Background Process - Need the sound to stay active

[Shadowcreed]

Hey everyone.

Currently I'm doing quite a bit of PvP in Dark souls - however as some may know it can take a while for someone to connect. In the mean time I alt-tab and watch some youtube vids or whatnot.
The problem is that I can't really detect when somebody does actually connect to me. The game offers a nice distinct sound that plays when this happens but because it's in the background Windows won't play it. Is there a program that allows background processes to play their sounds regardless?

 

[Quaxar]

Unless you can find it in in either the game's options or your Windows sound mixer I don't think there is. Have you had a look in the mixer when the game was minimized to see if its slider is affected?
Assuming Win 7, no idea if Vista already has that and XP surely hasn't.

 

[Shadowcreed]

Unless you can find it in in either the game's options or your Windows sound mixer I don't think there is. Have you had a look in the mixer when the game was minimized to see if its slider is affected?
Assuming Win 7, no idea if Vista already has that and XP surely hasn't.

I checked the sound mixer but this is WAY to limited. It can only adjust the sound levels but does not affect the focus of sound played in. (As a side note- these sliders don't save their values either when you restart Windows, why didn't anyone think of this?)
The game itself doesn't have any proper sound options either. Surely there's a way?
Also yeah I'm using Windows 7. Sorry for leaving that out, kinda silly of me.

 

[DoPo]

OK, I've got Dark Souls but I've not played it that much yes. Still, my flatmate is doing PvP quite often (on PC, yes) and what he does is put the controller down on the table next to him (any hard surface, really) and it starts to vibrate when somebody enters the game. Well that assumes you've got a controller. Also, it's an Xbox 360 controller, not sure if all others do it.

Probably not exactly what you're looking for but it's at least a solution. Sorry, can't help more - I know of the focus issue (through other applications) but I've not found a fix.

 

[Shadowcreed]

OK, I've got Dark Souls but I've not played it that much yes. Still, my flatmate is doing PvP quite often (on PC, yes) and what he does is put the controller down on the table next to him (any hard surface, really) and it starts to vibrate when somebody enters the game. Well that assumes you've got a controller. Also, it's an Xbox 360 controller, not sure if all others do it.

Probably not exactly what you're looking for but it's at least a solution. Sorry, can't help more - I know of the focus issue (through other applications) but I've not found a fix.

I see. I'm not using the controller for my game though as there's mods that fix the various problems keyboard and mouse have. Maybe I can try something with the vibration option, I'll have a look at that.
Hard to imagine there's no program that can change the sound-focus for Windows though. Surely this is a fairly common feature request?

 

[DoPo]

Hard to imagine there's no program that can change the sound-focus for Windows though. Surely this is a fairly common feature request?

Well, it's not really a Windows issue as such, it's more of on application basis. Some work fine when they aren't on focus, others don't - some games may pause or the sound may not work (as you experienced) and similar. And there might be something that just keeps them on focus but...not (keep bringing the focus on the window and you can still use the other stuff), however, I haven't found it. Should be mentioned that I also didn't look really thoroughly, just didn't find anything in Google in, like, one or two tries. It wasn't really that important to me.

 

[Shadowcreed]

Hard to imagine there's no program that can change the sound-focus for Windows though. Surely this is a fairly common feature request?

Well, it's not really a Windows issue as such, it's more of on application basis. Some work fine when they aren't on focus, others don't - some games may pause or the sound may not work (as you experienced) and similar. And there might be something that just keeps them on focus but...not (keep bringing the focus on the window and you can still use the other stuff), however, I haven't found it. Should be mentioned that I also didn't look really thoroughly, just didn't find anything in Google in, like, one or two tries. It wasn't really that important to me.

Hmm, I sort of figured it was an OS responsibility. So if its the application there's not much that can be done I guess. Can a dll injection do something like this? Just throwing ideas around at this point.

 

[DoPo]

Hard to imagine there's no program that can change the sound-focus for Windows though. Surely this is a fairly common feature request?

Well, it's not really a Windows issue as such, it's more of on application basis. Some work fine when they aren't on focus, others don't - some games may pause or the sound may not work (as you experienced) and similar. And there might be something that just keeps them on focus but...not (keep bringing the focus on the window and you can still use the other stuff), however, I haven't found it. Should be mentioned that I also didn't look really thoroughly, just didn't find anything in Google in, like, one or two tries. It wasn't really that important to me.

Hmm, I sort of figured it was an OS responsibility. So if its the application there's not much that can be done I guess. Can a dll injection do something like this? Just throwing ideas around at this point.

I suppose. I'm not sure. There could be a registry hack for it, too. I don't know what exactly governs what happens when application is out of focus. I sort of assume it's "nothing" unless specifically implemented by the devs (or fameworks could override it with some other defaults - Dark Souls is using the ), so perhaps they catch the ChangeFocus event (or whatever it's called) and do stuff with in that case.

At any rate - the only solution I can think of right now, aside from making the backgroung window on focus (dunno if that's even possible) is to have other windows floating always on top. So you will have the game running and in focus, and another window, the browser or something, on top of that (ideally, one you won't actually interact with much - you can still scroll or watch videos, though). When somebody enters, you can just minimise the other app and play normally otherwise, you maximise it then click back into Dark Souls to focus it. Or if you can have a process constantly stealing focus and returning it to DS (like...every second or several seconds or something), you'll be able to click more in the foreground window. Dunno if that's easily doable though.

Actually this [http://www.pcworld.com/article/218511/Windows.html] seems to be an utility for keeping stuff always on top. Dunno how well it works, but it's worth checking out. It also mentions it was done with Autohotkey so maybe a more custom made solution for DS canbe cobbled together with that. Never really used Autohotkey, I don't know what functionality and capabilities it offers.

 

[Shadowcreed]

Hard to imagine there's no program that can change the sound-focus for Windows though. Surely this is a fairly common feature request?

Well, it's not really a Windows issue as such, it's more of on application basis. Some work fine when they aren't on focus, others don't - some games may pause or the sound may not work (as you experienced) and similar. And there might be something that just keeps them on focus but...not (keep bringing the focus on the window and you can still use the other stuff), however, I haven't found it. Should be mentioned that I also didn't look really thoroughly, just didn't find anything in Google in, like, one or two tries. It wasn't really that important to me.

Hmm, I sort of figured it was an OS responsibility. So if its the application there's not much that can be done I guess. Can a dll injection do something like this? Just throwing ideas around at this point.

I suppose. I'm not sure. There could be a registry hack for it, too. I don't know what exactly governs what happens when application is out of focus. I sort of assume it's "nothing" unless specifically implemented by the devs (or fameworks could override it with some other defaults - Dark Souls is using the ), so perhaps they catch the ChangeFocus event (or whatever it's called) and do stuff with in that case.

At any rate - the only solution I can think of right now, aside from making the backgroung window on focus (dunno if that's even possible) is to have other windows floating always on top. So you will have the game running and in focus, and another window, the browser or something, on top of that (ideally, one you won't actually interact with much - you can still scroll or watch videos, though). When somebody enters, you can just minimise the other app and play normally otherwise, you maximise it then click back into Dark Souls to focus it. Or if you can have a process constantly stealing focus and returning it to DS (like...every second or several seconds or something), you'll be able to click more in the foreground window. Dunno if that's easily doable though.

Actually this [http://www.pcworld.com/article/218511/Windows.html] seems to be an utility for keeping stuff always on top. Dunno how well it works, but it's worth checking out. It also mentions it was done with Autohotkey so maybe a more custom made solution for DS canbe cobbled together with that. Never really used Autohotkey, I don't know what functionality and capabilities it offers.

Thanks for the helpful information, I can see some use for that program you linked - though it doesn't do exactly what I'm trying to get done this is a close 2nd solution.
I'm amazed there's nothing like this yet though