Unending battle music bug been around since last year, but still exists?!

realsickofbugstbh

First of all: I've read through the "known bugs" list and couldn't find this here, which is strange considering many people have experienced the issue..

So I made a new game and have been playing it for an hour now (an elven archer), and the battle music never goes away after a fight. I did all the quests at Candlekeep and even did the tutorial battle with a temporary party, which I normally never do. This is the first game where I've encountered the issue, and I don't know why it's appeared, but it's not very tempting having to recreate a character with a great 93 stat roll just to _maybe_ not encounter the same problem again.. This is driving me CRAZY, to have to listen to that stressful theme when I'm not even in combat, and it definitely ruins a lot of the gameplay experience for me as each area has its own soundtrack that normally plays. It's not very fun to explore an area with combat music instead of the intended background ambient theme...

What's worse: After googling the issue it seems that Beamdog has had this issue with BG:EE for MORE THAN SIX MONTHS! Six months and no fix? Yet Icewind Dale is out. How about you fix one thing before you make another? We pay good money for our games, and we expect them to work as intended. Bugs are find. We understand that games have bugs and issues. But when they are around for more than half a year without being fixed then something is wrong. I'm not going to call the developers lazy, beacuse I don't think that they are, but I do think that we deserve a hotfix for this asap, and not having to wait for a scheduled patch months from now or whatever.... I never ever even once had this problem, or any of the other "new" problems with the Original Baldur's Gate, so I'm questioning more and more why I wasted my money on a supposed enhanced edition. Was it only the bugs that were enhanced?

We need a fix for this, and if people have had to suffer through this since last year, then it is way overdue. I'm not interested in tedious workarounds, such as CONSTANTLY having to save and reload after every single battle just to get the normal music back (which works, but is extremely tedious and not practical). Please fix this once and for all... I want to enjoy my game the way it was intended to work.

Balrog99

I'm not as upset as the OP but I do agree that this bug is really annoying. If it really starts driving me nuts I'll do he save/reload thing but it'd be really nice to not have to do that...

oldman42

^This.

http://forum.baldursgate.com/discussion/39473/known-9318-battle-music-doesnt-stop-after-fight-has-ended#latest

http://forum.baldursgate.com/discussion/34247/needs-repro-combat-music-does-not-end#latest

Please, fix this +1.

adragon87

Yes. Please do. I have found it pretty annoying as well.

reedmilfam

Nowhere near as annoyed as others, but this one does happen during my games, from time to time. It isn't all of the battles, which is strange.

SharGuidesMyHand

My suspicion is that it happens as a result of pausing at certain points during battles.

For me, it's intolerably annoying - one of my favorite aspects of BG1 is listening to the scenic, non-combat music while I'm exploring. This bug is the reason that I don't play BG1:EE using the most recent patch.

deltago

How is pressing Ctrl+q then Ctrl+l extremely tedious?

I personally usually save after very skirmish anyway. If the battle music is still playing another 3 seconds to load does not hurt my experience.

There is no such thing as a quick fix with infinity engine games. Changing one thing can ultimately change another unrelated thing in the game. Beamdog decided after listening to community feedback that they would release larger patches at a slower pace to make sure nothing game breaking gets introduced into the game again like previous patches did. Sadly, newer bugs still make their way into the game (like this one) during a patch. It'd be great if they cauht everything, but with this engine, that seems to be unrealistic.

Releasing other products like IWD allows for a steady stream of income for the company to allow them to continue to work on all previously released games.

With all that said, I do hope it gets fixed in the next patch whenever that is (hopefully before Adventure Y hits)

adragon87

For me it happens more often on the iPad version then it does on PC. It still happens on both though. That may be just a coincidence.

shawne

Complaining about a bug that's been around for only six months? You must be new here.

joluv

realsickofbugstbh said:

[...] me CRAZY [...]

I don't think this level of indignation is merited. As other people have said, this is a bug with a *completely trivial* workaround. Pressing q and l to reload is easy, and the game barely hesitates; deltago is being very generous with "3 seconds." The devs are handling this in the responsible way, which is waiting to address it in a well tested patch instead of risking breaking something important by rushing out a hotfix for such a low-priority bug.

elminster

As I understand it sometimes pressing Q and then L doesn't stop the bug. Instead you have to re-start the game. But its possible I'm mistaken here.

adragon87

elminster said:

As I understand it sometimes pressing Q and then L doesn't stop the bug. Instead you have to re-start the game. But its possible I'm mistaken here.

You are not mistaken.

joluv said:

realsickofbugstbh said:

[...] me CRAZY [...]

I don't think this level of indignation is merited. As other people have said, this is a bug with a *completely trivial* workaround. Pressing q and l to reload is easy, and the game barely hesitates; deltago is being very generous with "3 seconds." The devs are handling this in the responsible way, which is waiting to address it in a well tested patch instead of risking breaking something important by rushing out a hotfix for such a low-priority bug.

I personally don't mind waiting for the next patch. I don't want a fix that creates more problems. I do hope it is in the next patch though.

rashkae

What I haven't seen on these forums so far is a reliable way to reproduce the bug. After an insane number of replays that would make anyone question my mental health, I can provide this:

There are 2 (or 3) conditions that need to be met for this bug to trigger.

1. A new member needs to be added to the party. Even if they are kicked out right immediately after, (or in the same dialogue, if the party is already full.

2. Without quitting the game, you need to change area into another area that is vulnerable to the bug. I haven't made an inventory of vulnerable vs. invulnerable areas, but most outdoor areas seems to count.

3. If you haven't quit / re-loaded the game between new party member addition and area change, on the next fight, the battle music will get stuck.

The most common places where many players will encounter this bug is in the first area East of Gorion's battle, (Imoen automatically counts as an added party member, and Xzan/Montaron if you recruited those two.) Also, if you recruit Jaheira/Khalid, then leave the Friendly Arm and battle the Hobgolins outside.

shawne

adragon87 said:

I personally don't mind waiting for the next patch. I don't want a fix that creates more problems. I do hope it is in the next patch though.

That logic doesn't hold up, though - patches will always create new problems, that's just how the Infinity Engine works. It's a question of degrees and priorities: having battle music constantly blasting in your ears can be really, really annoying, to the point where you might not want to continue playing. A bug that irritating should be resolved sooner rather than later.

Shin

This can be resolved (albeit by relatively brutal surgery) by going into the music folder and removing all of the battle music, i.e. the folders starting with b containing a multitude of small files, as compared to regular music which consists of one of a few larger files.