(v. 0.623) Occasional crash during the game

[Rasputin]

On two occasions, I have had a CTD while playing the game. The first time was right after completing a skirmish and being returned to the party map, and the second time was during a battle. No error message was generated either time. Sorry to be less than helpful about this one. Perhaps while the game is in beta you could have a logfile automatically generate upon an abnormal termination? Assuming that there is not one already.

 

[armagan]

Hi,

There are error checks and assertions at the points I thought were critical. A direct crash means that something has gone wrong at a place I hadn't anticipated. So it's the worst kind of problem for me.

The only solution, which I am doing is to add more checks in the next version and hope that the error will trigger one of these instead of causing a CTD...

 

[Rasputin]

Sounds good. We'll get this ironed out.

 

[Sir Jodi]

I get ctd often during battles when i try to shoot from horseback.

 

[sidat khan]

i want to report the bug that when i reach levels (about 17) of game and during battle it returns the desktop. what may be the solution for that. i tried to play it several times but it crashed and crashed again. Please help me. i get really upset cos i can't play my most favourite game.

 

[armagan]

Reducing battle-size from options menu seems to help with that problem.

 

[Somebob]

50 CTDs and counting since purchase for me so far, plus some interesting sound issues, too!

The crashes that happen most often are while the game interface is switching into combat, right after choosing Attack (or charge) on the encounter menu. The game just blinks out of existence, leaving me staring at the desktop. No errors or debug messages from any crashes so far, and other than combat entering a town or reloading a saved game will occasionally outright fail. So far it has never crashed during a save, but everywhere else. The game is still playable for the most part.

The sound issues pop up after seemingly random amounts of time in-game, with only a couple of things that seem to increase the chance they will occur. Saving, loading and especially Quit Without Saving followed by Restore all have a good chance to create bizzare staticy... well, electronic squealing? is about the best to describe it. It overrides all other sounds in the game, and requires a full exit of the game to make it go away. After an hour playing, it's just a matter of when the sound will start freaking out.

My own debug list:
Tried the battle-size menu. At its minimum or at its maximum makes no difference to either bug, nor any setting in between.
Sound and Music to zero doesn't stop the bizzaro static from being heard loud and clear when it appears.
Disabling the sound in the config file also didn't stop the sound bug, and I didn't notice any reduction in crash rates.
Frequency variation to off, no noticeable difference.
Absolute minimum graphics settings, no difference.

(Relevant)System specs: Windows XP Pro SP2, 1.4Ghz AMD Athlon, 512MB RAM, Geforce4 Ti-4200 128MB, Soundblaster Audigy Mp3+ Soundcard, NVidia Forceware drivers version 71.89 WHQL (latest).

 

[armagan]

Thanks for your detailed feedback. I have a question. When crashing during an attack, do you get to see the battle screen just before crashing, or does it crash without ever showing that?

 

[Tiedye]

My own debug list:
Tried the battle-size menu. At its minimum or at its maximum makes no difference to either bug, nor any setting in between.
Sound and Music to zero doesn't stop the bizzaro static from being heard loud and clear when it appears.
Disabling the sound in the config file also didn't stop the sound bug, and I didn't notice any reduction in crash rates.
Frequency variation to off, no noticeable difference.
Absolute minimum graphics settings, no difference.

I've also had this sound problem since I first got the game (I believe I posted a report way back when). I also tried all of the above, and it doesn't do anything. Strange that disabling the sound still doesn't fix it. It's a pain, because being deaf in battle is a definite handicap, you can't hear the in-game music, and you can't even listen to your own MP3s. You just have to turn your speakers off.

As I mentioned in my original bug report, I have a Soundblaster Live.

Please Armagan, fix this one!

 

[Somebob]

Thanks for your detailed feedback. I have a question. When crashing during an attack, do you get to see the battle screen just before crashing, or does it crash without ever showing that?

No battle screen at all, just straight to the desktop before any graphics can be loaded for a battlefield.

 

[SlickWilly]

I'm getting a CTD every single time I do into battle. This is insanely annoying as you might have guessed. I tried everything said here and nothing works. Awaiting a new patch because being stuck at level 8 forever isnt going to fly.

 

[Mathias]

I was on a capture the noble mission and i swear i had to redo it 9 frickin times because the nobleman kept dying before i could bludge his head in and knock him out. I finally had a good run at him after telling my guys to hold a position away from him and it crashes to desktop before i reach him. God that pisses me off.

*edit: I never had any problems with CTD'in till i reached higher levels. Game ran perfect for me until i got close to level 20. Lets say levels 17+ have been the only times I have gotten CTD's. Currently at level 22 and the crashes are worse than ever. Perhaps its the larger parties that you create at higher levels, the better items you have, the more and better items you give to your henchman. I don't know but its really really annoying.

 

[armagan]

Mathias:
I wonder if your CTDs will decrease if you tune battlesize down.

 

[Essobie]

Just chiming in with more straight up CTD occurances.

The last crash I got that had an assertion error was "line 327" but I mentioned that in the thread about that line already. Now when I go into the next battle right after my save state (which is me going to "give ransom money to bandits" but instead of giving the cash over, I slaughter the lot of them).

I've CTDed 3 times in the last 20 minutes, all during this fight. The first two were during the very first round. This last time was right before the very last guy was killed. Screen freezes, then poof. It's like I wasn't even playing the game.

Some things to note that others haven't mentioned that might also be part of the problem:

I start in windowed mode because I typically serf the web while I'm treking from town to town, but during battles I Alt-Enter to toggle on fullscreen mode (I have two monitors (3200x1200 desktop) and moving the mouse around in combat is a little wierd).

I found that it didn't seem to crash if I did NOT start in windowed mode... but this may just be a coincidence.

 

[Mathias]

My battle size is pretty low, I play at less than half of the full battle size. I've put it up to full before and it gets a little choppy for me, im runnin a radeon 9000 pro w/ 128mb but its on a crappy 900mhz athlon Anyway I will try and reduce the battle size further and see if my crashes are less frequent. They are not that huge of a problem currently, maybe one crash or two every 3 hours I play. It's just that the last time I crashed, on the noble mission, it was at the wrong time and in the wrong situation and severely angered me If this game crashed 3x as much as it does right now I would still play it every minute of my free time, this game rox armagan

 

[Rasputin]

Yesterday, I had my first Exception window. When I clicked on Retry, the computer actually rebooted on me. Now, THAT's a crash! I only wish I had time to write down the exception error message. Next time I will.

 

[DaLagga]

The only times i've gotten a CTD is when i'm an archer. I'm usually firing from horseback, but not always when it happens. My party is nothing but archers as well. I notice that it crashes the instant one of my arrows hits an enemy. I've never ever had it crash any other time. My first character never used a bow, and the game never crashed at all. But with my archer char, it crashes about once every 3 or 4 battles.

 

[ShangTang]

I'm level 17 and I keep getting crashes during battles. I've turned everything down to minimum settings and defragged and still get crashes. Makes it pretty much impossible to play.

 

[Zephyr]

Just wanted to report that I've crashed to desktop twice recently. Both times I was in the middle of a battle on horseback, and when I zoomed in and left clicked to draw my bow and the game crashed.

I don't know if zooming or shooting arrows is directly connected to CTDs, but I hope this helps.

 

[h_double]

I've seen about half a dozen CTD within the past day, all during combat (all, I think, on horseback).

I didn't see any crashes at ALL until about lvl 8 or so. Turning down the battle size slider seems to help a bit but not enough statistical weight to be certain.