Hi there,
I've recently installed STO on my laptop as I'm away from home, and after a series of
tedious .hogg corruptions, I've finally gotten the game working and playable.
However it seems that some of my
visual effects are missing in game. Cloaking doesn't do anything
visually, my ship remains totally visible, even though the buff is active and enemies can't see me.
Also, I've noticed that the science BO Space power "Tachyon Beam"
no longer shows the beam effect but does drain shield as it should.
I think that some of my weapons are
missing audio too, space combat just doesn't seem to sound the same as when I was playing on my PC Big Rig, but there's no way to compare it where I am now and no way to be sure I'm not making it up, but I'm fairly sure.
I think this may be something to do with further corrupted .hogg files, but I want to know if anyone knows the actual cause of this and any less painful fixes than downloading those damn huge game files again. Any feedback and similar tails of woe greatly appreciated!
Cheers,
TheArchitect
Comments
They didn't.
Those Screenshots highlight exactly the problem here, except I don't get any of the FX.
It doesn't help that the UI clues as to whether or not you're cloaked rely on the cloak button being greyed out or not, which is exactly what happens to it in combat. So vague it's like my ship is being stealthy about whether or not it's being stealthy. But that's an issue for a whole other thread right there. >_>
If you happen to be having the same problem as me, I've found the solution and it seems only prudent to post the details here...
What is Wrong: Fix Missing Weapon/Device/Power Effects and some Crashes on Ground Missions and Space Stations
How to Resolve: Delete the Sounds.hogg file and patch your game again.
Why: It turns out that Cryptics game engine links Sound FX and Visual FX together in such a way that if one is missing, the other won't play (thanks to Miiru for this info). It took me a while to make the logical leap, but it's simple. It's known that if a VFX is missing its sound won't play, but it's actually true the other way around too. If you're missing SFX you're going to lose the corresponding VFX. For me this was caused by a dodgy patching process which had me disconnecting because I was on Wifi and simply by accident mid patch when the power chord was yanked out of my laptop.
The big hint? My game crashed with a sound loop and a screen hang as soon as Zachary Quinto's EMT in the Tutorial began speaking to me face to face aboard the Khitomer. Churning out that ever so tired performance with it's accompanying audio files.
I'm going to see if I can spread this around to help out other people, as this method has also cleared up some game stopping hangs when landing at the Granalda Station, Deep Space 9 and Memory Alpha, along with the Deferi Missions too (landing on their planet).
If this helps you, spread the word to anyone else you see, as this may be the cause of some ground mission crashes. All you need to do to fix it (if you're lucky enough to have the same issue) is to go to wherever your game is installed, find the "piggs" folder, then delete "sounds.hogg". Start the game up normally and let the patcher download sounds.hogg again. Problem solved!