Instant random crash after a while playing

[Nehaektas]

Hello,

First a bit of context:

Win XP
AMD 64
nvidia 9600GT
(dxdiag attached)

A week ago I bought and installed DW, and then used the check for updates option in the launcher. After updating DW I did the same process with RotS. Installation of the game and the expansion was smooth as was their updates. Everything worked perfectly.

But, as the title suggests, every now and then the game crashes to desktop instantly. After realizing that it was not really a secret weapon from the Ancients to collapse the galaxy, I decided to post it here. It happens only once your empire has grown a bit, that's all I can tell so far. I have been experimenting for a week and have not found any pattern to reproduce the issue. You can fall back to a saved game and continue playing, and the game won't crash at the same moment as before. The problem is that I can never finish a game, because the issue becomes a massive black hole for my scarce spare time and it is better to start a fresh game than to fight against the odds.

My system may be quite old for the current standards. I am a linux user and only fall back to the Windows partition for playing jewels like DW . So bear with my specs please.


Looking forward DW-Legends,

Cheers.

[Data]

Hi and welcome to the forum. Assuming this is something related to load during late game what happens if you play the smallest map with just one opponent? Or any other setup that doesn't imply lots of resources late game.

[Nehaektas]

Hi Data,


Thank you for the welcome and the quick reply. Ok, I'll try that and post the results.


Cheers.

[Nehaektas]

Settings: 100 stars and 1 opponent. No monsters or pirates. It crashed after 6 hours of game more or less. At the end game I had around 150 ships and there were quite a few skirmishes going on at the same time.

This time though, there was a save game with a size of 0kb after crashing. It seems as if it crashed just at the beginning of the auto save process.


Edit: maybe this issue is caused by the lack of RAM (2gb) or because of the single core cpu. If so, then it is enough for me to simply know it.


Thanks

[Data]

I suspect that too. If you're up to it you can use either process explorer or process monitor from sysinternals to check the memory consumption for DW -> http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals. One of those keeps also a history and can capture the last call stack before the crash in case memory is not the actual root cause.
But from previous cases I think that is the limitation, do you have access to a more powerfull computer where you can test this?

[Nehaektas]

Thanks for the suggestion, I will play with that software out of curiosity.


Anyway, it really is the time to upgrade (mobo is 5 years old, as my daughter...) . Which means using diplomacy, maybe gifts, or [&o]. I hope it works [:)].

It will be ready for Legends for sure.

[Data]

Mine is way older than my two year old kid....but both will be ready for Legends for sure [:)]

[Master_of_Orion]

Hallo! I'm new here. First I want to say... the game is great!
But I have the same problem. Playing some hours and the game is crashing. The memory usage of DW process is about ~900MB (i think it's not the problem)
My System:
german version 1.7.1 of DW
Windows Vista Business 64 SP2
Intel Core2Quad
6GB RAM
Geforce 9800GT

[Nehaektas]

Hi Master of Orion,


I am currently playing a game without storyline, 1000 stars, 10 oponents in a sandbox game. I also have deactivated the virus protection while playing (Avira antivir), that I think could interfere. So far so goof after 6 hours of game. But I will have to see how it plays out to the end.



Cheers.

[Master_of_Orion]

Hi Nehaektas,

thanks for Information! On my system is MS Security Essentials installed. It's a good idea to deactivate antivirus! I also will try it...

have a vice day

[Data]

And btw, great id. You're the master of the galaxy....this galaxy; but other chalanges await....
Welcome to the forum [:)]

[Master_of_Orion]

Hi,

I testes with deactivated antivir - same problem. But I think, the autosave function caused the crash.
With autosave... crash after 15 mintues
without... no crash about 45 minutes

I'll test more

[Master_of_Orion]

No chance. After some hours playing - crash:

Windows:
Beschreibung:
  Stopped working

Problemsignatur:
  Problemereignisname:    CLR20r3
  Problemsignatur 01:    distantworlds.exe
  Problemsignatur 02:    1.0.7.1
  Problemsignatur 03:    4e01f54c
  Problemsignatur 04:    DistantWorlds.Types
  Problemsignatur 05:    1.0.7.1
  Problemsignatur 06:    4e014c46
  Problemsignatur 07:    895
  Problemsignatur 08:    c0
  Problemsignatur 09:    System.NullReferenceException
  Betriebsystemversion:    6.0.6002.2.2.0.256.6
  Gebietsschema-ID:    1031

[Master_of_Orion]

I tested it on 3 different PCs... some houres playing... crash
I only can say... it's time for an update!

[Data]

And what do you know, a big update is on the way [;)]

[Master_of_Orion]

sounds very good Do you know, when it will be downloadable? And do you know, when "Legends" will be released? I can't wait

[Data]

Last we heard they were both scheduled in about a week.....but I don't dare to hope [:)]