DISTANT WORLD CRASHES ARE DANGEROUS

[songseeker]

I enjoyed the original version of Distant Worlds tremendously. I was very pleased to see that Distant Worlds 2 was available and bought it when it was released. Unfortunately, it was unplayable, crashing as soon as I zoomed in on any sort of combat. I came back about every month to see if the situation had been rectified with a patch. Finally, the last patch with Vulcan and the Beta version reduced the crashes in the early game to about every 30 mins, and in the latter game to about every 5 mins. I liked the game so much that I was prepared to put up with this and frequently saved so I could continue playing. I should not have done this and I explain below why.

Most of the crashes would just put me back to desktop. Frustrating but I could put up with it. About 1 in 9 crashes produced a request to send in an error file; I was happy to do that. Unfortunately, about 1 in 11 crashes made the PC completely unresponsive and turned off the display. When this happens I restart the PC as there is no other option and,strangely, the connection to the internet no longer functions. I have a wireless connection and I can only get it to work again by removing and reinserting the wireless dongle, though which my internet comes. No amount of troubleshooting will work until I have replaced the dongle as the PC will not recognize any wireless network. Even this I put up with. But, the last time this happened it also removed my drivers on my graphics card. It took me a long time to figure this out. When I finally worked out what it had done I reinstalled the graphics drivers and the PC now functions correctly again.

This is the final straw though. When crashing severely effects the PC in ways that it totally should not, and can be quite serious, I have concluded that continuing to play Distant Worlds 2 is just too dangerous. A very sad day indeed.

[Cubano]

I suspect there's a deeper issue going on. A well configured OS won't allow a program to do that. If the PC wasn't recognizing your wireless dongle and you reached a point that your video drivers became unloadable after a crash (they weren't uninstalled - that doesn't happen) there is something seriously wrong.

I would bet that the game crashing and forcing a non-clean restart is just exposing the problem.

I've seen PCs do similar stuff due to corrupted drivers or a corrupted OS - one of my responsibilities is managing all the PCs at work so I get to see a lot of failures. If it was my PC, I would to a clean install of windows. I know that's extreme but I have found that those kind of failures are easier to resolve by doing a clean install than having to trouble shoot them - course I have clean images of the PCs at work which makes it easier.

[songseeker]

I suppose that is possible. But against it is the fact that it only happens with Distant Worlds 2, not with any other game or application

[zebanovich]

I suppose that is possible. But against it is the fact that it only happens with Distant Worlds 2, not with any other game or application

What GPU do you have?

[songseeker]

AMD Radeon R9 200

[zebanovich]

AMD Radeon R9 200

There are many 200 series cards, can you be more specific?
Can you give a link to your exact card to see stats?

[songseeker]

Have not really been able to determine more detailed information. Best I can offer is:

GPU - AMD Radeon R9 200 Series - Primary/Discrete
VRAM - 3072 MB - GDDR5 1250 MHz
Graphics Card Manufacturer - Powered by AMD
Graphics Chipset - AMD Radeon R9 200 Series
Device ID - 679A
Vendor ID - 1002
SubSystem ID - A003
SubSystem Vendor ID - 174B
Revision ID - 00
Bus Type - PCI Express 3.0
Current Bus Settings - PCI Express 2.0 x16
BIOS Version - 015.045.000.010
BIOS Part Number - 113-8E2490U-O4B
BIOS Date - 2014/05/08 05:10
Usable Memory Size - 3072 MB
Memory Type - GDDR5
Memory Clock - 1250 MHz
Core Clock - 940 MHz
Total Memory Bandwidth - 240 GByte/s
Memory Bit Rate - 5.00 Gbps
2D Driver File Path - /REGISTRY/MACHINE/SYSTEM/CurrentControlSet/Control/Class/{4d36e968-e325-11ce-bfc1-08002be10318}/0000
OpenGL® API Version - 4.6
OpenCL™ API Version - 1.2

[zebanovich]

Thank you for details, this GPU has been reported for problems by other people as well that I can find:
1. Windows OS may install it's own driver soon after you install official AMD driver
2. Windows updates may not like the driver due to OS patches
3. GPU settings

First thing I would do is to clean reinstall GPU driver, you do this by:
- downloading latest driver and note down the version of a driver that you downloaded
- uninstalling currently installed driver
- reboot system
- install downloaded driver again

Then next step is open device management and look for driver version of installed driver.
if it doesn't match with what you downloaded then you can be sure the OS installed it's own.

if it does match reboot system and check again because OS may install it's own next time.

One way to prevent Windows from installing it's own drivers is like this:
press Win button -> Settings -> About -> Advanced system settings link -> hardware tab -> Device installation settings:
And here chose "No" option so that windows doesn't install it's own driver.

Reboot system after you apply this and reinstall driver again, then reboot again

if this doesn't work you'll need to do some tests, your next option is to use AMD software program to adjust GPU settings, create a new profile and set everything to minimum and test game and see if causes crash, if not you return settings back one by one until you find a culprit. one you find it you'll know which setting the game doesn't like.

Testing settings requires patience! don't be bothered with everything to minimum, you're just testing, if game works on minimum GPU settings then you have good results and can play with settings further.

[songseeker]

Thank you for your advice. In the event, I have decided that my PC is old enough to warrant replacement, so I am doing that. Hopefully the problem will go away on the new PC

[Cubano]

Thank you for your advice. In the event, I have decided that my PC is old enough to warrant replacement, so I am doing that. Hopefully the problem will go away on the new PC

And here I thought my advice to reinstall windows was extreme