The Black Mirror sound issues
 

I just bought The Black Mirror from the Adventure Shop and I'm having some issues with crashes when playing it in Windows Vista. It seems that when playing certain dialogue lines, the game just makes a nasty static sound, and crashes to the desktop. I could, of course, just save the game often, and avoid triggering the lines that cause crashes, but I'm worried I'll hit a dead end eventually.

The point I've been testing at is trying to enter the stables of the castle right after starting the game. Samuel makes a comment about needing to get around the bushes, and mid-line the game crashes, at the same point every time with a static sound that sounds like it could ruin my speakers.

I've tried running the game in various compatibility modes, as administrator, and I've installed it to a directory where I could change access rights to the files. I also tried renaming the majerk and mejerk files as suggested in other threads even if the issues don't seem related.

Have anyone else encountered problems with static sounds that lead to crashes, and if so did you find a solution to it?

Edit: Turning off sound by setting sound=0 in the config file worked to get around the crash, but playing with no sounds is not really an option. :(

I'm not much help but I had the same problem, tried everything you did and gave up finally. It sounded awful through the speakers as if there was an electrical fault even though I knew there wasn't.

Good to know I'm not the only one with this problem at least. Probably means someone else somewhere had it and found a solution. :p I tried contacting support at http://www.adventurecompanygames.com/support/index.php about a month ago, but never got a response. Just leaving it alone until I get a chance to try it on another computer for now.

Maybe a long shot or something that does not work at all, but maybe you should tweak your DirectX settings a bit?

I remember static-ish sound with Blackstone Chronicles (no crash fortunately, but rendering it rather unplayable). Setting hardware acceleration of DirectSound to less accelaration lessened the problem, and turning hardware acceleratin completely off solved the problem.
Alternatively, changing the output source in DirectSound solved the problem as well. (I think it was something like that, I am not behind my own pc right now)

Maybe you could try some tweaking with that? Or maybe even in DirectDraw, although it seems to be a purely sound issue so I guess you can leave DirectDraw alone...

Unfortunately, tweaking hardware acceleration for sound is no longer an option in Windows Vista. Supposedly the option has been removed because of all the issues it caused in earlier versions of Windows. It shouldn't be necessary to do so to avoid crashes anymore, but the crashes I get *are* very similar to ones I've been able to avoid in games in the past by turning off hardware acceleration.

Tweaking other DirectSound options are not an option either as far as I know, since DirectSound is only available through emulation. If anyone uses Vista and has managed to play with DirectSound settings I'd love to hear about it, though.

I have same sound problem & every post I have seen the person downloaded from the adventure shop so maybe something was wrong with their file.
I have tried win 7 & also xp with the same results. I am wondering if it's video card driver related as on all the posts the problem appeared this year 2010.
I am going to try driver nvidea driver 61.77 to see if it makes a difference.

change of driver was unsucessful as the driver is too old for my card.
so no luck at all

Checked on this thread randomly as I felt like giving Black Mirror another go. Unfortunately, I still haven't found a way around the crashes other than disabling sound. I suspect a corrupt file as well, since I have no issues with the demo. After four months I still haven't received a reply from Adventure Company support, so I guess that's a dead end. Do post it here if you find a solution. :)

there is only one section that tends to crash the game & thats heading towards the stable from the dining room door, going to the stable from the fron door allows you to continue with the game.
So far when the sounds static happens the game can continue but in chapter 2 there is one spot where the sound static was quite large & longer than I had experiences so far & I hit the escape key & avoided the crash.
directx files look like they are patched, I can see updates from 2005 - 2008 in the folder.

One poster on another forum stated support from the adventure shop just told them they do not support the game only sell it.

I will also keep checking back here to see if anyone has found an answer.

the three pc I have tried to run black mirror all have realtek hd audio, anyone having this error could they be using the same audio

Yes, actually! Well, I've tried it on two computers, and only one had realtek hd audio, but on the old laptop I got a different kind of crash, and that one also had an integrated sound card.

This is odd. I have installed TBM on two laptops I have. One of them is an old (4 years) Toshiba with Realtek integrated sound, and I have no problem at all, running Vista. On the other one (a new HP with different sound board) , running Seven, I also have no problem.
I remember I have installed DirectX 9c on both machines. Vista and Seven have DirectX 10 natively, but DirectX 9 is not complete. Should this be the problem? Try inslalling DirectX 9c.

Was yours bought from the Adventure Shop as well, pizzo? I've seen posts from people with issues with the boxed version of the game as well, but not the sound crash one.

Edit: Oh, and both DirectX 9 and DirectX 10 are fully installed. I've also tried several different audio drivers, and both analog and digital output. Oh well, I'm buying a new laptop in a few weeks. I guess I'll try to install the game on that, and if I get desperate I've got an old stationary computer with WinXP and a SoundBlaster Live card under a pile of junk in the basement.

In my case it is a boxed version bought years ago (6 or 7, I think).
I have no sound issue. The olny problem (not so serious) is that I can´t use antialiasing, even seting up in the video drivers (I use an ATI RADEON integrated to the system.)

I installed a creative sound blaster card & same result. Up to chapter 4 now it's only taken me 3 months to get this far....LOL
sometimes the esc key works getting past the static & other times it will not go any further. Changing to from 1 to "0" in the ini file helps to get over a bad part. All I want to do is finish this nightmare & start playing black mirror 2.

i have to come to the conclusion the error is in this patched game.

sik I', playing on xp so i don't think trying on an older machine will work.

Perhaps one can play this new patched version on modern machines using a virtual machine such as VirtualPC or VMWare. Could work.
I have already played BM 2, and I can say it is not essential to play BM 1 first. However, the second game spoils the first because many things about BM 1 are revelated. So it is better to play BM 1 first, really.

Due to black mirror 2 being released it was then I hunted around for black mirror 1 & found it at the adventure shop for download, started BM1 & thought to myself give up on this.

started to play black mirror 2 & then they started to mention samuel from the first game so I put it hold & came back to BM1 to give it another go to solve the sound issue another go. I can understand not being able to play under vista & maybe win 7 but it should play under xp.

looks like the file has been patched by a Czech speaking person as words in the save files.txt has words in czech

I am almost finised now

I am attempting to run BM1 (downloaded from Adventure Shop recently) and am also getting scratchy sounds and crashes on Windows 7. I updated my DirectX drivers, but no luck.

I have searched all over the internet, but have not found a solution. I have pretty much given up playing because on the last crash I encountered, my original saved game was lost so not only did the game crash, but I had to start from the beginning again. I stopped played, but would try again if anyone finds a solution.

Thanks.

I gave the game one last try since I recently replaced the integrated sound card in my computer with a DAC (streams through usb, has its own drivers, and the RealTek chip is disabled). The game crashes at the exact same points, with the same symptoms. I've now tried the game on 4 different computers with different operating systems and hardware configurations. Two of them had Windows XP, which should be supported. I tried the game both with and without hardware acceleration for sound in Win XP.

I think I've finally given up now, but I'd really like to know if anyone has downloaded the game from the Adventure Shop and been able to play it without this issue. I don't mind not getting to play the game, or the wasted €15, but I would like to play Black Mirror 2 and 3, and I feel like I'd be missing out if I never played through the first game. It's definitely not worth suffering through crashes, workarounds to avoid them, and possibly ruining my speakers, though.

Same here Sik. I don't mind the loss of money, but I would like for the Adventure Shop to acknowledge the problem. Is it only the version they are serving up? If not, I would like to get my hands on another "legal" copy. I did contact there support staff originally. They did get back with me, but essentially said it is not their problem.

Thanks for the info though. It will save me alot of time.