Beyond the Sword unavoidable excessive crashes.

[encyclodoc]

Hi all,

Like so many people it seems, I can no longer play Beyond the Sword. Not for a lack of trying.

Attached is my dxdiag.txt file.

EDIT:[I forgot to add the crash style. the primary monitor running civ will go to black, with the music still playing the the background. it hangs there and does nothing. If memsaver is turned on, instead, the game will crash, eventually, to desktop, and give me an error about device switching, as if I had tried to alt-tab. This crash occurs if i try to zoom out to the globe view just as i load the current save file, or if i don't do anything, and advance to the next turn. ]

EDIT: [As I was playing through this current game, the game would randomly crash, forcing me to reload, as I worked through the game. Now, I can't even advance or mouse around on the current save file. The crash styles varied. some would simply black screen. some would crash to desktop with no apparent errors. some would crash the primary monitor to no signal, and the desktop would resume on monitor two. sometimes the same as the last crash would happen, but at a lower resolution or color depth. The current, repeatable crash is primary monitor to black screen, impossible to alt tab or ctl alt del out of.]

The Current save file I am trying to finish is stuck at 1905. Game settings:
Marathon
Custom Continents
8 players (two have been eliminated)
Gigantic map size.

I have played gigantic sized maps, including terra maps, to completion previously, on this machine, when it had lower specs.

My Computers basic stats:
Intel pentium 4, 3 gHz, hyper thread. (Edit, not dual core as I indicated originally)
Nvidia Geforce 9500 GT
3 Gigs of memory, which I verified are for my motherboard
4 gig static sized page file
Soundblaster Audigy 2 ZS
Windows XP 32 bit
~80 gig SATA HD. Not sure on RPMs. nothing fancy.

Current Game Version installed : Beyond the Sword 3.19
I purchased and installed Civ 4 vanilla from a CD.
I purchased Beyond the Sword from Direct to Drive, and patched from Direct to Drive.

I do run two monitors, but I have duplicated the problems with only a single monitor hooked up.

I have lowered my pixel and vertex shaders to 1.1, both, coupled with turning off AGP textures in dxdiag, and still it crashes.

I have cleared the cache, for both civ and bts.

I have tried to monitor memory usage with nvidias tools, but simply running the monitoring (nVidia Monitor) program instigates a crash (when run in tandem with an instance of BtS). This has been verified on a smaller save file.

I have lowered the graphical in game settings to the absolute bare minimum, including resolution.

I tried to install both the omega and NGO drivers, to run the card, but neither one was stable and/or would install my current graphics card.

At the time this game was coded, my machine should have been considered at the cutting edge of a gaming machine (I know, I know, not now, yeah yeah, send three thousand dollars to... and I will get right on that.) I no longer have an interest in new games, I just want to play this one, and right now, I can't get it to work. I have gone up and down two lists of suggestions, but perhaps there is something I am missing, some memory problem out there, that is keeping the game from running in a stable fashion. It makes no sense that the game has become progressively worse and worse as time goes on.

I have also monitored temperature of the gpu, and it is fine, running well within spec. With my Pentium 4, or because it is Dell, I am unable to monitor the Temp of the CPU, although I am going to go in and clean out inside of my computer, just in case. All the drivers from the motherboard on up are the latest available.

If you have some idea that could help, please please do so. I don't want to ruin the day of a nice minimum wage call center techie at take two.

EDIT [Events log shows no clearly apparent information regarding programs associated with civ causing an issue.]

EDIT {I am currently uninstalling the game completely, and reinstalling from civ 4 vanilla from scratch. Prior to doing so, I am also completely defragging my hard drive, as well as deleting and reinitiallizing the page file. }

Sincerely,

'Doc

 

[ori]

does the game start at all?
is there an error message in the windows event manager when it crashes?

 

[encyclodoc]

The game will boot, without fail, to the main menu. I have only experienced one crash prior to loading a save file, when i tried to lower the anti aliasing from 4 to zero. And it wasn't really a crash, it was a memsaver error from device switching, as if I had alt tabbed. This crash was not duplicateable, and I have successfully lowered the aliasing to zero.

The events log does not show any errors in the time frame associated with the crashes.

'Doc

 

[ori]

is this using a mod or the unmodded game?
could you please open my games\beyond the sword\civilizationIV.ini and set all items with log in their name from 0 to 1 - then start and crash the game and post all files in \my games\beyond the sword\logs\ as a zip file?

 

[crunch]

GPU overheating? open the computer and vacuum-clean the fans

 

[encyclodoc]

Ori,

Attached are the logs, as you requested.

This time, when the game crashed, it gave two error messages i have not seen thus far. One indicated that the game was unable to allocate video memory, and the second was a runtime error in an exe file.

This game is unmodded.

I have uninstalled and reinstalled the entire program, including vanilla. I also defragged the hard drive, including inbetween each install

I currently have 34% of my 80 hard drive empty.

To the other poster (whose name i forgot offhand,) The GPU is brand new, because going through this, I found out my old 6800 geforce card blew the fan clean apart. The current GPU is not overheating, its sensor does not rise above 50 degrees C, and the max for this card should be around 100 to 125C. Granted, I can't run my monitoring software while Civ runs, or it goes straight to a crash as I load the program, but I do know that if it did hit the thermal overload temperature, I would still be able to see the temperature spike a few minutes later through a reboot, and I do not with this card.

Another note about the crash. prior to resetting the log related settings in the Civ.ini file, when the game goes to black screen and hangs, I hear a beep eminating from the mother board, single chirp, and different sounding than the chirps i hear sometimes due to HD transfer errors (don't ask how I know what that sounds like from my motherboard... ugh...).

'Doc

 

[ori]

the out of vram error is also the only one present in the logs (the only unexpected one at least).
I understand you already tried different drivers?
When you installed the new graphics card did you make sure that the power supply is capable of running it?
Try updating directX: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/...38-db71-4c1b-bc6a-9b6652cd92a3&DisplayLang=en

 

[encyclodoc]

Ori,

I have tried other drivers. They won't run properly.

The box indicates the need for a 300 W power supply, and the documentation in the box for the Geforce 9500GT indicates the need for 350 W (Grrrr.. but whatever...). I opened the case, and found the power supplies UL listing shows an output of 350W. So, theoretically, there is enough juice to run the card.

To help be sure, I ripped out the sound card, depowered my CD-RW drive, and the pulled the plug on the other hard drive that is broken and won't mount, but was powered anyway. I also backed down to one monitor.

I ran it again, this time the crash stayed on the black screen and didn't move.

Also, when I rebooted, the system indicated that the registry got corrupted and needed to be recovered from a log file or back up. my system seems to be running ok, and Since I have removed some devices, hard to tell if this warning is due to the lack of drives or Civ.

Direct X is 9.0c, and no changes were made by reinstalling DirectX.

'Doc

 

[encyclodoc]

I am going to try to use rivatuner to actually lower the clock speed of the graphics card. lowering it shouldn't be a problem, I hope.

'Doc

 

[encyclodoc]

Apparently, I can't downclock the GPU.

There is a setting in riva "Enable motherboard chipset compatibility mode" that I enabled, and had no effect.

I really don't want to have to buy a benchmark program just to prove its not my hardware... but its looking that way.

'Doc

 

[encyclodoc]

I have been able to tentatively stabilize the game.

HideOutOfVRamWarning = 1

HideMinSpecWarning = 1

MemSaver = 1

With minimum graphical settings, one monitor, computer gutted to literally the bar minimum to boot.

I was able to continue the save game I have, and attacked the entire ai simultaneousy, and no crashes for 15 turns or so.

If a ram warning or video ram warning did pop up, but got intercepted by the fact that it has to switch resolutions to give the warning, is that then masked by the memsaver interrupting to indicate that devices have changed? I have never in this whole process until now changed the hide warning settings.

'Doc

 

[encyclodoc]

After the previous post, I have hooked back up my sound card, CD-RW drive and second monitor, and the game is running with these settings in the civilization.ini file.

Next step will be to incrementally add graphics features and move to a higher resolution to test stability.

Thing is, seriously, how is this game really occupying 3 gigs of real ram coupled with 4 gigs of page file and 1 gig of video ram.

And can anyone direct me to a link detailing specifics of what "memsaver" is doing?

'Doc

 

[ori]

DirectX9c has many versions (and microsoft does not believe in telling you the version number) - so I hoped an update might work...

I *think* memsaver was just an implementation in one of the patches of an unofficial hack way back after the first release - let me see if I can find that

Edit: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=146309

 

[encyclodoc]

Thank you for the link, Ori. Unfortunately, most of that was over my head.

I undid the memsaver, set my resolution to 1280*1024, and changed memsaver back. I then moused around a bit on the same save file i have been testing with, and the game did eventually crash. I do have a lot of lines drawn for planning purposes, does that suck up a lot of memory?

Also, I noticed that the video settings were higher than I thought. So, the game apparently will run stable at 1024*768 with 2x aliasing, all details turned on to high, with a single monitor, with the hide warnings off and memsaver set to 1, but if i have two monitors and move to 1280*1024 with the exact same settings, it is unstable.

I am going to have to build a new computer, darnit. I really wish I could get this stable.

I will go back in and turn off aliasing again, see if that cleans up the problem.

'Doc.

 

[ori]

anti aliasing is taking up lot of resources - does it work with AA turned off?
also: did you try this in windowed mode?
there are a few more items in the civilizationIV.ini (hidemoviebackground and everything with bik/bink in its name - try setting all of those from 0 to 1 and vice versa - just the opposite of the standard settings) - does that help any?

 

[encyclodoc]

Ori,

Thank you for all your help.
I kept the identical settings as indicated above, and set aliasing to zero. My game appears to be stable now, after having tried so many configurations. memsaver appears to be keeping it stable and lower on memory, and if you run memsaver I have a hunch that you need to hide the warnings, or else, when civ detects a memory problem and triggers the warning window, memsaver then forces a crash of the game. This is my hunch.

Of course, it is all moot.

I forgot that I preordered windows 7, and as such, by this time tomorrow it will be installed on my computer, so this whole thing will be obsolete. Hopefully, however, this post can serve to help people down the road.

So, to sum up, if you are having crashes associated with video memory. (Symtoms include graphical glitches, hangs to black screens, warnings about video memory)

In order (if you change aliasing with memsaver on, you will/might crash the client)

Turn off aliasing
Turn on memsaver in civilization.ini
Turn on hide warnings about memory and video memory

If that does not work, you may be forced to work on a lower resolution.
Don't run anything in the background

If you turn on memsaver, to change resolution, you have to turn it off, change resolution in the client, shut down the client, then turn memsaver back on. save for aliasing.

Less important, I suggest setting your page file to a permanent size, 4 gigs, if you can.
I also suggest defragging your hard drive, to ensure the page file is optimized.
I also suggest rivatools, or nMonitor, to watch the temp on your GPU. through all of this, i found my original GPU was overheating. Then I found the fan blew off the card.

google crucial. fill your memory. (I don't work for them. Purchase at your own risk. But this game needs memory. gobs and gobs and gobs of memory.)

'Doc

Thanks again, Ori.