Latest Information on Black Screen, Crash and Performance Issue

[Erik Rutins]

March 25th Update: We have just release 1.0.2.6 which includes additional crash fixes and the first round of changes to how we are handling vertex buffers in DW2, which we think may be one of the root problems causing crashes on some systems and drivers. Please see the 1.0.2.6 update thread.

March 23rd Update: We have just release 1.0.2.4 which includes a lot of additional fixes and changes meant to hopefully reduce the crashes, black screens, fix save hangs (which were unfortunately introduced in 1.0.2.2) and other critical issues. Please update to 1.0.2.4 as soon as possible if you are experiencing any of these issues.

March 21st update: We have just released 1.0.2.2 which includes a major change to the back buffer that may help on some systems with black screen issues. This build also includes additional crash fix and performance improvements.

March 18th Update: We have just released 1.0.2.1 which we hope will address a good part of the crash issues. This is the last update for this week, but we'll be back with more updates next week. We have one system now that can duplicate some crashes. We still are not able to duplicate some of the other issues, but we have two developers working hard down to the engine level on black screens and performance issues. There is no higher priority for us than getting DW2 working well for everyone. Thank you for your continued patience.

Update: We have found a system that duplicates some of these issues. Elliot and our Technical Director are working together to debug what is showing up there and we hope to have a resolution soon.

First, Elliot and I would like to apologize to those customers being affected by these issues.

We did not see these black screen, frequent crash, crash in combat and severe performance issues on our systems before the release. We would not have released if we'd know that on some systems, the game experience would be this bad. I have save files from multiple players experiencing terrible performance or crashes that run very well and without issues here.

Clearly, something is quite wrong and since release we've been working around the clock to figure out what it is and fix it. There will be new updates coming out regularly. The next one will include some new logging and debug tools to help us figure out exactly what's going on. We're also making improvements and fixes wherever we can find anything out of order. Hopefully some of these fixes will also improve or resolve these issues for affected customers.

We will be posting updated troubleshooting advice and FAQs with each update. If you are among those still experiencing critical issues, please let us know if any of these updates change your situation. Please also review these new FAQs and send us the requested logs and information so that we can more quickly arrive at a comprehensive fix.

Latest Troubleshooting FAQ here:
https://www.matrixgames.com/forums/view ... 6&t=380844

Thank you for your patience and understanding.

[Wizzy09]

I love you

[deMangler]

You guys are the most wholesome dev and publishing team I can think of.
Ironically I was expecting as a linux user to have really bad issues but I have to say that once I got it working it has hardly crashed and the only issue really has been the occasional short UI lockup.
It is really great to see the dedication to ensuring that everyone who loves these games has a good experience. Really good to see.

[Erik Rutins]

Updated to note the good news that we have found a system which duplicates some of these issues, which is a major step ahead.

[Erik Rutins]

I just added some updated information to the first post in this thread, based on our work and discussions today.

[Erik Rutins]

The first post in this thread has been updated to note the release of the 1.0.2.1 update, which is the last update for this week. We'll be back next week with further updates.

If you have been experiencing crashes, please try 1.0.2.1 and report your results.

Any further posts here should be based on 1.0.2.1.

If you are having any kind of crash or performance issue, we've had some success with users trying the settings in the gameoverridesettings.txt file (see the Troubleshooting FAQ) to increase or decrease the texture memory budget or try one of the other screen modes. If you try these settings and they help, please report what changes helped and post your DxDiag and Sessionlog.txt (again, see the Troubleshooting FAQ for more details).

Thank you all for your patience while we continue to work to resolve the issues still affecting some customers. These issues have proven difficult to reproduce and complex to investigate and solve, but we are putting every possible effort into them and we are making progress and hope for more significant progress next week.

[Joram]

1.2.1 definitely helped solve the crashes for me so far. Was about to put this down but its so much better now I've gotten back into it. Thanks so much for the perseverance to resolve these issues!

[Kielm]

Hi!

I have some performance feedback for 1.0.2.1. I have a reasonably well-developed game going, and have noticed some significant performance issues with certain overlays. I'll attach a savegame at the end of the post.

Zoomed out to galaxy view, I start with 1124 draw calls (found with shift & tilde). The farther I zoom in, the less calls there are (as expected).

If I stay zoomed out, most menus engage an overlay or two, which increases the number of draw calls to around 1500. I can still get around 60fps here, but it's taxing and performance suffers as each overlay is initialised.

If I deselect everything, turn off as many overlays as I can, and go to the research screen, the number of draw calls goes up to 1700 (approx).

Zoomed out to Galaxy view, deselect everything, go to research screen = 2500 draw calls.

But, here's the kicker - If I select the colony menu, and engage the basic lcoation badges overlay, (~1800 draw calls), and then enter the research screen - 3200 draw calls and 3FPS.

The number of drawn triangles is pretty stable (around 10k), and the texture memory usage is also stable (around 4088mb), but it looks like the sheer number of draw calls from the overlays is really killing things. It looks like many of these are still being rendered in the background while in the research screen (which has it's own impact).

I'm playing at 2k resolution if that makes any difference. Save game attached, please forgive my empire naming (I didn't expect the game to last this long, I was just having a practice/learning game)!


Additionally, playing at 4x speed (and sometimes, 2x speed with overlays) is causing some problems this far along. It seems some messages are disappearing before they are cleared / dismissed. I've only had one crash in the last ~10 hours of gameplay which is great improvement - unfortunately this did not produce a crash report. I suspect it was performance related, as I'd been running it for around 2 hours when it finally popped.

[Erik Rutins]

Updated the original post to reflect 1.0.2.2

[Erik Rutins]

I have some performance feedback for 1.0.2.1. I have a reasonably well-developed game going, and have noticed some significant performance issues with certain overlays. I'll attach a savegame at the end of the post.
Zoomed out to galaxy view, I start with 1124 draw calls (found with shift & tilde). The farther I zoom in, the less calls there are (as expected).
If I stay zoomed out, most menus engage an overlay or two, which increases the number of draw calls to around 1500. I can still get around 60fps here, but it's taxing and performance suffers as each overlay is initialised.
If I deselect everything, turn off as many overlays as I can, and go to the research screen, the number of draw calls goes up to 1700 (approx).
Zoomed out to Galaxy view, deselect everything, go to research screen = 2500 draw calls.
But, here's the kicker - If I select the colony menu, and engage the basic lcoation badges overlay, (~1800 draw calls), and then enter the research screen - 3200 draw calls and 3FPS.
The number of drawn triangles is pretty stable (around 10k), and the texture memory usage is also stable (around 4088mb), but it looks like the sheer number of draw calls from the overlays is really killing things. It looks like many of these are still being rendered in the background while in the research screen (which has it's own impact).

Very interesting thank you. Could you also share a DxDiag and a Sessionlog.txt with us please?

[eddiaz79]

Erik,

I have a Ryzen 3800X and SSD, 32 gig and AMD 5700XT and my game is crashing with update 1.0.2.2 and 1.02.1 when starting the game. I have some crashes on 1.0.2.0 and before but not as much as I am having now. The game is becoming unplayable the more updates it receives.

[Erik Rutins]

Could you please try going back to 1.0.2.2 and then deleting your gamesettings and gamestartsettings files manually from the /data sub-folder of your installation before launching 1.0.2.2 to see if that makes a difference?

[eddiaz79]

Okay I will do it now. Just be aware that game also crashes when zooming in and out.

[eddiaz79]

ERutins,

I deleted the gamesettings and gamestartsettings files manually from the /data sub-folder and started the game. The game loaded without an issue. When I shut down the game and restarted the game it crashed again and now it crashes again when I try to load.

I am getting AMD Software detected that a driver timeout has occurred on your system.

[Erik Rutins]

ERutins,
I deleted the gamesettings and gamestartsettings files manually from the /data sub-folder and started the game. The game loaded without an issue. When I shut down the game and restarted the game it crashed again and now it crashes again when I try to load.

Is this consistent for you in that if you delete those files again the game will load without an issue for the first time?

[eddiaz79]

I tried the same process again where I deleted the gamesettings and gamestartsettings files manually from the /data sub-folder and it still crashes when launching the game. However, for the first time after like three tries, I am able to launch the game. So not consistent but atleast I am able to launch the game on 1.0.2.2.

Correction, I did the process 5 times and I was able to launch the game 4 out of 5. However, playing the game is a different story, I am still having issues when zooming in and zooming out.

[Kielm]

Very interesting thank you. Could you also share a DxDiag and a Sessionlog.txt with us please?

Attached as requested

[alexman91]

i have an amd 480 gpu. i was having crashes constantly on the later patches. i read on a forum post that disabling amd anti lag and such and turning off freesync/vsync would improve things and now i played for 4 hours with no crashses sofar

[Erik Rutins]

Updated the first post to reflect 1.0.2.4. If you are having issues, please give 1.0.2.4 a try. If the issues continue, please report them to us per the instructions in the Tech Support sub-forum.

[eddiaz79]

ERutins,

Having issues with launching game with 1.0.2.4. Please see attached files.