A stand-in sound-card library starts the game, but the game turns its own sound off
Symptoms
A game built for one sound card imports that card's library. A silent stand-in for the library, which answers every call with success, lets the game start. The game then plays no sound at all, even its plain wave output. Wine's trace shows no waveOutWrite calls.
Cause
The game asks the card a question and turns its sound off when the answer is empty. POD Gold's Maxi Sound 64 builds open two wave outputs, and read the card's memory map before and after each to learn which of the card's wave streams it took. With no new stream in the map, the game sets its "sound on" flag to 0 and closes both outputs (observed, PODMAX64.EXEFUN_004ba304, FUN_004b9cd4; measured under Wine with the silent stand-in).
Evidence
The card library's call sites in the EXE (peinfo GAME.EXE --imports gives the thunks; a search for call to each thunk gives the callers). The decompiled caller shows what it does with each answer. In POD, UpLoad fills a table that a scan reads for entries of kind 0x20. An empty table makes both scans answer -1, and the next test turns the sound off.
What to do
Read what the game does with each answer before writing the stand-in's answers. Answer the question as the card would. For the Maxi Sound 64, list one wave stream in the map for each wave output the game has open. The stand-in learns which are open by hooking the game's waveOutOpen and waveOutClose in its import table (shim::iat). wrappers/maxi94 does this. Then log the first buffer of each stream that is not silence, to show the sound reaches the output.
Check the volume path next. POD's 64 builds also read their effect volume from the WinMM mixer, which under Wine reads 0 (the mixer's wave line).
Tried
- A silent stand-in with every call answered "success" and an empty map: the game starts and stays silent.
- The map filled from the open wave outputs: both outputs found (streams 0 and 1), sound written, at volume 0 until the mixer's lines were answered too.