‘Apex Legends’ developer reveals “single line of code” to blame for audio bug

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Respawn Entertainment has revealed that a “single line of code” has been responsible for a months-long audio issue in Apex Legends, though it has since been fixed.

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As detailed on Reddit (via PC Gamer), Respawn community manager Amy Thiessen explained that, since February, the developer has noticed certain sound effects — such as grenade explosions, or gunshots — were not being played.

Respawn theorised that the bug was linked to the fact that only 128 effects can be run per server frame, and a malfunctioning effect was using up all of those spaces — therefore pushing out the sound effects players were missing.

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However, Thiessen admitted that trying to find the cause “meant finding a needle in a haystack”, as “thousands of changes” were made with every season update.

Respawn’s metrics system was also failing to spot any issues, which left the studio with “minimal leads internally” despite recognising that the issue was affecting players.

Eventually, Respawn was able to confirm effects were being cut off by creating “unrealistic test cases,” such as 50 characters firing their weapon at the same time. Following even more tests, the studio found that “a single line of code was identified to be the root cause of the issue”.

The culprit was the Nemesis, a weapon that was added to Apex Legends in February. According to Thiessen, the weapon has a line of code that halts the gun’s particle effects while the weapon is uncharged — but due to a bug, every player carrying a Nemesis was creating a “stop particle” effect every frame.

After identifying the issue, Respawn was able to issue a fix last week. However, the anecdote serves as a reminder that making games is far harder than it sounds — as Thiessen pointed out, “a minute of players playing Apex is the equivalent of 10 testers playing the game for a year!”

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In other gaming news, Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 and Warzone 2.0 are getting a major update next week (May 10).