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[AGenericFool]

Hey folks, I'm new here and seek help for my fading Starsector addiction which I developed some weeks ago. I'll get right to the point, cause there is two big issues I am having.
First off I've gotta say, I already looked up both problems and tried multiple fixes for them but nothing worked so far.

Before I get to the problems here is some general info : I got Windows 10 x64 with 8GB RAM and 5GB RAM allocated to Starsector when playing and I've got more than enough VRAM too. I'm playing on 0.8.1a-RC8 with Dynasector, BRDY, Combat Chatter, Common Radar, Interstellar Imperium, LazyLib, Nexerelin, Shadowyards, Ship/Weapon Pack, Steiner Foundation, Underworld, Version Checker, Audip Plus and GraphicsLib. All of the mods are up-to-date as is my graphics driver too. I usually play with JRE 1.70, tried 1.80, but it did not fix any problems either. I've got slightly modified parameters as many do, but nothing special what should crash the game.

The first ("smaller") problem is that when I'm trying to create a new game, the game gives me a Fatal: null pretty much as the loading bar finishes. starsector.log reveals:

117667 [Thread-4] ERROR com.fs.starfarer.combat.CombatMain  - java.lang.NullPointerException
java.lang.NullPointerException
   at data.scripts.world.underworld.UW_Styx.pickLocation(UW_Styx.java:150)
   at data.scripts.world.underworld.UW_Styx.generatePt2(UW_Styx.java:108)
   at data.scripts.UnderworldModPlugin.onNewGameAfterProcGen(UnderworldModPlugin.java:212)
   at com.fs.starfarer.campaign.save.CampaignGameManager.o00000(Unknown Source)
   at com.fs.starfarer.title.TitleScreenState.dialogDismissed(Unknown Source)
   at com.fs.starfarer.ui.Oo0O.dismiss(Unknown Source)
   at com.fs.starfarer.ui.impl.J.dismiss(Unknown Source)
   at com.fs.starfarer.campaign.save.if.actionPerformed(Unknown Source)
   at com.fs.starfarer.ui.j.super(Unknown Source)
   at com.fs.starfarer.ui.I.processInput(Unknown Source)
   at com.fs.starfarer.ui.V.o00000(Unknown Source)
   at com.fs.starfarer.BaseGameState.traverse(Unknown Source)
   at com.fs.state.AppDriver.begin(Unknown Source)
   at com.fs.starfarer.combat.CombatMain.main(Unknown Source)
   at com.fs.starfarer.StarfarerLauncher$1.run(Unknown Source)
   at java.lang.Thread.run(Unknown Source)
 
That is the first riddle to solve, the second comes now, which is the one actually ruining the relation between me and my Starsector.

At a certain, "high level" point in the game , the game freezes several minutes (like 1-3) after I load up my game. This both happened to Surely from BRDY; Difficulty:Normal; Level 40; Cycle 210, Month 5, Day 29 and to Esther Olympus Imperium; Normal; Level 41; Cycle 208, Month 5, Day 4. Whichever one I load up, I can play for roughly something over a minute and then whatever I'm doing, the game just freezes and gives me
Java(TM) Platform SE binary stopped working and then I'm sad.
When I load up to game it stutters for like 4 seconds but then calms and runs smooth as it can be and big/giant battles never were a problem for my system either.
There is nothing in the log for this, so I'm really hoping someone can help me. I did not try running it without mods since the crashes, but I'd bet it would just work as always. I can try out whatever you guys want or give you any missing information etc. just tell me. Besides that I've got nothing to say besides thank you for even reading this far and have a nice day.

[Alex]

For the first problem, this looks like a bug in Underworld, since it's just a straight-up crash there.

For the second, it's really hard to say. Does it actually crash or does it just hang until you kill it? If it crashes, is there an hs_errXXX.pid file generated somewhere? It'd be either in the Starsector/ folder or in starsector-core.

[Midnight Kitsune]

First of all, welcome to the forums!
Your first problem I'm pretty sure can be fixed with this: https://www.dropbox.com/s/g44mhpm3473r87b/Underworld.jar?dl=0
What you do with it is you go to the underworld folder and into the folder labeled jar, delete the file Underworld.jar and put the one from this link in there instead.
About your second issue, I sadly don't have a fix for it in mind

[AGenericFool]

First of, thanks.
@Midnight Kitsune I did what you said and now my game does not crash anymore on startup, yay, thanks alot.

@Alex It just freezes/hangs until I kill it, it does not completely crash. I found no hs_errXXX.pid in neither of the folders, but I guess that was to be expected when it does not actually crash. Could i give you or anyone any more specific information that could probably shed light on this issue, or what the issue is.

[Alex]

Hmm. Well, it depends on how comfortable you are with computer things

Let me just preface it with saying that it's quite a bit to ask and if you're not comfortable doing any of the steps, no worries.

Basically, what could help diagnose this is seeing what the game is doing at the point where it hangs. There's a tool called "jvisualvm" that comes with the jdk that allows one to look at a running jvm and see a bunch of stuff about it. It's located in the bin/ folder of the jdk installation.

So, you'd want to run jvisualm, connect it to the local "StarfarerLauncher" application, and then wait for the game to hang. Once it does, go to the "Threads" tab and press the "thread dump" button. Hopefully that will work, and should produce what looks like a bunch of stack traces, similar to the error in the original post. Seeing what all of those say would be likely helpful in diagnosing the problem.

[AGenericFool]

So, this thing evolved in a interesting direction. First of, I'm no millenial but I'm pretty comfortable with pc stuff and I'd love if everyone who says to me "it's quite a bit to ask" had such easy requests with instructions.
Oh and I got 6GB Ram of 8GB allocated to Starsector not 5. As far as I'm aware 2GB is enough for Win 10 to run.

I did what you asked me to do, (oh I hope it was normal for the Application to be named com.fs.starfarer.StarfarerLauncher (pid11144) in the Local tab ) but as I flew around the rim of the system I noticed... you've got to be kidding me... the game is not freezing, but my Idle jumps around from 5%-80% while having nothing else open than Starsector, depending on how far I get towards the inner sector with alot of fleet battles. This means it is probably just not enough RAM and I should sacrifice some of my beloved mods huh? But why can I still sometimes play with 60 FPS and 0% Idle without the game freezing? And why can it just swallow 6GB of RAM as if it was nothing, I mean on the Modded Systems page it says "Even if you activated every single mod at the same time, 6 GB would still be enough."?
Anyways I flew back into the system where my Idle went to 1% and then the game froze. I tried to do the thread dump, but it told me that "Thread Dump failed". Now I am sitting here trying to get my game to crash, but after the invasion in this sector was over, I could not get my game to crash, even when buying supplies for 100,000 and flying in circles my Idle is at min 13%. This means it really was just a issue of not enough RAM, wow I'm a douche, thanks for helping me reflect on myself.
If it freezes again or I got other problems, I will at least try to take another Thread Dump and you will hear from me. Thanks for all the help and yeah in my little text are some open questions left, but thanks to you guys and my really late awareness I now know how to kinda prevent the freezes, at least if I'm really on the right track here.
I still feel like I forgot something, but it just won't come to my mind.

[Alex]

Hmm, yeah, this just sounds weird. If idle is jumping around like that, either it's indeed a memory issue or (and this seems more likely) something in the game is periodically taking up way more CPU time than it should. A hang could also be a memory issue coming to a head, *or* it could be something getting stuck in an infinite loop. Just hard to say, unfortunately.

That a thread dump failed actually may point to it being a memory issue, but it could actually work if you gave it another try.

Also: a stable 60 fps with 0% idle sounds... unlikely. If that's going on, that's really odd too!


(The application name is fine, yeah, that's what you'd expect to see.)

[Midnight Kitsune]

One thing you might try is making sure starsector's java is using your graphics card

[AGenericFool]

First of, I tried another Thread Dump but it did not work either, I guess third time is the charm.

@Midnight Kitsune I thought it does that automatically, if I only have one graphics card. So I don't know how to check this and neither found anything on a quick search.

@Alex I agree with something periodically taking up way more CPU than it should, but I'm not sure if it is in the game. I know my pc for wavering performance sometimes, but I did not find a solution or someone who could tell me where the problem originates yet. If you have a Idea, just shout it out, I appreciate everything. It is not exactly perfect 60FPS at 0% Idle, but more like 55-60FPS even at 1% Idle, which is probably why I never noticed my Idle dropping so low. I will perform a memory check today.

[BlackAlpha]

As a workaround, make sure you make new saves often. Whenever I get the problem that you described, I always have been able to load up the previous save and then keep going. I always do a new save every 30-60 minutes, so at worst I only lose 1 hour worth of progress.

[Midnight Kitsune]

Actually no, many times java will use your Integrated GFX card instead of your real one so you need to force the card to run when SS runs. You can do this by using the software that came with your card and navigate to the menu that deals with when your card is used. There should be an option to add a program to a list of programs that is forced to use the GFX card. Add SS's JAVA.exe (located in Fractal Softworks\Starsector\jre\bin ) to this list, NOT the standard exe as it is just the launcher. Note I'm doing this off of memory as I do not have a real card myself.
If that doesn't help then you might want to try disabling the GraphicsLib's effects in the mod's INI file. It is located just as you open the mod folder for GLib. Set "enableShaders:" to false and it should help hopefully

[AGenericFool]

@BlackAlpha Yeah I've been doing that since figuring out roughly when it crashes, but I do it more often than every 30-60min, that is sometimes how much time I have to play at all.

Due to a lack of time I've not been actively playing Starsector in the last days, now I'm probably sadly going to take out some mods and start anew, with a lesser frequency of crashes.

@Midnight Kitsune I already disabled GraphicsLib's effects before coming to the forum, it helped a little bit, but not much. I did exactly what you told me to and made sure it is using my GFX card, but it did not bring any changes.

I also tried taking another Thread Dump when the game crashes but again "take Thread Dump failed". When it froze it had 56 FPS and 2% Idle. At least I'm 99% sure, because despite the same game still being frozen I just looked again and now it reads 23 FPS Idle 42%. Interesting.

P.S. I just tested my RAM and there were no problems detected.

[Alex]

Thank you for giving it another shot! Hmm. It could be related to a specific mod, or, as you say (or at least imply) could be something on your system. An off chance, but may be worth a shot: running as administrator?

[AGenericFool]

No problem, sorry that i was gone for some time. Do you know of any mods which are known to cause this kind of issue? I am pretty much always running it as administrator, which did not seem to help.

[Midnight Kitsune]

It would help if you listed your mods out. Generally anything that is Dynasector enabled is good, as is anything on that page that they link to (Except the underworld jar bug for reasons)