A pattern in repeated CTD's

[gunnergoz]

P4 2.53ghz/1GB RAM
Win XP Pro SP2
Geforce 5700/256MB
SB Audigy 2
All latest drivers for video/sound
1.09 patch

I play with: audio/mono, graphics/low/no AA; I also use NVHardPage to set the rederer to 1.1 level and my nVidea software is set for high performance. I clear the cache before each launch of the game and I re-set the game priority to normal in Windows. My main Windows page cache is set for my separate USB drive and is quite large (4 GB). The machine is well cooled and very stable under normal conditions.

I'm seeing a pattern in the CTD's I'm having; they usually come about when there is large scale movement accross the map. I'm playing a large archipelago game and the year is now 1942. I get 20-30 game turns done with few or no problems and then when there is a sudden jump to a distant point on the map, the game crashes. The game is now offering to send bug reports to the manufacturer, so I've now sent 4-5 of them today. Hopefully they will help catch the pernicious bug.

I also have CTD'd in this fashion when scrolling around the map in a high "satellite" view, just short of full-globe view.

All this is making me think that the problem has to do with how the game handles memory and the vast database it must keep up to refresh the screen every time one moves about.

Now that the bug reports are going out, I'm very hopeful that the development team can fix this bug and others.

Oh, yes...I love the game!

 

[charonbond]

I've noticed this too. Like the game is moving faster than the computer can keep up with, but this is probably do to some memory not moving that fast or hanging up somewhere.

 

[highstreet]

Or maybe it's from moving across the "seam" of the map.

 

[gunnergoz]

Well, whatever the problem, it obviously impacts video card operations as well, since I've just now had a glitch where the entire interface went semi transparent and all the buttons and text disappeared. The background map and units were all there and even responded to the cursor, but of course there was no way to give directions. It even processed the turn in response to the return key...which tells me that the game code is probably working OK. I suspect that mostly the problems lie in the way the game uses video memory.
This same graphics engine was supposedly used in Pirates. I never saw that game...can anyone tell me if there were similar instabilites in that game?
I'm kind of hankering to go out and buy one of those new nVidia GeForce 6800 GS boards, it outperforms my 5700 by about 5-10 fold in many respects and I wonder if it would be better able to process all the demands that C4 is putting on it. Not that I have a spare $250 lying around...

 

[gunnergoz]

Well, the crashes are coming every couple turns now, making the last 70 or so turns of the game unplayable without a degree of patience I do not possess at the moment. I have been sending the post-crash problem reports generated by Windows to the developers (making me wonder if these are DirectX-related?) and am hoping that they can trace the problem and fix it. So large games (and certainly huge) are out for me until the next patch.

 

[anomalek]

I have also had the same experiences:

- repeated instances where the control panel options disappear and only the map remains.
- Crash to desktop
- blue screen/Computer reboot
- game freezes in mid-wonders-video
- certain crashes have a degree of repeatability; i.e., if a game crashes in the middle of The Pyramids animation, it is likely that when I restart the ame it will crash again at exactly the same place in the turn. If, afte rreboot, I restart game 3 or 4 times there is a chance it will eventually get past the difficult spot.
- Patch made the game much less stable. Crashes happen more frequently and at earlier points in the game, and I experience even mroe audio stutter than before.

If Sid meier lived here in NYC I would go take a dump on his doorstep.

 

[gunnergoz]

Well, I have to admit that the 1.09 patch seemed to help stabilize the game a bit. I still have to dumb down the graphics, but I get somewhat smoother play and fewer CTD's in the end game...I actually finished my first large-map game this weekend! Yay!
So please don't poop on Sid's doorstep; find someone from 2K software and dump on THEIR doorstep.

 

[oldStatesman]

Well, I have to admit that the 1.09 patch seemed to help stabilize the game a bit. I still have to dumb down the graphics, but I get somewhat smoother play and fewer CTD's in the end game...I actually finished my first large-map game this weekend! Yay!
So please don't poop on Sid's doorstep; find someone from 2K software and dump on THEIR doorstep.

Gunner,
If you have not seen it, you may want to study this thread posted below - several are working on a possible user fix for the memory issues...Harkonnen is doing a lot of work, and maybe has a patch almost ready...if you want to help out by sending him info, he has posted debug dll's that will write a report you can send him....thought you may want to know there are proactive efforts underway...

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=137706

 

[Mazruk]

My main Windows page cache is set for my separate USB drive and is quite large (4 GB).

Am I reading this right? You are using USB drive for your virtual memory? I'd imagine that it is very slow and maybe (just maybe) windows isnt waiting long enough for it to be accessed?

I presume your particular CTDs only happen after paging to disk has started?

 

[gunnergoz]

Am I reading this right? You are using USB drive for your virtual memory? I'd imagine that it is very slow and maybe (just maybe) windows isnt waiting long enough for it to be accessed?

I presume your particular CTDs only happen after paging to disk has started?

Actually, the USB drive made no difference. I have since returned to conventional (Windows-run) virtual memory management. CTD's actually happen when I scroll accross large swaths of a large or huge map.

 

[Woody]

I will add my two cents and confirm this problem with my game. I have a game where I won with space race but just for fun I have kept playing and am trying to eliminate all the AI. I am playing on a huge map and the year is around 2180 (yes it takes a long time to kill the AI when they have all the techs). Each time I load this game I might play two or three turns or I might play two or three minutes before I get a CTD. It seems that most of these crashes happen when the game recenters itself to a point far away from its current location. Usually when I reload from my last save it will get past the point that it crashed before but there have been a few times where it took multiple reloads to continue.

 

[jaywinyeah]

We here at Firaxis are looking into the problem. Could you attach one of your save games that reproduces the crash fairly frequently. Thank you.

 

[gunnergoz]

I've purged my saves, perhaps Woody still has his. Glad to hear that Firaxis is on it. Go get 'em!

 

[Oblivious]

We here at Firaxis are looking into the problem. Could you attach one of your save games that reproduces the crash fairly frequently. Thank you.

The save I've attached is from a Huge map with large continents, epic turns and is in the year 1560. With my system, the game freezes after 5-10 turns.

My specs are:

p4 2.53 ghz
1024mb ram (2 x 512mb) 333 mhz
ATI Radeon 9550 256mb
Soundblaster Live
Windows XP Pro

(The attachment below is in two parts as it was too big for the upload limitations of this forum (500kb). It's a two part .rar file (renamed to .zip so it could be uploaded) and can be opened with "winrar".)

 

[PiTiFUL]

Just to add my two cents, since the update 1.09, I am getting CTD's and an occasional reboot, early game was fine but now in the later stages I am getting alot of crashes. Also my wonder movies all played smooth until I built the Kremlin and that movie came to a complete halt after a few seconds and never recovered, I just opted out of the movie and the game continued. My system is clean with minimal processes running, ATI drivers and msm is all.
System = X800-XL 1gig ram P4 3.0c (hyperthreading=on) Audigy 2 ZS
Game = Large-continent-8AI-allvictoryon, of note using BlueMarble and Canada Mods.

 

[alarson83]

before 1.09 i would get the occasional ctd in the early game... maybe once every hour or two... and in the late game it came every turn...

now im getting crashed out before i even get my second city built.

also... anyone elsees graphics card just take a dump when it ctds? sometimes mine will completely go, leaving me with 4 bit color and a really small resolution

 

[gunnergoz]

My GeForce 5700 will do that if I run Civ 4 full-screen. It always dumps to desktop when the game is windowed...much better behavior. I can usually re-launch if I clear the game cache. I only re-boot the PC if I've seen signs of corruption on the desktop (typically the nVidia toolbar utility goes away.) So now I never run full screen.
And while the game is running a bit better, my wonder movies have again gone bad, stuttering and stopping altogether. Not sure if this is due to the patch, since I think they worked for a while after I installed 1.09. It may be one of the hundred other graphics settings I've tinkered with since then trying to get the game to behave, including some changes to the .ini file (like setting a brake on the FPS) and which I may work with some more.
On a different subject, I cannot get the game to run in 1600x1200. Changing the .ini file doesn't help; I suspect that the video settings are set in concrete when the game is installed and my PC was running at 1280 x 1024 when I installed the game; so now the only two choices I have in the options window is 1024 x 768 and 1280 x 1024. (And no, I'm not going to uninstall it since it does work to some degree.)

 

[jaywinyeah]

It seems that one of the problems is related to camera jumping. You can disable camera jumping by going into your civilization folder and going to Assets\XML\GlobalDefines.xml. Find the block that defines CAMERA_MAX_TRAVEL_DISTANCE as 3000. If you change this number to 1000000 (a million) it should make camera jumping practically impossible. We do not expect that this will fix the crashing, but we are interested in the behavior of the game after this change.
LL Cool Jay

 

[TLHeart]

Had no crashes before the 1.09 patch. Now, in late game, CTD every time there is an autosave, along with pagefile access going on. At least that is what appears to be happening. Tested with the same game file, with most of the standard map revealed, lots of disk activity, and then I reach the end of the turn with the auto save, and crash.

Celeron 2.0
512 memory
gforce fx5700 256 memory
Windows xp home sp2

 

[Avance]

Game runs, but crashes later in game (CTD).

1280*1024*32, no in game movies.

My specs are :
P4 3 Ghz
2048 mb ram, PNY NVidia 6600 GT 128, ForceWare Release 80
Version: 81.95, XP SP2

Error message (eventwvr.msc) : application défaillante civilization4.exe version 1.0.9.1722, module défaillant civilization4.exe version 1.0.9.1722, adresse de défaillance 0x005f8165.

This game is the only one (3D) that crashes my machine !