Crash in Jan 5th Patch

[bjmorgan]

Had a crash in the new patch. Logs and save game attached.

[Pocus]

Sorry, I did not repeat the bug, your turn processed ok for me, with or without redoing all AI orders. If you get another one though, don't hesitate to report it. Thanks.

[veji1]

This is where bugs are so tricky and why computer game programming is so much harder than console games : clearly something happening is linked to the player's machine and can't be replicated by the devs, yet it's not the poor costumer's fault and he can be legitimately frustrated... compllicated.

[bjmorgan]

Sorry, I did not repeat the bug, your turn processed ok for me, with or without redoing all AI orders. If you get another one though, don't hesitate to report it. Thanks.

It crashed again about 16 turns later. Here is the chain of events. (I hope this works right.)

[bjmorgan]

Here are the logs and saves. The AI log is too large. If you need it, I'll split it up.

By the way, the game does seem to be a bit more stable. I used to get the above types of notifications constantly, maybe every other turn or so, but now it's every four or five turns. And few of them each turn, too. It crashes about every 12 to 15 turns, it seems. I have another crash from last night, but I'll deal with that later. I want to see if I can resume from an earlier turn.

[bjmorgan]

Also, I don't think the Pressberg event works anymore. I executed it, and nothing happened as it did before the 5th patch. I'm a dozen turns past that point now. Can the Austrians turn it down? I didn't think so.

[PhilThib]

Also, I don't think the Pressberg event works anymore. I executed it, and nothing happened as it did before the 5th patch. I'm a dozen turns past that point now. Can the Austrians turn it down? I didn't think so.

The only way to know if this works or not is to send us the script reports on the turn of when it is chosen and also the saves (if any) of the 2-3 ensuing turns. This event has been amply tested by many different people and it does work...may be some conditions are not met to explain why it is refused/not taken by Austria (the AI takes it 100% of the time, provided Austrian morale is lower than French and strictly lower than 75)...

[Pocus]

I have played the turn and got no crash. If you are prone to crashes, then try first to exit the game and retry the turn. If the bug is still there, that's for me and I'll check the saved game. If not, then it is almost impossible to fix the bug as it can be caused by an hardware issue or an incompatibility between the DirectX library we use and your system.

[bjmorgan]

The only way to know if this works or not is to send us the script reports on the turn of when it is chosen and also the saves (if any) of the 2-3 ensuing turns. This event has been amply tested by many different people and it does work...may be some conditions are not met to explain why it is refused/not taken by Austria (the AI takes it 100% of the time, provided Austrian morale is lower than French and strictly lower than 75)...

Then if the conditions are not met, why does it deduct the EP? Should it not lock that option? Also, in another thread, someone said the same thing I did.

[bjmorgan]

I have played the turn and got no crash. If you are prone to crashes, then try first to exit the game and retry the turn. If the bug is still there, that's for me and I'll check the saved game. If not, then it is almost impossible to fix the bug as it can be caused by an hardware issue or an incompatibility between the DirectX library we use and your system.

Please tell me, or great squirrel, how hardware can cause two wars between countries? And how can it cause exception handling errors? Those sound like code or database issues to me. You discount these too casually, in my opinion.

Yes, I can usually restart the game and resume it, sometimes it reverts back a turn. But, that's perfect evidence to show that it is NOT a hardware issue.

And I have all available direct X versions installed. So ...

[Pocus]

The error message about 2 wars at the same time is most probably a game logic error. But that's not 100% certain. Computers running out of memory can really corrupt any data structure in memory, I have seen that. But as I said, this particular bug is most probably a true game logic bug, that I would gladly fix if it was reproduced on my side. I never got a report in beta of this particular message, so it must be an extremely rare bug (and again I'm not saying you did not had one).

Also... that you got this bug does not mean you don't suffer from a problem with available memory. That's not because you have a bug that this is the only problem around the corner. Before you say it, yes the game can run out of memory even with very powerful configs. It is using rather old (by 2016 standards) directX libraries and they might have some compatibility problems with some video card drivers, resulting in the memory never freed ever and so once the video ram is full, it eats into the main ram and then you get weird errors.

So in essence, I can fix reproducible bug on game logic, but I failed to reproduce your. As for more hardware oriented (or drivers compatibility) problem, only the Helpdesk can reliably find a solution. I'm saying you might suffer from a device compatibility issue because having a crash every 4 turns is exceptional. The vast and silent majority of players will only have game logic bugs and the same for betas. We do indeed have 2 betas that regularly crash and they also crashed in the previous game they beta tested. For all others, the only issues they get is with buggy scripted historical events or a bug in game logic.

[bjmorgan]

Well, I guess what you're saying is that since it can't be repeated, it's my hardware. Okay. Sure.

But, I have 16 GB, nothing else major running in the background, and have done a full memchk in the last week. All is good

Have a good day.

[Pocus]

No, that's an oversimplification. I'm not dumping on your machine the problem. I'm saying that if it can't be repeated, then there is a compatibility issue between the DirectX wrapper we use, which starts to get old, and your video driver. The Helpdesk might have a solution about that by the way, that includes placing a DLL that will convert what the wrapper asks to your video card to something more recent, that will hopefully be better supported by the video card.