"Crowd noise" in busy zoos missing

[ZooForce11]

Hello, I recently installed Zoo Tycoon (Complete Collection) after many years of not playing and started to go through the scenarios. From the beginning I noticed that something felt "off" in my zoos but I couldn't really point my finger at it. When I was watching videos of playthroughs on YouTube I started to realize what felt so wierd in my game: the "crowd" sound-effect that plays when you have many guests is completely missing. Normally you hear lots of people talking, kids screaming and so on but that sound effect is completely absent in my game apparently. All I hear is the standard map ambient background sounds (cars honking on city maps, seagulls and waves on marine maps or the occasional wind howling on desert maps) and the sounds of stands / restaurants etc, animals or workers doing their thing - but the guests are silent. 

Now that I realized what is missing it really stands out and annoys me because it's killing the mood when building a large and packed zoo when all you hear is the occasional lonely  wind howling sound effect. 

 

I'm not sure what to do in order to fix it, I installed the game from my old CD that I bought in 2005 or so and it has worked normally without any errors. 

 

Could this somehow be related to the fact that I am playing the game on a modern system? I already played around with the settings but nothing has fixed it so far. 

[(Admin)Savannahjan]

Hello ZooNoise11, welcome to Tek!  We're so glad you joined.

 

I've had this issue before with the zoo noise missing.  Do you have a lot of downloads in the game?  I wonder if the game could be overloaded so that the processor can only operate some of the elements at one time?  This could be totally wrong.  I'm sure you will get more input on this problem.

[ZooForce11]

6 hours ago, Savannahjan said:

I've had this issue before with the zoo noise missing.  Do you have a lot of downloads in the game?  I wonder if the game could be overloaded so that the processor can only operate some of the elements at one time?

Hey, thanks for answering! Yeah I have quiet a few mods downloaded, I was already thinking about the possibility that these could have been causing this. I'll try removing them and then loading up a few of my save games to see if the problem persists! 

[ZooForce11]

Alright I tested it out with all mods removed but that didn't seem to be the problem because the "silence" persists in my zoos. Really weird.

 

EDIT: Eh... even weirder, I have somehow just fixed it I guess. I literally just removed the "sounds.ztd" file from the main directory and replaced it with a "fresh" version copied directly from the main directory on the CD. Now the sounds start to play after a few seconds. Both files are identical in size, but somehow the "old" file doesn't work (tested it again by switching them out). I'm so glad I decided to switch interests and didn't become a software developer, weird problems in programs with unusual fixes like that are just absolutely confusing haha.

[(Designer)Z.Z.]

Hi! Welcome to Tek!

Im so glad you were able to figure out the problem! :D

[fountain]

And you're certain the guests were quiet because of the sound file and not because the all the zookeepers had their pants on backwards.     I'll accept that. 

 

Welcome to Tek!