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Author Topic: Game display freezes during battle  (Read 2940 times)

adam_2020

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Game display freezes during battle
« on: September 24, 2020, 07:19:15 AM »

I just heard about this game a few days ago and I'm loving it so far, but my game freezes at random almost every battle, and rarely while travelling space. I can still hear the battle going and can still hear sounds when I interact with the menus, but I can't see the menus at all. The game will appear to be frozen but there is still things going on in the background. My game has been running consistently at 60fps the entire time, and it only started happening often after I got a large carrier. I have no mods. What can I do to fix this besides alt+f4 quitting the game every time?
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robepriority

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Re: Game display freezes during battle
« Reply #1 on: September 24, 2020, 08:05:47 AM »

What are your specs?
It sounds like the same problem I have with large battles:

http://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=19152.15

adam_2020

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Re: Game display freezes during battle
« Reply #2 on: September 24, 2020, 08:21:23 AM »

I just heard about this game a few days ago and I'm loving it so far, but my game freezes at random almost every battle, and rarely while travelling space. I can still hear the battle going and can still hear sounds when I interact with the menus, but I can't see the menus at all. The game will appear to be frozen but there is still things going on in the background. My game has been running consistently at 60fps the entire time, and it only started happening often after I got a large carrier. I have no mods. What can I do to fix this besides alt+f4 quitting the game every time?
My computer is a Dell Inspirion I5 3000 laptop with 8GB of RAM.
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Alex

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Re: Game display freezes during battle
« Reply #3 on: September 24, 2020, 09:07:45 AM »

Hi - sorry about the trouble! Hmm. It does sound like it's similar to one of the issues @robepriority is running into. I'd suggest trying the same things:

1) Rebooting, if you haven't recently
2) Shutting down whatever else you might have running
3) Making sure your graphics drivers are up-to-date

If you have windows aero effects turned on, actually, turning them off *may* be worth a shot, too - it might free up more system resources. See this thread for a bit more info (different issue, but same potential thing to try):
http://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=19034.msg296949#msg296949

Does this happen in fullscreen mode, btw? I'd also try different combinations of "windowed at less than max resolution", "fullscreen unchecked but with max resolution", and "fullscreen checked at max resolution" - all of these do something a bit different under the hood which may factor in.
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robepriority

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Re: Game display freezes during battle
« Reply #4 on: September 24, 2020, 10:22:02 AM »

FWIW I've run it on 1280x768 and 2048x1152 windowed and fullscreen.

Also, my earlygame doesn't crash either - started a new save and battles go smoothly.

adam_2020

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Re: Game display freezes during battle
« Reply #5 on: September 25, 2020, 09:45:04 AM »

I don't understand the problem; every resolution I tried gives the same result, the game freezes mid battle and force quitting is the only option. I was taking on three survey ship drones at once and winning, and when another droneship explodes in the corner of my screen, it freezes and I have to quit. Same thing happened in another encounter: my fleet was ripping apart a pirate's capital ship and once I got within viewing distance it froze.
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Alex

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Re: Game display freezes during battle
« Reply #6 on: September 25, 2020, 12:09:43 PM »

Thank you for the added details!

Based on what your describing, it sounds like the problem is most likely one of two things:

1) A graphics driver issue. If that's the case then using a different version of the drivers (perhaps an older one; that's helped people in the past) might resolve it.
2) Some other software running at the same time conflicting with the game. For example, something like MSI Afterburner, the equivalent-ish ROG app, or anything to do with video capture/playback would be something to look at (and turn off).
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robepriority

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Re: Game display freezes during battle
« Reply #7 on: September 26, 2020, 11:21:33 AM »

One thing I would like adam to try out is to do the same battle he's been crashing on, except without his flagship deployed. I actually have done 3 battles with video feed scrolled on top of the station, and yet the battle runs smoothly.

zeno

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Re: Game display freezes during battle
« Reply #8 on: October 05, 2020, 11:23:19 AM »

I'm running into this when I run on a laptop as well, and it's almost certainly due to Intel drivers for integrated graphics.  Every it happens for me there's a corresponding error in Windows logs about a hang in the graphics driver, either because of a bug in the driver itself or maybe the hardware is overheating.

However, other apps can usually recover after the driver is restarted by the OS, but Starsector's render loop looks like it just gets stuck.  It's not obvious whether this occurs in the OpenGL or Starsector's runtime...

This doesn't happen on other machines that have a dedicated nvidia or AMD graphics card.
« Last Edit: October 05, 2020, 11:26:14 AM by zeno »
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Xandorius

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Re: Game display freezes during battle
« Reply #9 on: October 16, 2020, 09:36:03 PM »

Hello,

I seem to encounter the same issues as Zeno under similar circumstances using a Microsoft Surface Pro 7. I get the same things in the error logs.

Have you found any potential fixes or things to try?

Thanks!
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adam_2020

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Re: Game display freezes during battle
« Reply #10 on: October 21, 2020, 10:06:47 PM »

I don't currently have any solution to this, but I increased the allocated vram for my game and try to avoid zooming out in battle whenever a ship explodes or is about to explode. It tends to do that whenever I scroll the view out a lot in the larger battles, and not doing that I've noticed has reduced the rate at which these freezes occur.
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