[Openal] alcOpenDevice crashing

[Garin Hiebert]

>
> i cannot get any debugging info, everything just crashes. i can call 
> other al functions just fine from the plugin but i cannot open a 
> device for some reason. is it possible that an application, such as 
> the vm in this case, could lock up directx?? but in that case would 
> openal not default to wavout??

Given a NULL string for the device name, alcOpenDevice will try out 
DirectSound 3D first, then if it finds that the system doesn't have 
acceleration or enough voices it will try DirectSound, and if that 
fails (which will normally only be on NT4), it will move to MMSYSTEM.  
It could be that one of the DS stages is causing the problem, as you 
suspect.  You can test that by passing in "MMSYSTEM" as the device 
specifier in alcOpenDevice.

> any info would be appreciated. this is frustrating because i cannot 
> get to any alError because everything crashes. i know there is no 
> problem with openal on my system, i have written test programs, i just 
> cannot open a device in this particular situation.
>

If the above doesn't work, then you will probably be stuck compiling 
your own AL library to do some debugging.  If the above, _does_ work, 
it would actually still be interesting to find out exactly what is 
crashing -- it would be nice to find out if there is a way for 
alcOpenDevice to avoid the crash and get to MMSYSTEM to still provide 
functionality.

Garin