DiRT Rally Sound and controller problems

[Kennett Ylitalo]

Bought this one over the weekend and oh boy, i should've picked this one up long time ago. Superb game. But....


First problem is that controller settings aren't stored. I have to do the same changes EACH time i start the game and that is NOT acceptable! It doesn't take long but god damn it is annoying. There seems to be NO saving of controller presets! Is this true?

Second problem is about sound. This is a bit longer, you'll see why...


On snow track, mainly Sweden i have terrible stutter on sound. I've traced it to "compact snow" but so far, messing around with config files don't solve it. I managed to switch the snow sound to sand but that did nothing, i am old modder and dabbled on game development and by happen stance also sound engineer (yes, i know..what are the odds) so this kind of thing is not new to me. Google turns out dead questions and no solutions. I could maybe open the associated bnk file with WWise but my laziness of learning it bites me in the ass so that is the definitely last option. Most likely i could fix this fast with proper access to game files, hell, i'd take all road noises off rather that stutter...

Has anyone got a solution to this? The stutter is so bad that it is unplayable. It is full on silence back to full on sound, similar to digital clipping or buffering issues. It is DEFINITELY relative to the suspension/tire impact strenght but it is not audio routing related; nothing in anywhere in audio settings, not in windows nor in game makes any changes to the amount of stutter. So that points to data side of things.

I'm quite helpless at the moment, there is not a lot of information about this game. I haven't yet checked modding but somehow i feel that since i have basic realtek audiochip, popular mobo, win7 64bit... this could be very common problem.

I am running on super low graphic setting and there is maybe some FPS stutter at the same time but if it is, it is more a "jitter" than a real FPS drop. And it is not consistent, the audio glitch happens even when it is totally smooth so i'm guessing the audio starts to choke up the system (too many samples at one time is one possibility but changing this setting did nothing).

 

[Elaphe]

I cannot help you with the sound issue, but maybe uninstalling and deleting all config files manually (you know... the game files under the program files folder, my documents folder, etc.) could help.

The controller issue is an old bug. If you ever remapped the pause key, then your are doomed. There's nothing you can do then, but completelly uninstall your game and install it again. If this is not the problem, be sure that your gaming devices are always plugged into the same usb ports. You can also use a program called joyids to check and control the gaming devices ids. In my case, my controls are saved but I have to close my Windows session after plugging my devices and then launch the game. Unless I do this, the game will ignore my wheel and the controls will be set to the keyboard mapping.

 

[Kennett Ylitalo]

Ok, that explains the controller bug, that is quite odd bug to have on a final product, in a genre that has the most various set of controllers, pause being quite important in rally games..

Sound is odd, there have been some that have had the same problem but not enough that there would be a workaround..

edit: wow.. i started the game and no sound problem.. I did only one change; i had also huge problem in TF2 all of a sudden ... yeah, tf2, so i knew i had bigger problem... i cleared my graphics card drivers (used the uninstaller app for perfectly clean install) and installed new ones.. No sound issues and i'm quite sure i don't have to play on ultralow anymore either. Too bad i'm having a bit of fever so can't go full on driving mode but god damn, there are no technical issues that stops me either. I'll check on that controller bug more but this is already more than a win; for a moment i thought i can't drive any snow tracks.