Hi everyone.

I am well aware that Soul Reaver is a very old game and it's very likely to spawn some issues. Fortunately mine is on a softer side. It's not gamebraking or anything but, it just bothers me a bit.

The issue is with some audio. Most of it plays as it should, there are no sfx glitches, voices are perfectly fine, intro played without problems, it's all good... except that background ambience audios won't start at the beginning of new area until I pause the game and unpause it. It works like a reload. Besides that my game seems to be missing tracks from the spectral realm which is a real bummer for me because I really loved those. After unpausing it begins playing the normal version of the track in that particular place I'm in, even if I'm currently in the spectral.

I tried to fiddle around the settings, textures, different video settings etc. but it doesn't really change anything. With software mode it kinda helps, but it still takes a lot of time for the game to realize that I am in a different area.

I would be happy to hear there is a fix to that but I will totally understand if there isn't, I've read some topics already about sound in this game and it seems like I'll have to get over it.

This.
(More exactly.)
This patch fixes bugs with sound (music & voices, not sfx), including wrong behavior of music on pause (restarting) and unrefreshing it at the edge of locations. Also there is support of additional music tracks for chosen (in music.txt) locations and something like dynamic playback (optional DSP-filters for Underwater and Spectral Realm).
Yet no support of full copy of music playback as on PS ("danger" and so on).

Pardon me but I think I'll need more explanation to this. I did install this patch and... it does work, partially. I know for sure it allows to skip the intros and that BINK notice, I can also change the color of my health bar (blue is great btw. I'll definitely be playing with that). So it does work. BUT, it still doesn't fix my initial problem. I still have to reload the music by pausing. There is a notice that I have to restore the "cash" of the game? How exactly do I do that? Should I just reinstall the game?

I've read that this should be played from Steam, with steam overlay, so I added it to my library (even though it's called "settings" with a Raziel icon), but it's the same, it still doesn't fix it. Oh, I should also add that I cannot access the map (because in the readme it says there is one) and debug. I'm definitely doing something wrong here.

Another thing that also interests me is the fact you switched some music as I saw in the folder. My question is, can I switch these files myself? You know switching .wav & .mp3 files and write different names in the .txt file so everything matches?

Sorry if I miss something obvious.

Whoop, it works now. Thanks a lot.

However, I have to add, this is a bit silly that fans have to fix the ports of some games. I love Soul Reaver series to death, it's one of the best games I have ever played and seeing how lacking this pc port is, is just sad. It's not as bad as some other ports but still, this shouldn't be happening. I mean I know this is an old game but come on, how hard can it be? It's clearly possible to do. You did it (I assume you are the creator of the patch), so why people responsible for the port couldn't?

Also one more thing. Won't that other steam account and playing under different tag won't get me into trouble? Because if somehow I'll get banned for it and it will lock my main account I'll probably end myself since I have a f*ckload of games there. >_<

Cool. It is not problem at all to fix all problems with LOK-games or to make full port of SR1 from PS (I mean - to reactivate all features that were disabled for PC-version like dynamic playback) or even from DreamCast (exactly, the current PC-version of SR1 is not a port at all in full meaning of this term - it appeared at the same time as PS-version (in 1999); 6 months later DreamCast version was created = it was ported for DreamCast; it is like now we have several versions of modern games - for PC and for consoles; say, DarkSiders) whether Crystal Dynamics have sources of SR1 or not (I shown that it is possible to fix problems or to add new features even without sources + it does not require a long time).
BUT: they just do not want to do this (Square Enix does not give them such task and they (CD) does not do anything by themself - only for money and only after resolution of SE). For example, SE sold 300k copies of SR1 only on Steam (you can imagine what is the their profit) for really zero efforts (it is yet SR1 from 1999 with applied bink-patch which was created by my team and the updated version of which - now with new sound and achievements engines - you tested now). Moreover, this bink-patch (created by fans and for free) they bought from gog which obtained task from them to adopt LOK-games for newer OS. I.e. now we have 2 companies that made profit for nothing (SE and gog). As I wrote in my ReadMe and repeated again above, if you worry about your Steam-account, play in SR1 under the profile of the game SpaceWar under FAKE account (i.e. create new one and play under it). I tested SR1 (many hours of gameplay) in such way (+ initially with some bugged constructions) - no problems at all (I mean, no ban).
This game (SpaceWar) is from official Steam-API SDK: it is available for all accounts (for free) and was created for tests. Moreover, usually it is impossible to obtain ban (on Steam) for the games which are not ones for Cyber-Sport (i.e. anyone can cheating and even distribute through Steam-community mods or just cheats for the most games, including newer ones; for example, I made, tested by 300+ hours (under my real profile, of course), and distributed some time ago my mod for XCom: Enemy Within - no problems, though there are active moderators for this game, in comparison with old games like LOK or API like SpaceWar).

Yeah I did just that, I created new account but I did it under the same e-mail and I've read Steam bans all accounts under the same e-mail. But after reading your post I'm not that worried anymore. I won't be using that fake account for long anyway, only for the time needed to beating SR1. Well, thanks again. :D

You don't need to buy Soul Reaver on Steam or change its appid to add it to your Library. You can easily add shortcut to installed gog's version through client under Games - Add Non-Steam Game to My Library. Then you can run it from Steam.

One more "writer, not reader". He did this already (the third post in this thread), but in such case some new features given by the patch 1.2.3+ are disabled due to added by myself protection against thieves (gog) and pirates, so one need to run SR1 (to have all features) either under id of Steam-version of the game (i.e. one need to buy SR1 on Steam) or under id of the game SpaceWar (i.e. one need to know how to do this = to look at the Patchv123_Readme.txt, the previous version of which for bink-patch was removed from the distributive of SR1 by gog).