An issue with sound not working with some Android browsers

Hi Ashley ... Tom and the rest of the Construct team

Recently I filed a bug report about sound not working in the default browser on a Galaxy S7 (also galaxy S8 I think), and some other android phones I've tested at a local shop.

Ashley was very helpful and explained that this problem lies with Samsung as there is a bug in their browser and that he lied an issue with them.

Just for context, I love everything that the Scirra team are doing and also own a business license for C3, as I'm planning on using it quite seriously.

The problem I have here is that this bug (from my tests) seem to affect a lot of phones. Even if it is only Samsung phones - that is a really big slice of the pie. My main reason for using C3 is the reason that it works so well across a bunch of devices and I can be confident people will be able to play my game without issues.

I understand the Scirra can't keep on top of every single thing, but I do think that this sort of bug is quite major and there needs to be some sort of workaround. Perhaps using a different sound format that WILL work (as a backup).

It is quite scary to think that, my games working or not on certain devices lies in the hands of a manufacturer.

I again want to stress that I love Scirra's products, but in this case I am quite concerned, as I have no idea how long Samsung will take to fix this problem.

Thank you!

Hi Ashley and Tom

Just wanted to bump this topic to see whether there might be some workarounds to the above problem later - e.g.. using alternate sound files to support these buggy browsers?

I know you guys are busy so thanks in advance for your reply!

There's nothing much we can do about browser bugs, Samsung has to fix their browser.

IIRC a workaround is just to delete all .opus files from your project and use a different format. You can also use the same formats C2 uses, i.e. Ogg Vorbis and AAC, but you'll have to encode them yourself.

Hi Ashley

Thank you for the reply. When I try to import OGG into my project, C3 tries encoding it again.

So basically C3 is not letting me import OGG file, which are the ones I need for Android.

What can I do about this?

You try to go to Settings>Developer Options and look for an option to toggle between NuPlayer and awesomePlayer. Try toggling between the two and see if that helps.

driving-directionsmaps.com

Ninjadoodle most audio formats are converted to opus at the moment, but if you include an aac audio file with the m4a extension it will be included as is.

I believe the construct runtime will give preference to the opus file if it exists and can be played ( which the samsung browser is falsely claiming that it can be ). So you would have to include only the m4a file in your project to workaround the samsung bug.

As for not being able to include ogg files; the runtime includes a opus decoder that is intended to make up for platforms that don't support it yet. However, the decoder currently has a few issues which I am trying to fix. So I'd recommended to include aac as well in the meantime if your targeting a platform that doesn't support webm opus.

Hi Nepeo or Ashley or Tom

Thank you for your reply. I've tried including an m4a sound file only, and while this works on iOS, I seem to be getting no sound in the Samsung internet browser I'm having issues with.

I'm currently testing another html5 game framework, and I'm able to include both m4a and ogg file and have no issues with sound playing in all browsers I've tried.

My question is - if it's so simple for me to get working in an open source framework, why is this such an issue with C3?

Just curious as I'd like to find a workaround to play sounds across all browsers - even the buggy ones

Thank you in advance!

Am I missing something here? After importing sounds I get both .ogg and m4a files in my media folder and I have no problems hearing sounds on my Galaxy s7 edge. Works in both, Chrome and Samsung's default internet browser.

We're trying to make the jump to Opus everywhere for Construct 3, so that you no longer need to worry about having multiple audio formats. We're having a few problems with decoding Opus on platforms that don't natively support it though, and Samsung Internet falsely claiming to support Opus natively is another issue. We're aware of these issues and hope to have them sorted out soon.

The runtime will pick any other natively supported audio file over Opus if there is one, so you should be able to import AAC and delete the Opus file and have correct audio playback work. The Samsung Internet browser says it can play AAC so that should work as a workaround - please file a bug report if it doesn't (but who knows, it already lies about Opus, maybe it lies about others...)

Hi Nepeo / Ashley

Thank you very much for your explanation and your help with this issue. I've made another test including only *.m4a sound files, and I can now get my levels to load and play sound on the Galaxy phones I've tested.

Thanks again for the workaround!