Chrome On The Dev Branch (version 66) May Block Audio For Unity WebGL

So I fired up one of our applications today in chrome (version 66) and mysteriously there was no audio. The applications worked fine in other browsers and sites like youtube played audio fine in Chrome. So what gives? Well I checked the console and...



That links to this page here: https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2017/09/autoplay-policy-changes#webaudio

I guess there's no way around this huh? This is probably "by design" according to Chrome. Is there a way that unity could let us "restart" the AudioContext as a callback to an event listener? I really don't know how we will get around this issue...

 

Do you have a workaround or a fixe ready for the 2018.x version?
It look that chrome will release the version 66 in a week : https://www.chromestatus.com/features/schedule
So what we do if the audio do not work?
Thank you

 

Like the google update is planned for the next week and that i doubt that like per magic you will release a patch for that, can you tell us if a workaround is possible on the Audio.js file present on Editor\Data\PlaybackEngines\WebGLSupport\BuildTools\lib ?

Thank you.

 

Hello,

Sorry, but this solution do not help.

After a few test, it seem that :

- If you click the page where the game is loading, then we do not get the warning message in the console and the audio should work.

- If you do not click the page (just do not click the page or move your mouse till loading is complete), then we get the warning message in the console and the audio should not work.

Tested on chrome canary 67.0.3394.0
The both build do not contain any audio.

Link with captureAllKeyboardInput set to true : http://www.asr-games.net/testing/BuildTrue/
Link with captureAllKeyboardInput set to false : http://www.asr-games.net/testing/BuildFalse/

The result is the same in the both build. It's maybe a window focus problem?
If the user do not interact with the page where the game is loading, then chrome shut down the audio and we have no way to get it back (we have to refresh the page).

Why you do not add a preloader (like on most video player or 3d viewer) that cover the content of the game and wait after a click on the game view in order to init the _JS_Sound_Init() (info here https://forum.unity.com/threads/uni...-but-stalls-on-chrome-66.525935/#post-3456219)

For me, it's a critical issue as chrome is used by 80% of our players.

This problem has been reported 2 months ago by kognito and we are at the same point. I'm sorry, but the unity team are doing something wrong somewhere in term of communication.

The unity staff said working or been in contact with the google team but google have annouced this audio change in September 2017 and we are still talking about that.....

Thank you

 

We can confirm that the suggested workaround did not fix the problem for us, either. Is there some additional requirement?

 

Are you serious? I think that you need to stop drinking coffee and start working.

You are a complet team working on the webgl stuff and no one of you are able to find a workaround before an internal fixe?

It's an april fool or what???

As simple hobbyist, it take me 2 hours yesterday to fixe this issue and nothing in 2 months for you??

Can i generate an invoice to Unity because i have lost 2 hours with my wife and son because of some lazy guys?

It's really unbelievable to see that, really crazy .....

Sorry for this message, but that webgl story with unity start to piss me off.

There you go ...... https://www.asr-games.net/testing/buildbutton

Is that hard?

 

It works! A little brute force, but it works!

 

Can we update the live games(non development) without needing to rebuild from unity? We have a lot of games with web license bought from the developers(ofc without source code), so wanted to know if we can have this workaround without the needing of extra "Play" button ahead. @Marco-Trivellato

 

FYI the chrome release is now live. Thanks again @Marco-Trivellato for the workaround. Looking forward to seeing it in a patch release!

 

Is this in a patch release yet?

we are being overwhelmed with the number of support tickets coming in right now.

 

We cant read that minified file, any way to read and make changes to this file ?

 

I think he means that, yeah, indeed this minified code is difficult to read once built: [EXAMPLE]....

‹Ò(ìZ AudioLinkTest.asm.framework.unityweb UnityWeb Compressed Content (gzip) Ìi{½ñ{Ù¶.Öð²Éc;NêÖv\oÚº”gµ½ °”]|ÓßÞ9tí…ÁMû´oc´Òh4’F£Ñh$•¯§£^„£òqØŸ|»4û‡®¬ñÄ?›Ž¬vu<nËÒžÝy“ÒtďŸƒþÅþð>]™3'Íj?=™(‚ëò+¯£¾ÿà÷?íÙ³^8ŠBˆ„7eëPÆ—‚¨4
ã’wç¯é¥O^ì•îƒÁ€Æþ$
¢¸ŒJ=¯wë—¼Q¿t:ðýÉéÄ¿Ž4d×/Eޝ߯Zöüóyuø£LÊÖ› ß½Ž,»…Qát—?í}>wfsG§ j½~Zå“?ö¼Qï±lýá¼£ëÚ9ÆüŒ*zõ®£r<™úŽ®»?™Ø3lâÃ;|sþßÊiØ2&µdËŸûñçé`õ&¾]çêb¯U45~ü8öÃëҐCÞ ø§ßw]ך)×ÁÈï[OO¯² ©~:c jß@C•ý›ÙD~I—

 

On windows, trying to unzip the file after changing the extension returns an 'invalid file' error.

 

Thanks, that worked! Just had to compress back to gzip using 7-zip for it to work.

 

Thanks

 

@Marco-Trivellato , just made the patch myself. Thanks. I had been chasing the mobile safari audio mute issue and though I had killed chrome audio! I have a suggestion. for WebGL builds make the button part of the splash screen, either the unity3d one or the custom. for now I think im going to add a click event to the JS_Sound_Init and handle the mobile safari audio issue there as well.

Keep up the good work.

Garry

 

@Marco-Trivellato , The replacement to JS_Sound_Init as you described installed fine. I had to change the permissions down the Unity path to allow for the file to be saved after the change. no biggie. Works great on Chrome in windows and Android.

However, now when playing it in Safari (desktop mac) or mobile safari (Iphone 6) I just get a grey screen after clicking the ok warning message and unity loading shows. It just hangs there on a grey screen.

Any ideas?


Garry

 

I keep getting a "SyntaxError: illegal character" javascript error after I re-compress and replace the *.framwork.unityweb file . It decompresses just fine, but even if I decompress it, make no changes to the file, and re-compress it, I get this error. What settings do I need to use in 7-zip when compressing?

 

Marco, I have commented in another thread, but I am meeting clients on Wednesday and I am anxious. I have a main app and 3 modules of it as a separate demo. Chrome was not playing audio in either app. I added your fix and the main app is now working, however the demo crashes at the first user interaction ... in Chrome AND in Firefox.

Uncaught abort(-1) at Error
at jsStackTrace (blob:http://www.q-skills.com/751db6a5-30d5-4f2d-8883-5df63331fbe5:1:22814)
at stackTrace (blob:http://www.q-skills.com/751db6a5-30d5-4f2d-8883-5df63331fbe5:1:22997)
at abort (blob:http://www.q-skills.com/751db6a5-30d5-4f2d-8883-5df63331fbe5:36:53511)
at _JS_Sound_ReleaseInstance (blob:http://www.q-skills.com/751db6a5-30d5-4f2d-8883-5df63331fbe5:1:198345)
at lTc (blob:http://www.q-skills.com/751db6a5-30d5-4f2d-8883-5df63331fbe5:25:95273)
at qVc (blob:http://www.q-skills.com/751db6a5-30d5-4f2d-8883-5df63331fbe5:25:128809)
at cRc (blob:http://www.q-skills.com/751db6a5-30d5-4f2d-8883-5df63331fbe5:25:57758)
at CRc (blob:http://www.q-skills.com/751db6a5-30d5-4f2d-8883-5df63331fbe5:25:78148)
at GMc (blob:http://www.q-skills.com/751db6a5-30d5-4f2d-8883-5df63331fbe5:10:955129)
at $Ra (blob:http://www.q-skills.com/751db6a5-30d5-4f2d-8883-5df63331fbe5:23:334011)
If this abort() is unexpected, build with -s ASSERTIONS=1 which can give more information."

I'm using 5.3.2 Help please.

 

Hi Dradb, are you using the unzip, update JS_SOUND_INIT and rezip technique?

 

Thank you for your reply.
No. I just edited PlaybackEngines/WebGLSupport/BuildTools/lib/Audio.js using Marco's code and rebuilt the WebGL files.

 

Here's the js console from the Firefox crash. What is the missing "JS_Sound_ReleaseInstance" ?

UnloadTime: 2.000000 ms UnityLoader.js:1
Unloading 5 Unused Serialized files (Serialized files now loaded: 0) UnityLoader.js:1
missing function: JS_Sound_ReleaseInstance UnityLoader.js:1
-1 UnityLoader.js:1
-1 UnityLoader.js:1
Invoking error handler due to
uncaught exception: abort(-1) at jsStackTrace@blob:http://www.q-skills.com/87dc9580-904a-4698-9e12-a7570aebef73:1:22814
stackTrace@blob:http://www.q-skills.com/87dc9580-904a-4698-9e12-a7570aebef73:1:22997
abort@blob:http://www.q-skills.com/87dc9580-904a-4698-9e12-a7570aebef73:36:53511
_JS_Sound_ReleaseInstance@blob:http://www.q-skills.com/87dc9580-904a-4698-9e12-a7570aebef73:1:198346

 

Just to clarify a few things, you don't actually need to unzip the framework.unityweb file if you make a Development build, it won't be compressed or minified. If you choose to just edit the source file (PlaybackEngines/WebGLSupport/BuildTools/lib/Audio.js), that is also non-compressed or minified. Both of these solutions worked for me, thanks @Marco-Trivellato

 

What I can't understand is that it seems to work OK for my full app but not the demo. The demo just has a few modules of the full app. I've been playing around cutting bits out but the demo version keeps crashing.

 

Hi,
I think I might be seeing the same issue in latest version of Firefox. Can anybody confirm if this is the case?

 

It looks like line 4 should be:

WEBAudio.audioContext = new AudioContext();

... but it still doesn't stop the crash, related to "JS_Sound_ReleaseInstance", whatever and where ever that is ??

 

First return to the original file to see if everything come back to normal and then move foward step by step.

 

I have exactly this issue! Is there a way to avoid having to get a development build? We have many projects from clients all with no dev builds. Have to reach out to those partners and QA-ing all the games again is going to be a pain. (We have an online web portal). Is there a way i can make this work with a non-dev build? I have done exactly what is told, but i get the
Invoking error handler due to SyntaxError: Invalid character '\u001f' Error

 

This fixed the issue for me completely, thank you very much Marco !!

 

Thanks roka. After wasting a dew days, you have by far the simplest and most reliable approach.

 

@Marco-Trivellato, sorry to bother you like this, but this is quite hurting our business. Could you please have a look at my post:
https://forum.unity.com/threads/chr...ck-audio-for-unity-webgl.517758/#post-3488085

Thanks in advance!

 

After tinkering with it for some more, i noticed that my gzip output on MAX compression still does not match the filesize of the unity gzipped version. Are you stripping even more content from the gzip?

 

Hey Marco, so what im doing is - using a production build, unzipping the <game>.asm.framework, altering the code, and then running 'gzip --keep --no-name --best TunnelRushWebGL.asm.framework' in my terminal. After uploading this build online the application crashes on that specific character ''\u001f''.

Even when i just gunzip and gzip the file without altering anything i get the same crash. It seems that you either have a different gzip, or use different settings because i notice you get a 78.5% compression rate where i can only max get a 78% compression rate. (your gzip results in a 91kb file, and mine in a 93kb file)