Game crashes when first starting as miner/trader

Stateofpsychosis · Post by **Stateofpsychosis** » Sun Dec 15, 2013 4:12 am

Okay I can run the game now, but it always jams when trying to land on this planet. there might be some other planets that require less memory that i can land on i'll try that... also, i get error messages when if i hit the start key at any point now to like look up something i'm doing online.. it didn't do this before the game stopped working. at least i can't somewhat play it now

Stateofpsychosis · Post by **Stateofpsychosis** » Sun Dec 15, 2013 4:12 am

okay i'll try switching those modes

Stateofpsychosis · Post by **Stateofpsychosis** » Sun Dec 15, 2013 5:20 pm

yea okay i can land on smaller planets like the ice ones, but it crashes when i land on earth like planets

it also crashes some of the time when i launch (F2)

unfortunately the max ram you can put in my laptop is 2 gigs so i probably won't be able to able to get this running smoothly unless the crashing of the game when landing on planets has to do with the 2 gigs hard drive installation for the planets like the problem i had before.

Stateofpsychosis · Post by **Stateofpsychosis** » Sun Dec 15, 2013 10:54 pm

now it's back to crashing at 98% again after i tried using the hidefade mod trying to get rid of those launching crashes. even after deleting it it's still doing it. guess i should uninstall/re-install the planets again if that's what fixed it last time

Stateofpsychosis · Post by **Stateofpsychosis** » Mon Dec 16, 2013 3:00 am

okay i got it working again by switching to locked (F5) mode again, then i went to my desktop pressing start, it forced that error to come up again, then when i tried to start the game again it worked... for some reason forcing that error is actually what stopped it from jamming at 98%...

I still can't land on earth like planets but I managed to land on a larger saturn like planet so it has nothing to do with the size of the planet.. more just the memory it takes to load i guess.

Also it's worth noting that when i tried to run the game with swiftshader 3.0 it stopped it from ever jamming but it's just too slow to play running with swiftshader..

it seems if the game could just slow down and lag a little at these points where it totally crashes, it wouldn't need to crash.

part of what swiftshader does is slow down the game along with software 3d rendering and bypassing shader limits.

too bad i can't just turn that off and on wily nilly. I'd just activate the swiftshader whenever i needed to do something that crashed the game...
but it's either all on or all off with that..

maybe an update for this game will eventually come out that will deal with this memory crashing stuff. if swiftshader can stop it from crashing all together then there should be away around it...

wait, are there any mods that might help with memory issues or whatever's causing it to crash when landing on earth like planets?

Post by **Vice** » Mon Dec 16, 2013 4:07 am

Your efforts have likely just been shifting the memory points around, giving it room to access memory under some conditions and not under others. Low resource planets, namely those without water and other more memory consuming details like plants, are likely loading because they don't demand as much memory. But the higher resource planets will require more memory, so when the game requests it and your system denies the request, it closes at that point. If 2 GB is the limit of memory you can install, there may be no feasible way to get it to work all of the time under your current system configuration and its limits, the limits are just too tight and it sounds like there isn't much more that can be done to free up enough memory to provide the game with what it needs all of the time.

There isn't much that can be done on the update side of things either, if your system can't render at the bare minimum details, the only option left is to leave those graphics out entirely. And planets with missing terrain wouldn't look too good.

Now some mods might be an option, but we'd talking about a matter of only a few tens of MB at a time with some of them. It may help, but with such tight fluctuating memory confines, it may do little to nothing to resolve the problem on your system completely. Along this line of options, here are a few suggestions I would recommend as an attempt:

- Replace the plant structures with something very simple and small. Design a flat square mesh that replaces the tree1-4.x (detailed in the customizing kit ReadMe) objects in the \\environment folder.

- Lower the memory overhead for some textures and images by importing lower resolution versions (ie replace the 1024X1024 and 512X512 with 256X256 or lower). You can probably just edit an existing cockpit mod for some of these options.

- Although I do not recommend it, you can 'mod' out the dynamic cube mapping and water animation system entirely by placing the attached file in the game's install folder (not the save data folder). Keep in mind that this option is entirely unsupported and may introduce new problems that didn't occur before. So if you run into any issues trying this step, remove or rename the file to restore regular functionality. This option will render the water without cube mapping, animation, reflection, etc, leaving only a very basic representation. It also may not work entirely as the game is not designed to run without these shader effects in place.

The last step is probably your best chance at getting the game to render planet descents under such below minimum memory conditions. But the others may help to a smaller degree as well.

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Stateofpsychosis · Post by **Stateofpsychosis** » Mon Dec 16, 2013 2:11 pm

okay I'll have to try those

thanks

Stateofpsychosis · Post by **Stateofpsychosis** » Tue Dec 17, 2013 12:09 am

okay i tried the watereffect one and it seems to come a little closer to not crashing but still does.. it's giving me crashon text files now to, but they're blank?

also, for a test i ran a bunch of programs at once and tried to launch the game and i got passed 98% with only 1.1 gigs of memory

so not sure at all what was causing that

even stranger, i don't have any of the files or folders you told me to edit in either the game folder or the save folder

there's no \\environment folder at all

are my issues possibly to do with missing objects?

anyways, i can free up to 1.7 gigs of available memory now by using game booster. i can turn off even some system stuff with that so i can boost my memory even higher if i go even farther with it but it doesn't effect it.

Post by **Vice** » Tue Dec 17, 2013 1:08 am

Yeah, I think the overall problem is the lack of addressable memory in the order it is needed, not necessarily just the capacity. And as I mentioned earlier, it may also be due in part to video memory in conjunction with system memory. There's just not enough to work with for the memory needs of the game.

even stranger, i don't have any of the files or folders you told me to edit in either the game folder or the save folder

Correct, they won't be there until you create them for the mods. Sounds like you're not yet familiar with this process, so you'll want to download the game's customizing kit and review the 'ReadMe' file included with it for details.

are my issues possibly to do with missing objects?

No, just memory limitation issues. Do you have any plans to get a new system in the near future? If so, and you are considering a new laptop, review the display details of a potential model you may buy carefully. Make sure it has dedicated video memory, not and integrated system with shared memory. And minimum RAM these days is 4 GB, but more is better.

Stateofpsychosis · Post by **Stateofpsychosis** » Tue Dec 17, 2013 1:29 am

no i just bought this one recently. i keep my system lower than the rest of the gaming community because my main game genre is point and click games.. they barely ever go beyond shader model 3 or use a lot of memory. usually pre-rendered graphics...

plus all my money is tied up in trying to get my digital audio workstation up to par for the soundtrack for the market. I can't afford to be buying anything expensive for personal pleasure.. too bad there's not a mac version of this because my mac is top notch

anyways, I'm going to keep trying to get this working anyways.

I like enigmas like this..
after all my favorite game genre is solving puzzles.

you don't think i'm risking burning out my graphics card by playing this do you? the thought just came to mind.

now i get what you mean about those folder. yea i've never tried the mods yet. now that i'm reading the txt file i get what you mean.

Post by **Vice** » Tue Dec 17, 2013 1:40 am

you don't think i'm risking burning out my graphics card by playing this do you? the thought just came to mind.

Nope, it's not too GPU intensive compared to a number of other games. One thing you will always want to do though is make sure your GPU (and CPU) heatsinks are clean and not packed with dirt/dust. Clogged heatsinks can lead to overheating, which can damage your system's internals. Most systems these days come with audible alerts and/or auto-shut downs if temperatures get too high, but it's always good to keep things clean and cooling efficiently.

Stateofpsychosis · Post by **Stateofpsychosis** » Tue Dec 17, 2013 2:58 am

kk, good

cause i think i can eventually get this working. I've only ever encountered a few games in my life that i couldn't get to run on a system that couldn't handle it. this game is so open ended and modable that i feel confident that there may be a possibility. not getting my hopes up of course. worse comes to worse i can still do space combat in it...

anyways, you've been a lot of help

thanks.

I'll post any solutions here if i can get this working for planets.. i'm sure there's someone else out there that could use the help if i get it working.

[Edited on 12-17-2013 by Stateofpsychosis]

Stateofpsychosis · Post by **Stateofpsychosis** » Thu Dec 19, 2013 3:10 am

i tried everything you told me. i even reduced all of the images in the cockpit mod until it looked 8 bit.. still jamming.

i watched task manager while it jammed and it actually looks like the cpu usage was being an issue. I still had 700,000 available memory left over at the point of jamming but my cpu usage percent dropped down to only 8% after being really high... then after it crashed to the desktop it shot back up.

might just have to do with the memory issue but maybe my cpu isn't handling this?

my cpu is 2.13ghz

I guess there would be no way to allocate virtual memory to get this working either eh?
i remember doing that for some stuff back in the mid 90s

Post by **Vice** » Thu Dec 19, 2013 5:58 am

Nah, your CPU looks fine to me, although a little slow, it's enough to handle what this game needs. Also, keep in mind that if you are watching memory use in the task manager, that won't necessarily give you an accurate reading of the actual memory load of a game or program. What you're typically viewing there is the working memory level. To view the 'commit' memory level, you'd want to use the resource monitor (perfmon.exe /res) and click on the Memory tab. I think this was available in Windows XP, but it's been a long time and I'm not sure it is. If it's available to you, you can view the commit level of memory being used, which can differ significantly from the working level, giving you a more complete picture of just how much memory is being used/needed.

Do you recall emm386 days? That was always fun trying to manage memory settings that way. Fortunately, things have come a long way since then and most things are pretty automated these day.

Stateofpsychosis · Post by **Stateofpsychosis** » Thu Dec 19, 2013 2:36 pm

okay thanks that helps.

yea pretty sure i can't get it working for planets now.. if i've turned off as much as i have with no difference I think i'm just wasting time trying at this point..

that perfmon.exe /res will definitely come in handy though

anyways,

I think my best bet is just to buy and old game like freelancer (evochron looks so much better tho)

the only other thing i can think of trying is to download the original version of evochron (v1.0) then try to build the game back together by transfering files from the old version of the game and replacing files in the steam version.

too bad i bought this on steam because if i didn't i could have just tried v1.0 the normal way

i hear the planets are smaller so they could possibly load

anyways, one more thing to try

thanks again

[Edited on 12-19-2013 by Stateofpsychosis]