Random crashes...

[ogreb]

Game randomly crashes....sometimes within 5 minutes and some times it may be 10 actual game hours.

It crashed 2x in the last two days..once yesterday about an hour in and maybe 5 minutes in today...

After yesterdays crash I played the same city for 6 hours and nothing...

I even spun the mouse around and zoomed in and out as fast as I could to see if it would crash....added tons of plazas...nothing.

The next time it crashes I'll post the message

Like I said it's just random...

I have 0 lag with all settings maxed even on the city I included in this post ( I did lower res to see if that would make a difference) so no chugging or anything ( except the intial load lag)

e6700
GTX ( FOC to Ultra )
4 gig ddr 2
All latest video/audio drivers
WinXP SP3...all updates/dx version/

And I did notice it seems to crash on one particular side of the city as I was rotating the camera...and it always seemd to be the same time of day( year)

[ogreb]

Savegame...sorry

[ogreb]

Well it did it again...

I'm thinking it has to do with the plaza bug that I read about...

I don't have time for this and if I can't build a city my way I'm not really interested anymore...

I mean if I can't figure out whats causing it I'm not going to spend another 40 hours just to find it crashing again.

I'm trying to find the error message...it was was supposed to be saved to local settings...

I'll crash it again and post it.

[Kiya]

Ogreb, it's not the plaza bug I think. I spent some time looking around in your city and had no crash. (I have everything maxed out, except fixed shadows.)
Perhaps we could have your dxdiag?

Perhaps some more details: which side of the city, what time of the day/ year does it crash? So I try to do the same.

[ogreb]

DX Diagnoses report



It was the side of the city where the small pyramids are...and it was harvest.

I should add it's a retail version and patched to 1.03

And it did it again...played for one season...flood to harvest...

Ahhhhhhh !!!

I wanted to at least finsish a medium pyramid

[ogreb]

Just reinstalled Direct X

I had just installed and reinstalled alot games and some have thier own DX version installed.

But according to my DX diag I had the latest version....but I reinstalled it anyway and got the August update...

[Kiya]

I let your save game run several years, zooming in and out, especially on the pyramid area, nothing...no crashes.

Your dxdiag shows nothing special. btw I have almost similar type of PC.
All I could think of: perhaps you could try playing your sidewinder and speedpad not attached. You never know if you don't try, it could make a difference.
:)

[ogreb]

The Sidewinder is my mouse...( not the game controller everyone thinks of)

I'll try unplugging the speedpad

And it keeps crashing....

[Kiya]

One thought: you haven't been speeding up the game, say having 5.0 speed? In that case it has been said the game becomes unstable. (The game runs up to 2.5 unless you change some of the game data.)

PS your save is still running nicely, no crashes, so it must be something in your end. Sorry I'm out of ideas right now.

[ogreb]

I made it through one season and no crashes...

Maybe it's the shadows I have it on full...


I have defragged/ run AV etc..and ran Crysis for a few to see if it was hardware..

Gpu temps mid 60s ( It's hot here today)


Fixed shadows is ok but there are now blue squares under some of the statues....


And no speed increases...I play on normal speed and there are no mods/tweaks installed

[ogreb]

@Kiya...what drivers are you using ?

I've read where older drivers are the most stable...( not interested in doing that though)

[Rnett]

Can you post some screens of those blue squares?

[Kiya]

@Kiya...what drivers are you using ?

I've read where older drivers are the most stable...( not interested in doing that though)

I've got Win XP SP3, 2 Gig RAM, Geforce 8800 GTS (display memory 640 MB) drivers date 6/28/2007. I know they are not the most recent ones but they work perfectly so why change. ;) I can play CoTN, including your save with everything maxed out, this time also 'shadows cast'. No crashing, played more than ten game years, even built you a medium pyramid and a third very small one since there was a neat place for it. :)


Yes, the shadows do make a kinda difference. I use fixed ones, but with them some of the statues have this nasty lavender blue 'tile' under them. :( I don't prefer the moving shadows so I have to put up with these blue tiles. :(

Pic1 Ogreb's Glorious City (I changed nothing, added just one more overseer, some labourers, and built 2 pyramids)
Pic2 shadows none
Pic3 shadows fixed
Pic4 shadows cast
Pic5 shadows fixed shining nastily in the night

[ogreb]

Post the save ...I would like to see my city

You built the pyramids exactly how I was going to do it...same places and size...

I was going to build 6 very small ,one medium and in another spot two small and a great pyrmaid.


Has to be drivers....

Well...STALKER Clear Sky won't be out for another week so I may roll back drivers...

Thanks for the help....

[Kiya]

Here you are, your city ten years later. As I said I made no changes. I would have built my city a bit differently but yours look just magnificent. Some notes though. I think it would be wiser to use dedicated priests rather than let them do a bit everything. You seem to have lots of entertainers, usually one entertainer family for two or three nobles. But yours still find work, two or three families entertain a noble family at the same time! :eek::D Your nobles can't say they are not entertained! :D

[ogreb]

Yeah it's my first real city...I've only had the game a couple of weeks so it took me awhile to figure out distances etc.

My first couple of towns were little blocky things...and ugly.

So I tried to spread it out...especially it being an oasis map.

The little plazaed off area with all the statues is where the cult temple was to go....

Yeah I got carried away with redundancy....but I hate seeing those orange and red icons.....so I waited until the entertainers had over a hundred food and then built another one...one for each noble...and like you said it works..


My next city will be worthy of the gods....( if I can get it running right )

Thanks for the save game..

I'll roll back drivers later today and see what happens...

[Kiya]

Yes I could see you had a plan. Happy gaming :)
Let us know if the older drivers made any difference. It may always help some other guys later if we know what helps and what doesn't.

[Alizeefan]

Hi , i also have problems with crashes to desktop.
My PC is a Dell XPS 700
Intel Core 2CPU
2.13 Ghz 2,00GB of ram
and a 1024 MB nVidia GeForce 8600GT video card.

I played my first 4 city's of the grand campaign without any problems but with the last one i have crashes.I turned all background programms off( Start> Run >type msconfig >click the startup tab > click disable all button > apply > close, and restart PC ) and it still crashed.I made also changes in the video settings and when i turn the music off i can play it.

Do i need a supercomputer to play this game properly or what?

My dxdiag is attached.

[Keith]

I noticed that you are using a 1920x1200 resolution, but the max resolution you monitor supports is 1600x1200. You may want to crank back your desktop setting somewhat.

Use a smaller resultion in the game such as 1280x1204 or 1024x768 and see if that helps.

Current Mode: 1920 x 1200 (16 bit) (60Hz)
Monitor: Plug and Play Monitor
Monitor Max Res: 1600,1200

Update your video driver from 169.21 to one of the current ones.

What version fo the game are you playing? 1.0, 1.2, 1.3? Is your game a retail box disc version or a digital download from Direct2Drive or TryMedia?

If you game is 1.0, then you should update it to 1.2 at the very least, if you can find that patch out there still, or 1.3 which requires STEAM.

[Alizeefan]

Hi Keith, i'm using a 1024 x 768 resolution in the game.

I updadet the game to 1.3 version and it's a retail box disc i bought 3 years agoo.

I have these crashes when i'm playing the campaign and not in a scenario( not so far).

Yesterday COTN closed the game because it found a fault and i got a window to send a report to microsoft but i didn't do that.

[Keith]

Some of the crashes have been linked to the autosave function in the game. For some reason on some system the game just crashes when a autosave file is being generated.

Try disabling the autosave function in the setting by moving the slider control for the frequency to zero. You'll have to make manual saves from then on. See what happens.

Try a fresh install of the game and patch.

If that doesn't work, try newer video drivers.

[Alizeefan]

Thanks, i updated my driver yesterday and disabled the autosave function.I'm playing the Sun of Ra sandbox game now and no problems at all.

I let you know what happends when i resume the campaign.

[Keith]

Excellent. Just remember to make a periodic manual save now and then so you don't lose everything if there is a crash.