Since you're running Kubuntu, I'm going to try to help you out while using KDE.
KDE uses its own centralized sound system called aRTs. Which manages what sound server should be used in a situation. Depending on the game, you should probably check what sound system it is trying to contact. If, while in KDE, you can listen to audio with no problem, aRTs is probably going to be your best bet. Check the game options to see if aRTs is an available sound system. Use it.
If aRTs isn't available within game options, there is usually an option to manually specify the hardware address and sound server to use. Since you've gone ahead and installed the ALSA drivers, you probably want to try these out. So, manually specify ALSA as the sound server to use. Manually specifying a hardware address will bypass aRTs altogether, and is therefore a better method to troubleshoot audio issues. In order to choose the hardware address, you first need to find where your card is located. There is potentially a couple ways to do this, but here are the two easiest:
1.) Simply check an already configured asound configuration file:
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turtle asound # updatedb && locate {asound.conf,.asoundrc}
This will list your ALSA configuration files used everytime ALSA is called. If you are able to hear sound regularly, these files will have the correct hardware address settings. Note: if you find an .asoundrc file located in your home directory, use this. If not, the global settings kept in (for example) /etc/asound.conf are already correct. Check this file for the information. Here is an example snippet from my .asoundrc:
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pcm.amix {
type dmix
ipc_key 50557
slave {
pcm "hw:1,0"
period_time 0
period_size 1024
buffer_size 8192
}
Using this information, I have the correct hardware address _with_ the correct ALSA syntax: "hw:1,0". You can skip the second step if any of these files exist.
2.) Check your '/proc/asound/cards' list and compare that to '/proc/asound/devices':
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turtle ~ # cat /proc/asound/cards
0 [Dummy ]: Dummy - Dummy
Dummy 1
1 [I82801DBICH4 ]: ICH4 - Intel 82801DB-ICH4
Intel 82801DB-ICH4 with AD1981B at 0xdfcffe00, irq 11
Looking at the output of cards, I can tell the card I want is at hardware address 1. Now we need to find the device number.
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turtle ~ # cat /proc/asound/devices |grep -i "audio playback"
16: [0- 0]: digital audio playback
52: [1- 4]: digital audio playback
48: [1- 0]: digital audio playback
We could grep for "audio playback" considering this is the device we want: the "playback" device.
So we see two playback devices at hardware address 1: [1- 0] & [1- 4]. Personally, I do trial and error to figure out the device number. It is probably a safe bet to go with the first device: [1- 0].
Now, to pass the hardware address to ALSA in the sound options of the game, ALSA uses a specific format for accepting the information. Considering your information is the same as mine, you could use the following as the hardware address in the game: "hw:1,0".
Simple enough syntax, no?
Quite the bitch to gather the information, no?
This will force the game to pass all audio directly your card using ALSA at the address specified.
If you are trying to use some game that has been ported to Linux (such as ZSNES)- It's very likely there won't be any sound server options in game. However, I've written some scripts for multiple games that export your device settings in order to override the default ALSA variables the game tries to use.
(Had to do this because ALSA always wants to use my dummy device as the default device.)
So, don't give up if there aren't the options you're looking for in the game settings.
Good luck. I didn't mean to write this much, so let me know how it turns out!