Entry 203

"The later volumes' sound tables: each disc's banks placed by its own executable"

2026-09-26volumes

Filestools/sound_tables.pycrates/piney-data/src/sound/mod.rscrates/piney-data/src/sound/mut_.rscrates/piney-data/src/sound/out.rscrates/piney-data/src/sound/qua.rscrates/piney-data/tests/sound.rscrates/piney-audio/src/lib.rscrates/piney-audio/src/stream.rsplans/volumes.mddocs/engine/sound.md

After 0202 Mutation booted, but it had no sound at all, the opening movie included. SndData::read placed every disc's SNDDATA.BIN with Infection's loading tables. On Mutation the first bank past Infection's layout ran off the file ("read of 20 bytes at 0x6260 runs past the end"), Audio::open failed, and the game went on silent.

The tables

tools/sound_tables.py now writes the tables for all four volumes (gen), and piney_data::sound::tables_of picks them. A later volume's names come from tools/xfer.py with Infection's sizes, and several tables grew:

So a table's rows on a later volume come from that volume's own layout (extent):

• if the next global is the same one as on Infection, the table grows by however much the gap to it grew;
• if Infection's neighbour sits elsewhere, the table runs to the next global;
• if Infection's neighbour has no name, the table keeps Infection's size.

Infection's output is unchanged.

The port

SndData keeps the tables that placed it, and SndData::read takes the disc's volume. Audio::from_snddata builds the engine from those tables. stream_ctrl takes the tables for its seData[42] note-off.

later_volumes_tables_place_their_discs checks each of the three later discs:

• every bank's header, sequences and samples load;
• the common SE bank loads;
• every BGM track lies inside BGM.BIN;
• every jukebox row names a bank.

Headless renders of the desktop music and a sound effect play on all three. The game on Mutation no longer prints "no sound" and plays its opening movie with sound.

Left out

• The voices. The later volumes' voice tables are empty for now: the event voices, the field's voices, the skill words. Each volume's code picks them from its own groups (plans/volumes.md, "The sound across volumes"), and several of their tables carried no name.
• setbl.cpp, the animation notes' sounds, is still Infection's. Mutation's rows are Infection's, laid out the same. Outbreak and Quarantine changed them.