Hidden Path Entertainment

With the Steam of Tuesday, 7/29/2009, the sound is now functional and a new AI -- the world's former champion, eh what?, is now your companion and tutor, except he hasn't seen some of these machines either. Now, I've been running the game for some time without sound, it wasn't liek I had it and it went away, but when I saw the Steam download I tried the game right away. It's really cool! Thanks! My only thought, I haven't received any email letting me know about he patch. Perhaps a CSR opportunity? :) Best! Bill

By now, you likely know what took place.  The update we put on Steam only partially downloaded to players from Friday through Tuesday, and for some people they just lost audio, for other people the game didn't work at all. 

The fact that anything worked at all  is surprising since you had some files from one version of the game mixed with files from the latest version of the game.

Additionally, we did a couple of things we shouldn't have done - first we put out the update on a Friday - a true no-no that we should have avoided as we have in the past, but we were simply too confident that this update was benign and was going to be a positive experience.

Secondly, we at the last minute got the opportuntiy to show Defense Grid XBLA at Comic-Con in San Diego over the weekend and we were AFK for most of the time until Tuesday.

Two wrongs - don't release on Friday and then don't live offline for the days that follow. 

For those two things I greatly apologize on behalf of Hidden Path Entertainment.

Fortunately, the fix was quickly determined (people weren't getting all of the update) and remedied (full update now downloading) on Tuesday, and all should be good in the world now (including world peace I've been told).

Thanks so much for your patience and support through this.  We screwed up, but hopefully now you have a better game experience.

Defend the Cores!

Jeff

I just got done playing the demo version of defense grid 7/26/09 and purchased the game, downloaded it in 45 minutes. When I started playing, there was never any sound. However, there was sound in the demo. I'm running Windows 7 build 7100. But I see here this problem is also on xp machines too. I just read others experienced this after a recent patch. I never played before the patch, but i'm sure the demo was never "updated" anyway. Also, I noticed the text $HEALTH_INDICATOR in the Settings>Interface tab. Also, I have no modem in this computer, the only thing I could find in my device manager to even consider disabling was is a reference to a pc speaker, which I don't have. Onboard Envy24 Family Audio Controller WDM is the sound device listed in device manager. Any ideas on what to do? Or do I just wait for an update from Microsoft and then for steam to update defense grid?

I also lost sound after steam patch. Worked fine before. Other games work fine. Also wrong text in some places, example "$PLACE_TOWER". Windows XP 32 english version. Onboard NVidia nForce audio. I have reinstalled/redownloaded from steam, still no sound. What is going on Steam? Hiddenpath? (Update: Seems to be fixed now - july 28 tuesday evening)

Same problem, was working fine yesterday and then BAM! a steam update to download some minor updates to the game. Good News you can now place your first tower before the aliens come at cha, bad news NO SOUND, and I don't even see any dialogue boxes pop up with our computer friend.

Sometimes modem or other non-compliant DirectX devices can cause conflict with the audio engine we use in Defense Grid.  Microsoft has been working on this, and an update on Steam should be coming out very soon.

 

Jeff

We use the Microsoft sound engine, its a recent thing and another game that uses the same engine is "The Maw".  Try the demo and see if it has the same issue - I'll bet it does.

 

That said, we think we'll have a way to force the fix to take (a fix is out, but there is some strangeness in how DirectX may or may not fix it for a specific person) that we're hoping to release soon.

 

Jeff