[EM 2.088] Planets causing CTD *FIXED*

[Heracles]

Hi there everyone.

I don't think I've ever posted here, even if I suscribed a few months ago. Let's take the advantage of this firt post to congratulate you Vice for this amazing game that has nearly everything I've ever wanted to see in a space game.

So, about these CTD, it's kinda weird how they happen. Every time I want to land on a planet, the games crashes while entering the atmosphere. No error message, not even Windows saying me that the .exe stopped functionning.

Yesterday when I updated to the expansion, I wanted to land on a planet to test the Terrain Walker (silly me who didn't even think that I'd need to buy it first). I managed to land (sort of), and I could see the amazing improvement in graphics about the planets. Having seen some low framerate during the descent, I thought that enabling the Pre-generated option would get rid of this. But I didn't try to land on a planet after...

Since tonight. I wanted to go to one of the city stations of Rivoch. While entering the upper atmosphere (right before you die if you go too fast), my game crashed. I disabled the pre-generated option, and tried again to land on Rivoch, in vain.

I went back to the planet on the center of Sapphire (I don't remember its name, I think it's the one of the training), where it worked yesterday. I could enter the atmosphere a little bit further but the game still crashed.

Any thoughts about what may cause these CTD ?

By the way, my specs are :
- Windows 8 x64
- Intel Quad 2 Core 2.0Ghz
- 4Gb RAM
- Nvidia GT130M

(PS : As a french guy, my english isn't the best, so I apologize if I made any mistakes. )

Thank you, and keep up the good work Vice !

[Edited on 12-11-2012 by Vice]

[Vice]

Your issue sounds like this one also: http://www.starwraith.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=10098

Your system is apparently blocking the game from loading the data assets in needs for planets into memory. And at least in your case, it may be intermittent. Try the 'Procedural' mode again and see if the behavior changes. If you're using a security program while running the game, like Microsoft Security Essentials, make sure the game is included in any exception list it offers. Other steps here may help: http://www.starwraith.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=6595

Then if you'd like me to review your system specifically for possible causes, follow the steps here: http://www.starwraith.com/evochronmercenary/faq.htm#8

[Heracles]

Wow, no doubt, you're a quick one to answer !

So, what I tested since your post :

- Activate the built-in cleanup procedure : At first the procedure crashed and closed the game with an error. I tried again and this time it seemed to complete successfully.

- Try the no-LAA version of the executable : Nothing did really change.

- Put the program and the folders in the exceptions lists of my security programs : I only have Windows Defender and Windows Firewall, and I added everything related to Evochron in their exception lists.

- I tried again with the pre-generated option. It slightly improved the stability as I was able to go down to 100.000 alt. (something like that, all I can say is this was way further than before). I will try to put the option back to procedural to see if it changed something.

- Since Microsoft greatly improved the sleep mode in Windows 8, I actually haven't really restarted my computer since I installed Evochron (my uptime indicates 4 days and 19 hours). I will shut it down completely tonight before going to sleep to see if it changes something tomorrow.

The thing I find the most disturbing is that I've never had any problems with planets in EM 1.828, nor at my first attempt yesterday with the 2.088 version.

I sent you an email with the .nfo and the .sw files, maybe you'll see something that could help me.

Thank you !

[Edited on 10/12/2012 by Heracles]

[Vice]

Thanks for the report. Interesting results. The failures listed in the error log relate to the display system. Your display driver is from last August, so one step I'd suggest initially is updating the display driver. And since it appears to be a laptop (MSI GX723?), make sure to use a driver directly from them. Next, the 130M you are using may have shared memory, which isn't really supported. If it is using shared memory (that is, eating up system RAM for use as video memory), see if there is a setting you can apply in the control panel to set a fixed limit on the amount of memory given to it (set it to something like 512 MB if you can to test with). Then make sure to switch back to the 'Procedural' mode for futher testing.

[Heracles]

So, after a little night...

As I said, I completely turned off my laptop before going to bed and I turned it on again this morning. I then launched Evochron, switched back to procedural and went to test it. I managed to land twice on Rivoch, with two big framerate drops during the descent, but no crashes to desktop.

My display driver is up to date, it's the nVidia 306.97 of October 10th, and likely the last that will be available for the GT130M. No matter how good their laptops are about their specs, MSI support is kinda bad. Their last display driver for my laptop is 2 years old, and for Windows Vista 32... Since then I only used official drivers from nVidia without any problem.

I looked in the nVidia control panel for a setting allowing me to change de shared memory setting but I found nothing. I'll look on the web to see if there is some kind of a very advanced control panel to change this.

[Star King]

Heracles what was your framerate when you entered the atmosphere?
What was your FPS when you landed ?

[Heracles]

Hi Star King,

I did a new descent to Rivoch tonight.

The FPS meter of Evochron indicated 30 FPS at the beginning (departure from the space station near Rivoch). During almost all the descent I was over 25FPS. I noticed two framerate drops though. The first one was at 200K altitude, I went down to 3-5 FPS during 1 or 2 seconds. The second one lasted atleast 5 seconds and happened when I was about 30K altitude, right where the weather starts shaking your ship in all directions (I'll never settle on this planet !). If the first one doesn't really matter (it was short and nothing happened), the last one is much more critical as you're at lower altitude and you can see your nose pointing right at the ground without being able to do anything...

This test was done with a 1280*800 resolution, all details to Medium, Anti-aliasing on 2X, cockpit in 3D (type 1). As I didn't see much change in 1440*900 (my native resolution) I may go back to this one, as the general text and the UI are clearer.

[Vice]

Glad it's working now at least for you, although I am a little surprised it runs at all on the 130M. The procedural mode must be the required method for it to work on such a setup. The temporary hesitations might relate to the system trying to move memory around for use as video memory or more likely, it could be your system clocking down under load, which some laptops/notebooks do when running on battery, if temps get high, and/or under high resource load.

[Heracles]

As for my specs I didn't encounter any problems with previous versions of EM. Even now, I have a solid 40-50 FPS in space in 1440*900, everything on High and 4X AA.

A friend of mine made me re-install the game in the C:\\ partition drive, and put everything on low. I guess I thought that my computer could still handle better settings... But anyway, in low for everything, the descent is smooth and my framerate stays regular the whole way down.

It made me wonder, which setting exactly of the three "details" options available is responsible for the texture generation of the planets ? Just to see if I could put the other atleast in medium.

Not saying that Evochron is awful in Low settings, but well, I'd like to see if my computer can handle a little more...

Anyway, thanks to you both for helping me. I think this thread can be tagged as fixed, atleast for now...

[Vice]

It's difficult to say for sure, but I would doubt the Star Detail setting would impact performance much on your system. It's probably either the Graphics Detail or Texture Detail setting. Either one of those reduces rendering details, which could bring the required overhead for the game down enough to help improve performance on your system in the way you describe.