Fractal Softworks Forum

Please login or register.

Login with username, password and session length
Advanced search  

News:

Starsector 0.97a is out! (02/02/24); New blog post: Simulator Enhancements (03/13/24)

Pages: [1] 2

Author Topic: Crashing in battle  (Read 5206 times)

robepriority

  • Captain
  • ****
  • Posts: 409
  • robepriority#2626
    • View Profile
Crashing in battle
« on: September 22, 2020, 07:19:20 PM »

Hi, I've been loving SS, but I have been crashing a *lot* in battle. I suspect this has something to do with my low integrated VRAM(128MB), but both GPU and Memory are >40% usage when it crashes. The crashlog is around 50,000 KB so I'm not quote sure how to share it,

1) Is it a VRAM issue?

2) If so, is there any way to allocate more or downgrade graphical demands from SS?

Alex

  • Administrator
  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 23986
    • View Profile
Re: Crashing in battle
« Reply #1 on: September 22, 2020, 07:33:50 PM »

Hi - is this vanilla, or with mods? At the end of starsector.log, there should be a stack trace - it should be to just post that here, it's not too large. It's maybe the last 100 lines after it crashes; probably somewhat less.
Logged

robepriority

  • Captain
  • ****
  • Posts: 409
  • robepriority#2626
    • View Profile
Re: Crashing in battle
« Reply #2 on: September 22, 2020, 08:29:55 PM »

This is vanilla. I'm getting database errors when I try to post anything more...

robepriority

  • Captain
  • ****
  • Posts: 409
  • robepriority#2626
    • View Profile
Re: Crashing in battle
« Reply #3 on: September 22, 2020, 08:33:35 PM »

Ok, I've attached what I've intended to post:

[attachment deleted by admin]

Alex

  • Administrator
  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 23986
    • View Profile
Re: Crashing in battle
« Reply #4 on: September 22, 2020, 08:56:34 PM »

Hmm - I'm not quite clear on whether the stack trace in the attachment is from your log or from Discord. I suppose running with sound off might be a way to see if your error is sound related or not. If, for example, you have headphones and no other sound device on your computer, and you unplug the headphones while playing the game, then this sort of thing *might* happen.

How much RAM do you have?

And - have you rebooted recently/do you reboot fairly regularly? If not, then that might actually help.

Also: are there any hs_err_pidXXXX.log files in the game folder? With XXXX being some numbers. If so, could you post one whose last modified date corresponds to a crash?
Logged

robepriority

  • Captain
  • ****
  • Posts: 409
  • robepriority#2626
    • View Profile
Re: Crashing in battle
« Reply #5 on: September 22, 2020, 09:05:30 PM »

The code that I had in the attachement was from discord. to quote someone on there:

Quote
The only kind of error I can find, it repeats on several occasions.
Always followed by the launcher opening so I'm going to assume it's our culprit.
Audio Driver issue perhaps?

I haven't seen an hs_err_pid file.

I have 8GB RAM.

I tried to do a test between no-sound and sound on a pirate raid - both did not crash, curiously enough.

I have rebooted just today.

Alex

  • Administrator
  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 23986
    • View Profile
Re: Crashing in battle
« Reply #6 on: September 22, 2020, 09:23:41 PM »

Hmm, ok - if you have 8gb ram, then it's probably not due to your integrated VRAM, since spillover from that would go into regular RAM, and you've got enough - the game is not going to use more than 1.5 gigs by default.

Based on what the person in Discord said, this does indeed seem like the error. Could you try the steps in the troubleshooting thread, the 5th item down?
http://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=2106.0

In particular, I'd look for OpenAL dlls in your windows folders and clean those out, just in case the game is picking up a bad one (or just a not-quite-right-version one) and that's causing the crashes.

Also, if you've got other software running at the time - anything to do with audio or video capture, perhaps? Or MSI afterburner or some such... or anything that comes to mind, really - basically it could be interference from something running that the same time, conceivably.
Logged

robepriority

  • Captain
  • ****
  • Posts: 409
  • robepriority#2626
    • View Profile
Re: Crashing in battle
« Reply #7 on: September 22, 2020, 09:41:23 PM »

It doesn't seem like I have anything running besides SS, task manager, and Edge right now.

I found one instance of openal32.dll after running the installer, I think that's the correct version.

I forgot to tell a few other details about how it crashes:
Audio still plays, but the video waits ~3 seconds, then advances one frame and stops entirely. Input doesn't really change anything.

robepriority

  • Captain
  • ****
  • Posts: 409
  • robepriority#2626
    • View Profile
Re: Crashing in battle
« Reply #8 on: September 22, 2020, 09:46:30 PM »

Code
6433 [Thread-4] ERROR com.fs.starfarer.loading.ShipHullSpreadsheetLoader  - Ship hull spec [flare] not found in ship_data.csv
6433 [Thread-4] ERROR com.fs.starfarer.loading.ShipHullSpreadsheetLoader  - Ship hull spec [module_hightech_decor] not found in ship_data.csv

I have 3 log files, they're all loading/initialization, except for this one set of errors common on all 3, could this be the cause?

robepriority

  • Captain
  • ****
  • Posts: 409
  • robepriority#2626
    • View Profile
Re: Crashing in battle
« Reply #9 on: September 23, 2020, 06:06:36 AM »

I found out during a windowed play session that the cursor actually can be moved during the "crash", so I'm not quite sure what's going on anymore.

What I suspect is that it's not actually a crash, but the visual aspect of the game breaking while the rest of the game continues running. This might also be why the logs are ususally just filled with [INFO].

I've reinstalled the game, and the conditions are the same.

I've also run a test where I basically let AI do control -  being the maximum zoom + fleet command view enabled. This was on a Tri-tachyon base defense with 2 pirate armada's attacking. Zero crashes. GPU/Memory were around 30/40% usage.

I did the same thing against a Luddic Path fleet, did not crash during battle. When I went to open up the combat screen for the Alpha core technology cache next to the luddic base, GPU and CPU spiked to 100% before freezing. Closing out SS also spiked to 100%.

Having either battle zoomed out, or zooming out in battle will also have the same issues popup in-battle.

« Last Edit: September 23, 2020, 08:50:00 AM by robepriority »
Logged

Alex

  • Administrator
  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 23986
    • View Profile
Re: Crashing in battle
« Reply #10 on: September 23, 2020, 09:02:43 AM »

(These errors in the log are expected, btw; they don't indicate an issue.)

This is starting to sound like it could well be a graphics driver issue, then, yeah.

Could you make sure your graphics drivers are up-to-date? Another thing that's worth a try is messing with various graphics driver settings you might have. For example stuff like adjusting the slider for the amount of hardware acceleration could make a difference.
Logged

robepriority

  • Captain
  • ****
  • Posts: 409
  • robepriority#2626
    • View Profile
Re: Crashing in battle
« Reply #11 on: September 23, 2020, 09:43:31 AM »

I did update the driver, but it doesn't seem like there are any customization options like troubleshooting or hardware acceleration.

In the meantime, I found the lovely set of runtime errors again, which still brings up a database error if I attempt to post the actual log:AL error 40964, ect ect.
 

I'm running a 64 bit operating system, should I be running openAL64? The official openAL site defaults to 32.
« Last Edit: September 23, 2020, 09:46:31 AM by robepriority »
Logged

Alex

  • Administrator
  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 23986
    • View Profile
Re: Crashing in battle
« Reply #12 on: September 23, 2020, 09:51:59 AM »

Yeah, you'd want the OpenAL64 one, I'd think.

If you've got windows 10, there should be a slider for hardware acceleration here:
https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_10-hardware-winpc/how-do-i-change-hardware-acceleration-in-windows/0c0ec0b8-c5b0-4740-bfc4-1007fa4578c0

(It'd be somewhere similar for other versions, probably.)

Also: if you have Chrome, then turning off hardware acceleration from the browser will actually have some system-wide effects, so that may be worth a shot. Not sure if Edge has the same toggle/with the same effects.
Logged

robepriority

  • Captain
  • ****
  • Posts: 409
  • robepriority#2626
    • View Profile
Re: Crashing in battle
« Reply #13 on: September 23, 2020, 10:20:49 AM »

Edge does have hardware acceleration! Turned that off.

Unfortunately, it seems like there's no method to turn off acceleration for the drivers, the linked windows support thread said that that method got shutdown in a '17 Windows update.

I've installed openAL64 from some dll filesharing site, didn't do much, unfortunately.


Also, since I keep editing posts, I might not have able to express that both CPU and GPU reach 100% during these freezes.



« Last Edit: September 23, 2020, 10:26:23 AM by robepriority »
Logged

Alex

  • Administrator
  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 23986
    • View Profile
Re: Crashing in battle
« Reply #14 on: September 23, 2020, 12:06:41 PM »

Also, since I keep editing posts, I might not have able to express that both CPU and GPU reach 100% during these freezes.

Right, I saw. It's a potentially interesting bit of info but I suspect it has more to do with what's going on in the driver code than in the game code, if that makes sense.

One thing that might be worth trying: if you edit data/config/settings.json, there should be a line that says:

"useGLFinish":false,

If you change it to:

"useGLFinish":true,

Then that may possibly get around the issue. It's an extremely long shot, though - basically it's changing an (otherwise normal) aspect of how the game works in the hope that maybe that'll factor into whatever the driver is having trouble with.

Have you had it hang with sound turned off? Knowing this might help clarify whether it's indeed a graphics driver issue or still sound-related, since right now it feels like several things going on and that's difficult to try to debug. E.G. there's hangs-but-not-crashes, but also apparently OpenAL-related crashes...
Logged
Pages: [1] 2