Volume is reduced when running the game

Our compiled game works fne but for some reason Unreal Engine reduces the windows volume when it runs.
At first glance it sounds kind of cool and it does it nicely by fading the volume down smoothly but in practice its annoying for people who use TeamSpeak or listen to music while they play.

How can we control his behavior?

Hey bigzer,

A couple of quick questions, which version of the engine are you using when this issue occurs?

Do you have any sort of volume control options in your packaged game?

I can understand how this could be a bit troubling, but there is some insightful documentation about control the Volume levels within your game so they are clean and efficient. It is broken up into categories so you can find certain specific questions you might have, aside from this one, a bit easier.

Audio System Documentation

Cheers,

We are using 4.6

We have added in-game volume control two weeks ago to tweak environment, voices, sfx and music volumes, but the problem existed before that. When we started we actually hoped to find some sort of external volume ducking while doing the standard stuff but we couldn’t find anything about this. I’m 100% certain it happened on 4.5 too, but I’m unable accurately remember if this happened on previous versions as well.
Our project was initially based on Shootergame so there might be some reminiscent code we aren’t aware of but haven’t been able to find it yet.

Something that could give you a lead perhaps is that this windows volume ducking happens also right when you start the game; When the small UE4 engine window pops while the game is initialised it happens already once there!

I’m just thinking of something else now. When the game boots my webcam light turns on once, it means the micro is accessed and now that I think about it it could be caused by the SteamSDK. Additionally when we play the game the light is also on so it actually happens at the exact moments when the windows volume shuts down. If you tell me UE4 doesn’t do this, it can only be Steam’s SDK.

Hey again bigzer,

To me this sounds like it could be an external program or application taking precedent over the UE4 game. As in, the MS Windows sound properties are gaining control of the audio in order to check that sound with others programs running on your machine.

You could also be on to something there about Steam’s SDK. I will check with our audio team to see what could be happening here. I appreciate all the extra information as it helps us determine the location of the issue and how to go about resolving it as well.

Cheers,