100 Copies sold! ...and bizarre mic issues

This morning, The Choicer Voicer reached 100 copies sold! I cannot thank everyone enough for their support, especially with the game in its infancy like this. The overhaul will take a while, but I expect to be quite pleased with it.

Recently, I've learned more regarding integration with Twitch chat by working on a "game" I've called Crow-Sourcing. It's basically a streamer-only game due to the need for a Twitch chat, so I have yet to actually guarantee that it fully works. I've had to test it by going to Twitch, finding a streamer with a lot of comments coming in, and connecting Crow-Sourcing to that channel. I'm glad I made a separate project though, because I learned several things via trial, error, and pain. It was nice to not have to fix first-draft spaghetti code, since I was making it for such a tiny game, and now I've learned some things to avoid when I implement it in The Choicer Voicer.

On a much more annoying note, some people have issues with the game not properly using their microphones, and I have yet to determine why.

What was most puzzling to me is that the live mic output can work, but the actual live waveform sampling won't. These individuals not only use different audio devices than me, but at least two of them use Windows 11--something I've been avoiding like the plague, so I cannot test my game in that environment to determine whether or not it's actually a Windows 11 issue.

Regardless, I already knew that the live mic option in the settings didn't play nice with the waveform sampling, as viewers of Vinny's second TCV stream would see during the "I wonder what's for dinner" segment. So this morning, I added a piece of code that gets waveform samples while the live mic is on.

What I discovered is harrowing.

The waveform sampling occurs, but the live mic fails. BUT, I can make both work at once by changing one or more of my audio input/output devices, but only while the mic is actually live. And to make things worse, sometimes changing to a different audio output device will just... make it fail permanently, until I exit the page. I cannot figure out what's going on, nor can I determine whether this is the same issue as the one some players have reported, or if this is a separate problem altogether. What I have determined--but do not understand why--is that the problem has something to do with my AudioEffectSpectrumAnalyzerInstance, a Godot resource that performs a live Fast Fourier Transform on the current audio (and has no frickin' documentation on it, so thanks for that).

When I remove all instances of the, well, Instance, and insert randomized dummy information into the waveform sampler, suddenly the live mic works perfectly fine all the time. But if there's even one AudioEffectSpectrumAnalyzerInstance running each frame, I encounter the sometimes-works-sometimes-doesn't issue with the live mic. I have to believe this is related to the mic issues other people are experiencing, but I have no plan on how to fix this. I have to hope on two possibilities: make a completely new sampler and hope there's no conflict, or poke and prod endlessly at my current code until I identify an issue that can be corrected. Sucks, but I guess gamedev can't be all sunshine and happy announcements.