As an idea here, could it be using another sound device in your system? I mean, the game is configured to use one, and you have sounds there, but the built-in player tries to use another. Do you, by any chance, have other output devices available in the Windows control panel? Maybe headphones jack or something like that. You can try disabling them. Or just make sure that "Preferred devices" is set up properly in Control Panel -> Multimedia applet. There's also a tick called "Use only preferred devies". You can also try that.

Thanks for trying to help me out! What you wrote sounded goo to me and I tried it out, but still no sound 🙁 I checked 'Use only preferred devices'
and disabled quite a few things that I didn't know but still it does not work. Your theory about that the audio player built in the game trying to use
some wrong device (=no sound output) and windows media player picks the correct one (=sound) sounds correct, though. But to my knowledge,
there is only one sound device built in the Thinkpad 600x, so I have no clue what the build-in player could try to use.

Comer sounds like a very sus game.
The sound hardware does make a huge difference. One slight variation in a card from one model to the next even in the same series can require some extensive driver tweaking. I personally haven't used the card you're using but sound hardware throughout the 90s had very different capabilities and faults depending on the card. What I'm saying is your drivers and hardware might be rubbing the game the wrong way.

Maybe a driver update could help, or if the card has a utility program installed, you can check the settings. Also make sure that all types of sounds (wav, midi, etc.) are at full volume. I think this is a windows setting.

Best of luck and I hope you can get Comer coming.

Thanks Cursed Derp, this is all true, but what I still don't understand that windows media player plays the intro.avi from the game-CD totally fine (video and audio work perfectly
after double-click on intro.avi which starts media player).
So obviously, both audio decoder and soundcard are capable to output the sound as intended. It just does not work when I start the game and the game itself 'starts'
the intro.avi file. So for some reason, the game code does something wrong when processing/calling the intro.avi file.

Also as mentioned, it is very. strange that I do have the exact problem with my Thinkpad R52 + Windows Xp. I have playes many games on that Laptopb with no
sound issues at all, but with Comer I have the same issue as I am having with my Thinkpad 600x + Win98SE.

MikeBn wrote on 2025-01-10, 16:32:

Thanks Cursed Derp, this is all true, but what I still don't understand that windows media player plays the intro.avi from the g […]
Show full quote

Thanks Cursed Derp, this is all true, but what I still don't understand that windows media player plays the intro.avi from the game-CD totally fine (video and audio work perfectly
after double-click on intro.avi which starts media player).
So obviously, both audio decoder and soundcard are capable to output the sound as intended. It just does not work when I start the game and the game itself 'starts'
the intro.avi file. So for some reason, the game code does something wrong when processing/calling the intro.avi file.

I've had similar experiences with Windows media player before. There's an opening video in the game Strife that I can't get to play in-game but only works when played by the media player.
I would reccomend checking the batch file that starts the game to see if you can change some settings to try to play sound during the cutscene. However this game is for windows and probably not started by a batch file.
However, check if theres a config file for the game. It might be looking for intro.avi in the wrong place. Make sure it's pointing to the right place on your drive

Hi Cursed Derp, no, it definitely finds the file as the video is played perfectly fine, just the sound is missing. I will search for a config, but I doubt I will find one as it is a windows game,
not a dos game. I am really confused, as my system can play the video+sound with media player, there must be a confusion. The game also does not have a bug as
audio works for him.

Ok, I actually found the solution by 2 actions:
a) bought a new TP 600e (I had TP600x) knowing that the sound was there with my friends TP600e which has a different sound-card
But at first, it still did not work! So I compared the sound entries in device manager and mine had some entries he did not have

b) I deactivated 'Crytsal Sound Fusion PCI Audio Accelerator (because my friend did not have this entry) - Crystal Sound Fusion
Virtual MPI-401 got also deactivated automatically then.

Then I had sound. I have no idea why this was effective. For some reason the Accelerator feature does not work with the intro sound

Note: I would not have bought the TP 600e just for that - I am notthat crazy. i wanted to buy it anway as I am missing a win95 Laptop. I prefer
using original devices instead of emulators (will make an exception though if I should start with MS-Dos/Windows 3.1 gaming, 4 Laptops are enough 😉

MikeBn wrote on 2025-01-12, 14:50:

Ok, I actually found the solution by 2 actions: a) bought a new TP 600e (I had TP600x) knowing that the sound was there with my […]
Show full quote

Ok, I actually found the solution by 2 actions:
a) bought a new TP 600e (I had TP600x) knowing that the sound was there with my friends TP600e which has a different sound-card
But at first, it still did not work! So I compared the sound entries in device manager and mine had some entries he did not have

b) I deactivated 'Crytsal Sound Fusion PCI Audio Accelerator (because my friend did not have this entry) - Crystal Sound Fusion
Virtual MPI-401 got also deactivated automatically then.

Then I had sound. I have no idea why this was effective. For some reason the Accelerator feature does not work with the intro sound

Note: I would not have bought the TP 600e just for that - I am notthat crazy. i wanted to buy it anway as I am missing a win95 Laptop. I prefer
using original devices instead of emulators (will make an exception though if I should start with MS-Dos/Windows 3.1 gaming, 4 Laptops are enough 😉

Hey congratulations on getting the game working! Sorry I didn't respond earlier. On my last reply I meant to say to check the configuration file for the sound file which might be separate from the video file. Comer is a Chinese game right? Never heard of it before you posted

Thanks, Cursed Deep. Comer is a 1998 from ShineStudios, I don't think it is a chinese game, but I am not 100% sure. Maybe what you mean is the game VOID, which is quite
an obscure Japanese Myst Clone (many other games with the name Void exists, do not mix it up with one of them)
The only existing version (to my knowlegde) of the Japanese game Void has japanese text in the game, but the voice in the game is english. Starnge mix. We just started playing it, not sure
if it is possible to beat the game as a non-japanese speaker. There is a playthrough on Youtube - I hate to consult walkthroughs, but here I will make an exception if I am stuck
too long. Also the game is hard to run, it starts without any problems but at some point the game fails to load a jpg. because it is in a CD-folder with japanese characters in its name
and englisch or german versions of Windows 98 cannot access that folder (windows shows the name as two square-symbols). As a workaround, I copied the folder on HD, renamed it
to some random name and when the game does not find the original japanese folder on the CD, a window appears where you can search your hard disk for the file and open it. To my surprise this works, after opening the .jpg one can contiue playing the game. Weird.

I know of all this because me and my gaming buddy love myst-like games and after having played all the well-known ones (Myst-series, Schizm, Rhem etc etc) we
have started to search for less well known ones, Comer & Void are two of those.

MikeBn wrote on 2025-01-12, 14:50:

Crystal Sound Fusion Virtual MPI-401 got also deactivated automatically then.

You mean MPU-401? That's a MIDI device.
The game is probably playing .mid files on top of the video. They may be somewhere in the game's folders.
If it was selecting this device for playback, and it's muted/not connected to speakers, then disabling it has forced the game to pick the remaining sound device.

Comer was published in Hong Kong by Kyle Choi.

Hi feda,

what you wrote sounds quite plausible but then again in some readme-file of the game, it says 'No MIDI required'. Also, I don't think
there are additional midi files for the video because - as I mentioned - there is the file intro.avi in the game folder and when I play it
with media player (so, outside the game), the sound is there, so there is no additional midi-file used, right?

I really would like to understand why deactivating 'Crystsal Sound Fusion PCI Audio Accelerator (which automatically decativated Crystal Sound Fusion
Virtual MPI-401 as well) solved the problem.

What is also strange is that the other sound entries of the new TP 600e I bought have name likes 'Crystal PnP Audio System' . My friend,
who also has a TP-600e has only those Crystal PnP Audio entries and the ''Crystsal Sound Fusion PCI Audio Accelerator' is missing EVEN THOUGH
we used the same sound driver from the thinkpads.com/support site. Shouldn't the entries be identical then? My friend, on the other
hand also has an entry called 'ThinkPad Wave Table MidSynth-Device 'which I don't have - why? It is a total mess. For starters, I would really like
to understand what each entry means, which entries are directly related to the hardware which at the end produces the sound and which
entries are something totally different (For example, I never mentioned the entry 'ThinkPad PhoneLine Device' because I assume this
has nothing to do with the sound hardware at all, but is something related to the internal modem)

This thread does not have a lot of followers, but if any sound hardware expert reads this, I would appreciate more explanations....

And you are right about the game Comer, so CursedDeep was right that it is an asian game, but luckily it was translated 100% to english (or developed in english) , unlike
VOID with japanese text only (and english speakers, strange mix).