'm very worried I'll end up missing key plot details in the flashbacks that I can't go back and review as I would with the journal entries.

Thank you so much for any help I can get, and thanks a million for the free giveaway a few weekends ago. I never had the chance to play this before or watch any playthroughs of it, so I can see now why everyone's so crazy about this game. I don't think I'm very far into it (I just finished up with the water), so if this bug could be fixed quickly
enough I wouldn't mind restarting in order to catch any flashback dialogue I may have missed.
(This post was last modified: 03-28-2018, 02:51 AM by Ryblade.)
03-27-2018, 11:41 PM
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Mudbill Offline
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#2
Not Solved RE: BUG: Portions of journal entry narration are missing/skipped.

I've experienced the same thing on OS X and from what I can remember, it's identical and might even happen at the same locations in the text. I never got to troubleshoot it.
What's odd is that the log does not even mention any error regarding audio files for these.

If you reload the Guest Room map real quick and acquire the diary again, does it work fine or does it always skip the same part? If it always skips, it might be an issue in the configuration files; perhaps an oversight.

03-28-2018, 12:05 AM
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Ryblade Offline
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#3
Not Solved RE: BUG: Portions of journal entry narration are missing/skipped.

I had already done a save, so I can't acquire the diary entry again. I'll save before reading a diary entry next time in case it happens, then I'll try to reproduce the bug by exiting the room, going back in and reading the page, as you suggested.

I need to stop playing for today, though. Everything on the screen still looks like it's "breathing" even when I'm not playing the game. I think my brain needs a bit of time to heal.
03-28-2018, 02:55 AM
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Romulator Offline
Not Tech Support ;-)

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#4
Not Solved RE: BUG: Portions of journal entry narration are missing/skipped.

(03-28-2018, 02:55 AM)Ryblade Wrote: I had already done a save, so I can't acquire the diary entry again. I'll save before reading a diary entry next time in case it happens, then I'll try to reproduce the bug by exiting the room, going back in and reading the page, as you suggested.

I need to stop playing for today, though. Everything on the screen still looks like it's "breathing" even when I'm not playing the game. I think my brain needs a bit of time to heal.

Just for what it is worth, the game autosaves when you enter a map, so you can check again later if you choose. But do take a rest if you feel that way. The effects this game uses can be a little bit off-putting haha.

Discord: Romulator#0001
[Image: 3f6f01a904.png]
03-28-2018, 06:23 AM
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Ryblade Offline
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Posts: 7
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#5
Not Solved RE: BUG: Portions of journal entry narration are missing/skipped.

EDIT: Ahh, now I see what you mean. I just found the directory full of autosaves. I'll look through those later on today.

Would it help if I uploaded a copy of one of these save files here as an attachment, so other people can see if the same bug happens for them more easily? I'd really like to help get this fixed if it's happening for other people as well, as it seems to be.
(This post was last modified: 03-28-2018, 02:42 PM by Ryblade.)
03-28-2018, 02:34 PM
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Mudbill Offline
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#6
Not Solved RE: BUG: Portions of journal entry narration are missing/skipped.

There's a "load game" button in the menu you can use to load those autosaves. If you ended the game right after picking it up, you shouldn't lose any progress if you go back to the second last save.

I have a suspicion that the issue is not related to the save file, but perhaps the language files (of course if it isn't just a bug that it fails to load the specific audio file).

(This post was last modified: 03-28-2018, 06:52 PM by Mudbill.)
03-28-2018, 06:52 PM
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Ryblade Offline
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#7
Not Solved RE: BUG: Portions of journal entry narration are missing/skipped.

Hey everyone, sorry it took so long to get back to this thread.

Yeah, this bug is reproducable, alright. I restarted the game and made a save with your hand right about to grab Daniel's Note to Self. It'll skip the same part of the entry every single time you read it.

Mudbill, I followed your hunch and checked the language files. It appears they're fine, they exist on my installation and they'll play when I load up the .ogg files in mpv. However, it seems that this bug is skipping over some of these files in-game when they're supposed to play. For example, in Daniel's Note to Self, the specific part that doesn't play is the contents of '.../voices/diaries/Diary_CH01L01_DanielNote_04.ogg'. So, you're probably right about the bug having something to do with failing to load the audio file.

I noticed the bug is happening in flashbacks, too. You do see the skipped text for about one or two frames; it goes by in the blink of an eye. This sucks, because this means the game is now unplayable. Damn, this is like getting a good book from the library, really diving deep into the story, only to notice later on that entire pages are missing from it.

I can't attach the save due to file size limitations on the forum, but if any developer wants me to email them a copy of it, I'd be glad to. Speaking of which... do the developers check these threads and help out around here? Not that I don't appreciate support from the community, but I would like to know if any official support is still available for this title from Frictional or Out of Order. I'm prepared to do whatever's necessary to help them diagnose this issue and get a patch rolled out so that everyone can benefit.
(This post was last modified: 04-11-2018, 10:18 PM by Ryblade.)
04-11-2018, 10:06 PM
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Mudbill Offline
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#8
Not Solved RE: BUG: Portions of journal entry narration are missing/skipped.

Kat, our friendly neighborhood Community Manager, checks things out here Smile
She can report to the devs if needed.

Could you send me the english.lang file from /config/lang_main ? I wanna check it out. If it's true that it skips the same part every time, then I wanna confirm that the file looks okay, because I have never experienced this on Windows.

PS: If you wanna send a file, you can use http://mixtape.moe.

(This post was last modified: 04-12-2018, 02:31 AM by Mudbill.)
04-12-2018, 02:31 AM
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kirakatve Offline
Frictional Games

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#9
Not Solved RE: BUG: Portions of journal entry narration are missing/skipped.

Thanks for your extensive research on this issue!

We're currently trying to get a proper rapport going with bugs of our older games. So we can't promise a fix right away, but we will definitely do our best to solve it.

Thanks again, Ryblade, and we might be in touch on this later on!

/Kat

Your friendly neighbour the community manager.
04-12-2018, 10:17 AM
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Ryblade Offline
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Posts: 7
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Joined: Mar 2018
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#10
Not Solved RE: BUG: Portions of journal entry narration are missing/skipped.

Mudbill, here's the file you asked for: https://my.mixtape.moe/kfhwjo.lang

Love that upload site you recommended, by the way. Especially the message that shows when JavaScript is turned off, I laughed so hard I got a cramp in my side. They understand us paranoid types so well...

Kat, you're very welcome. I'm very glad to hear that this is gonna be worked on, it's rare to find good developers these days still willing to give their older titles the love and attention they deserve. I haven't even finished this game yet and I'm constantly in awe of how ahead of its time it is in so many ways. You're all awesome. I'll be here if you need any more work done on my end. Files, logs, etc. I work a lot in the terminal as well, so I'm not afraid of doing any of that technical stuff that may be required. I've been using several Linux distributions exclusively for about 12 years now, so it's all good.

EDIT: Crap, should I send that link as a PM, Mudbill? Just hindsightedly realized I could technically be violating copyright with that, even though it is in the interests of troubleshooting... lemme know if I goofed up, eh?
(This post was last modified: 04-13-2018, 05:32 PM by Ryblade.)
04-13-2018, 05:27 PM
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