[EM 2.088]planet descent/training crash *FIXED*

[Neo160]

my client always crashes when i try to jump to planetary decent and city docking training. when the game spawns me in it shows red tracking marks and places me WAY far from the nav point. I then try and set my ship to autopilot to get to the nav point, and with 8 seconds, instant crash, no matter what happens, auto-pilot or not. happens so fast my OS doesn't even tell me it crashed.

I'm currently trying to finish training so i can get into the demo, want to see if I want to buy this game. can't do that if I'm consistently crashing >.>


Specs:
win 7 64 bit
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 550 Ti
8 gigs ram
Intel i5 CPU @ 3 GHz

I'm already running Evochron in administrator mode, and trying to run it in compatibility mode just makes it more unstable.

Any help is much appreciated

[Edited on 12-10-2012 by Neo160]

[Edited on 12-11-2012 by Vice]

[Vice]

Sounds like the game is running out of available memory while still loading planet details. Check to make sure your hard drive isn't almost out of space, free up more if needed. Then try switching to the 'Pre-Generated' rendering mode and see if the behavior changes. If it continues, I can review your setup for possible causes if you complete the steps here: http://www.starwraith.com/evochronmercenary/faq.htm#8

[Neo160]

i already checked and tried those first two. my hard-rive has plenty of space, and after setting to pre-rendered planets, although they look prettier, it crashes exactly as before, no behavior change.

[Vice]

What are you using for anti-virus/anti-malware?

[Neo160]

Webroot Antivirus And ThreatFire, my personal HIDS (Host Intrusion Detection System)

Threat Fire threw a hissy fit when i first installed your game, said it was logging keystrokes, but I gave it the all clear and assumed it was a false positive. Both of them, and my firewall, Comodo, are currently leaving it alone. If they wanted it in their sights, the thing wouldn't even get past the start screen, like it initially didn't, XD.

[Neo160]

Also, i followed the steps you linked and sent you an email with my system information file and the pilot save file, which happens to be a default starter save with basic new player stats, as i haven't started the single-player demo yet.

[Vice]

I'm not familiar with two of those, but they're on the Steam list of programs known to cause problems: https://support.steampowered.com/kb_art ... -SFLZ-9289

I might start by trying it with Comodo removed entirely (using whatever else you might want for protection as desired). Considering its past track record in games and the list of other programs you have that are crashing on your system (iTunes, Hitman Absolution?, Planetside 2, HL2, and others), that might a good first step to troubleshoot with. You'll probably find they're related to the same cause and they'll likely all run more stable once the problem is found and removed/corrected.

[Neo160]

I have to say i disagree with you on Comodo. its only a firewall, and always asks me before it does anything with any particular program. it asked me about the game once and I told it to consider it safe. all the programs you don't have issues with my firewall. cept hitman, couldn't get that thing to run for the life of me, XD.

I'll try disabling Comodo temporarily and see what happens

[Neo160]

yep, as i thought. I disabled my firewall, and no change in stability.

[Vice]

Only a recommendation based on past experience (here's one example for this game: http://www.starwraith.com/forum/viewtop ... #pid128046 ).

Did you remove it or just turn it off? Just 'disabling' may not remove the residual effects such programs leave behind on a system. May not be Comodo, but instead one of the others.

Whatever it is seems to either be interfering with the game's access to HDD resources to load heightmap data into memory from the drive, or it's interfering with the memory the game needs to load it to.

[Neo160]

did a full uninstall of Comodo, no change in stabillity. also ran CCleaner (registry cleaner) to remove all the leftovers. i also checked the list and I don't have anything marked with the green asterisk for complete uninstalls.

ok, i think I've nailed down the source of the problem, I turned on task manager to monitor system resources while a loaded and tried to play the game, and took a screen shot after the crash. it seems your sim is only running on a single cpu! I am running a quadcore system, so the game will easily run out of processing power if it only uses one core. you'll also notice the bumps and drop offs in RAM usage, thats the game loading, and then crashing, but its not running out of ram.

here's the screenie:



[Edited on 12-9-2012 by Neo160]

[Vice]

That wouldn't be the problem. But here's another step to try, download and replace the default exe with the one in this zip file, see if the behavior changes at all:
http://www.starwraith.com/evochronmerce ... yNoLAA.zip

[Neo160]

behavior does change, its that the game is even more unstable. It crashes during universe creation in the loading screen at around 84%

going to have to reinstall the client to the old .exe

what does it mean by no LAA?

after reinstall its back to the same old behavior.

[Edited on 12-9-2012 by Neo160]

[Vice]

Ok, that was a good test to try then. It definitely appears to be a memory allocation interference issue on your system then. LAA stands for Large Address Aware. It's a way to setup a binary so that it can access more memory on certain systems, preventing some of the memory related stops in a game on systems with lean memory available.

More and more games appear to be including the LAA mode by default now as the resource demands for games increases. Evochron comes with LAA enabled by default now, so I wanted to see if the issue changed at all when LAA is not enabled. And your results confirm that it does, as expected, and the lack of memory issue shifts to probably around the 600-650 MB range at around 84% loaded.

So what needs to be found in your system's case is what exactly is preventing the game from accessing the 800-900 MB or so range of memory it needs to properly function. And then, why it happens at that particular stage as it needs to load more planet details near that point in memory. There must be something blocking that particular region/address of memory, denying it to the game when it requests it.

Edit: And also, in case you haven't tried yet, switch back to the 'Procedural' rendering mode and see if the behavior changes.

[Edited on 12-9-2012 by Vice]

[Neo160]

well, switched back to procedural and it runs perfectly! was able to make a hard planetary decent at 1400 mps and it played great, thanks for the help

gonna be switching my security software back on slowly to isolate what exactly is the cause of the problem, will let you know here in this thread when I've figure it out.

[Vice]

Ok, great, thanks for keeping us posted. And that's good to know it worked. The 'Procedural' mode should work fine on your system in terms of performance. It will just shift the workload over to memory rather than disk. That test appears to confirm that your system's problem may have involved the game not being allowed to access files from the disk like it needs for the 'Pre-Generated' mode. So one of those security programs may have introduced file interference rather than solely memory interference (if not both).

[Neo160]

Update!!

well, reinstalled Comodo firewall, and re-enabled my antivirus. Threat Fire has actually been discontinued, so i activated Comodo's built in HIPS system, which works wonderfully well and is honestly far better.

to stress test the game to its limit, i had Comodo set on its HIPS to paranoid, and also ran an antivirus scan, if the game was going to crash because of these programs it was going to be now or never.

I proceeded to load into the planetary descent training exercise and went through with a hard decent at 1494 ms per second, moving energy from weapons to shields to keep my shields stable from the plasma of re-entry.


game ran like a dream, 50-60 fps easy, almost no hiccups whatsoever (just once when starting). I successfully landed and ended the tutorial. game is perfectly stable, I'm calling this thread RESOLVED.

also for future reference, ThreatFire is now Vapor-Ware, no-one should ever be using the software, its no longer supported and its aged tech, it seems to have been the odd one out on my security setup. a firewall's HIPS like Comodo's or another dedicated HIPS software should be fine.

thanks for the absolute top-notch tech support and very fast responses, even for a non-paying customer. You just earned yourself a sale, going to buy the full game version soon

[Vice]

Thanks for the follow up and details (and for the order). If it's ok with you, I'd also like to edit the subject line of the thread to include something referencing 'planets/planet descents' to aid others in their related searches.

[Neo160]

go right ahead, that should definitely help those who get this same issue