Abe's Oddysee has inverted stereo channels!

[hexaae]

Did nobody else notice Abe's Oddysee (PC) has inverted left-right channels???
Hear carefully, it has this bug never fixed for ages!

It needs a fix, definitely...

[Wil]

PC or PlayStation?

[Fuzzle Guy]

You sure your TV's not upsidedown?

[hexaae]

PC
Playstation version must be OK since nobody ever noticed this bug in all these years...

[Fuzzle Guy]

Why don't you just swap your speakers positions when you play the game?

[hexaae]

Geeehhh
That's not properly "a solution". The exe needs a patch.

[OddjobAbe]

It certainly is a solution. Not the solution you're looking for, eh? I'm sure that someone will come up with something a lot more complicated and confusing than that, don't worry.

I doubt that a patch is around the corner, I'm afraid. But I could be wrong. I know nothing about patching .exe files. Never worked with them properly.

[hexaae]

It's a great platform game (I'm an old Amiga user and so...) but this bug is very annoying... very strange nobody reported it in all these years. Probably a very few PC gamers have it though (I think 95% Abe fans have Playstation) and in the year it was published the Internet was very different from today...

I still hope for a fix (official or unofficial) however!

I'd like to hear what the authors of the game (do they read this forum?) have to say about this.

[Xavier]

more then 7 years I've been on this forum an this is the first time I've heard of that bug. And I have only played the games on PC. Are you sure the problem isn't on your machine?

and don't expect a patch soon, expect a re-release of the game.

[hexaae]

Yes I'm sure. Strange but true.
There is the demo available on Oddworld's website. I bet it also suffers this bug.
Consider that happens only for the AbeWin.exe version (the Win version). The DOS version on the same CD seems OK (I've tested it briefly with DOSBox, but I'm not 100% sure)...
Somewhere on the Net (have to find again the URL) it was also reported (after A LOT of search I did)...
-2 mins later-
Here is it: http://cedegawiki.sweetleafstudios.c...'s_Oddysee

I repeat, this game was released in '97-'98, for PC was a bit unknown, the bug is only in the Win executable version... I guess all these things contributed to leave the bug unsolved for all these years. At that time the Internet was also very different and there wasn't a closer contact with the development software houses as today with forums, ADSL fast connections, official sites etc. etc....

[Nate]

I noticed this also, last time I played. I figured it had been reported long ago so I didn't mention it.

[Wil]

I’m shocked that nobody has mentioned this before. I never noticed it myself, but it does appear to be true. It’s not that annoying. You have to listen carefully, it’s not particularly extreme, and obviously it’s not so noticeable if nobody has mentioned it here in seven years.

The stereo in AO is quite limited, anyway. I can’t notice any stereo noises coming from objects that are onscreen, only noises made offscreen, such as by Sligs that patrol back and forth. In those cases, Sligs on the screen to the left can be heard more out the right speaker, and vice versa. But the effect is so minimal, the sound only comes ever so slightly off‐centre anyway, so it’s hardly noticeable. This is probably why no one has noticed.

All the same, this is really quite interesting on several layers, so thanks for bringing it up, hexaae.

[hexaae]

Yes... the part when you listen more clearly it has been swapped is where there are the electric shock barriers to switch off.
I'm a real platform lover (started with Amiga back in '80-'90) who plays paying max attention to this kind of games! I love good platforms!

[hexaae]

Does the new (?) version of Abe's Oddysee PC on Steam have the stereo bug (inverted left-right channels) still?
Will ever be fixed (Steam can then auto-update the game you buy)?

[Nate]

I'm not sure whether it's been fixed. I imagine that any bugfixes they put out would either have to be tiny things or major, game-crashing bugs because OWI no longer have a team of programmers on staff.

[DarkHoodness]

lol, you mean none of you knew about this?

I noticed when I first played the PC version of AO way back in 2000. This bug also affects the PC version of AE too - I think it's a programming mistake with the game engine when they converted the game from the PSX version. But it's not really that much of a big deal 'cause it doesn't affect gameplay very much, if at all (it's rare that you hear stuff off-screen), so I never bothered mentioning it - Perhaps it's the same with everyone else who noticed it.

Swapping your speakers/headphones around is a way to solve the problem if you're REALLY that bothered by it, but then you'd have to put up with L/R Stereo sound reversal in the FMVs instead.

[hexaae]

Yeah
As I feared, also Exoddus has this bug?
That's a pity. There was a user who disassembled the AbeWin.exe, Paul, but disappeared from this forum on April 2008.
Maybe he could try to make an unofficial quick-fix. I tried to send him some PMs but got no reply (maybe he didn't link the PM to his private email)

Yep, swapping speakers is not even a valid workaround (boring anyway) because videos have correct stereo instead...

[HTML_Earth]

I bought the games on Steam, so yes the problem is not fixed in the Steam versions.

[hexaae]

I bought the games on Steam, so yes the problem is not fixed in the Steam versions.

[hexaae]

The Admins of this site know if it's planned a fix for the Steam version by the Oddworld Inhabitants?

[Wil]

Nope, haven't heard anything about it. As far as I know, the games are transformed into something Steam can cope with without any actual changes to them.

[Xizmik]

cool o_O.