CTDs, game freezes/long pauses, unit responsiveness, and how I solved these problems

[drachasor]

Aren't the artpak files unpacked automatically if you have installed 1.09 patch?

No, the art0 file is just seperated into 4 smaller files.

-Drachasor

 

[lakon]

I just wanted to thank you.
After the Patch everything was horrible unstable and slow.
With your suggestions I can really play huge maps even in the modern era!

 

[Zanmato]

I have no idea of "Tree Region Cutting" is.

I'm not sure either but I would guess it's refering to a BSP tree, commonly used in many 3D games to draw the environment. The purpose of BSP is to greatly reduce the amount of work the game engine has to perform in real time to draw polygons on the player's screen. This world is then divided and/or cut into regions.

Need a PhD in Computer Science to understand the rest of it.

Cheers,
Rob
--

 

[Rohirim]

Thanks drachasor, I changed the ini file and now the game runs smoothly again (even on a huge map with lots and lots of cities)

In my Belgian Version of the game the art-files are already unpacked(probably because I nstalled the patch)

Picobello !

 

[Sifmole]

This game has been collecting dust because nothing else was working to make it playable. You ini file seems to have solved the problem.

2K Games owes you a nice paycheck.

 

[toschistation]

Just thought I'd add my thanks, I was playing a game on a huge map and it was crashing every 3 or 4 turns and freezing up quite often as well. Did most of what you suggested and played for 4 hours without a crash (haven't even had that happen on regular maps). The Wonder movies are stuttering again though, any idea which setting might affect that? I'll try changing that one back and see if I still have the great performance.

 

[s3d]

I fiddled with "Trilinear Minimap Filtering" and disabling "Tree Region Cutting" (anyone know what that is?) but changing the defaults produced no positive results either singly or together.

Trilinear Filtering is how textures are seen from afar. Probably with Trilinear Minimap Filtering minimap will be smooth and not blocky. Because minimap is small it shouldn't affect anything. "Tree Region Cutting" may mean how lumber cutting in game is depicted, or not to render tree which are not in the camera. If later is true it may give small performance increase.

 

[jldean1]

A BIG thank you for the work you did! You're suggested changes to the ini file have finally allowed me to play without all the graphics weirdness I've been getting. In fact, I had boxed the game up and was ready to uninstall it. I still check the forums though and after reading your post, decided to give it one more try. I made your changes to my ini file and started an Earth18Civs game last night. Everything worked flawlessly!

Thanks again!

 

[aaronlawyer]

just wanted to say that this procedure solved all of my CTD problems even on huge maps, where no other solution on this board would, I had tried everything. The only difference was that i used 66.xx nvidia drivers instead of the latest ones. Thanks so much for your post, it really works great now and i quit playing civ 4 when i'm done, and exit the program, not after the latest CTD.

Specs:
Athlon xp2400
1gig DDR Ram
Gforce FX5200 256mb (running nvidia 66.xx drivers)

 

[Divide Overflow]

Unfortunately, even after applying the excellent suggestions listed here I still experience memory read errors, lockups (freezing), and crashing to the desktop. My computer plays every other modern game perfectly fine and since I run a very up to date system I place the fault squarely at the foot of Firaxis. I’ve changed video drivers over and over again, uninstalled and reinstalled the game repeatedly all without help. My system is in danger of becoming corrupted from all the frequent system crashes while playing Civ4, so I’m calling it quits until I see a dramatic improvement in how Firaxis deals with this problem. The first patch didn’t seem to do anything for me, so I’ll wait a little while to evaluate the next patch before taking my game back to the store for a refund.

The problem isn’t just me, either. Out of eight of my friends who have bought and are trying to run this game, all eight are experiencing problem stuttering, freezing, crashing and lockups, even after the 1.09 patch.

 

[kill-9]

Any more recent discoveries for this problem?

 

[sonal]

Hi all,
I had same problem of PC reseting and dropping to DT - nothing i tried (including hark patch etc) didnt help...
One thing i did and i think helped alot (i didnt drop yet after few hours of playing - and in the end game!) is removing sound fonts -
If you have sound card that support loading soundfonts (modern SB cards) try to just load minimal sound font or remove them all - made HUGE change for me.
I have no clue why doing this solved graphics problems and all the other problems /shrug

Hope it helps some -

 

[ModernKnight]

drachasor (or anyone),

I'm trying to play my first Civ4 game, a Huge one, and am having the trouble described. So this thread looks great. But option #4 is still not entirely clear to me. Would the following be an entirely correct walk-through? I don't want to screw anything up:

1) Locate the packed art files in c:\Program Files\Firaxis\Civilization IV\Assets. Specifically for patch 1.09 these are:

Assets0.fpk
Assets1.fpk
Assets2.fpk
Assets3.fpk​

Ignore all the other files/subdirectories under Assets; only these FPKs matter.

2) Use an unpacking tool such as (thanks Kilim):

PAL Extractor Tool for Win XP
PAK Extractor Tool for Win 2k​

(These links from Kilim's post are not working for me atm, but maybe the site is down.)

3) Extract the contents of the four .fpk files to:

C:\Documents and Settings\Moose\My Documents\My Games\Sid Meier's Civilization 4\CustomAssets​

Unpack into the CustomAssets directory itself; don't worry about the subdirectories. (And/or maybe the unpacker puts them in the proper subdirectories?)

4) Also, delete the folder:

C:\Documents and Settings\Moose\My Documents\My Games\Sid Meier's Civilization 4\CustomAssets\Interface​

This shouldn't have anything in it, unless you have mods. (Note: I don't have this directory, shrug.)

Does this sound right? Thanks for your help!

MK​

 

[ModernKnight]

Ok, so I've done everything but #4 and guess what - no CTDs and, even far better, none of that crap where it would freeze for two minutes with much disk thrashing! I played 3 hours straight, no problem! However the interface is noticably more sluggish, which probably relates to, not unpacking the art.

A few more questions on top of my previous post, if I could -

1) I can get the unpacking tool now (the site must've been down for a moment), but it says it's looking for .FPK_Layout files, not .fpk files. If I still try to open e.g. Assets0.fpk, it says "Could not open Assets0.fpk!". What's up with that?

2) Do I delete the four FPKs from Assets after unpacking them?

3) Entirely unrelated question - does the Ini have a setting that forces Civ4 to "snap to" the next unit, instead of "gliding over" to it? With these sluggish graphics, I'd much rather snap to! Half my game time is waiting through these sluggish glides.

Thanks all! - MK

 

[Liquidated]

I did all the above and for some reason cannot load any games now that existed before unpaking...

I can start a game, I can save said game and it loads fine... if I take a prior save the game just *drops* near the end of loading. I mean no error nothing, it's like nothing was running.

this is after a clean install of civ4. I'm about to scream as now I cannot even load the SG's that weren;t crashing me as bad.

to say this is annoying is an understatment.

Cheers!
-Liq

 

[doo]

MK, you may be using File>Open, which won't let you unpack the files. Use Pak>Unpack instead. It is the 3rd option in the toolbar.

There is a picture here:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=133787

 

[Liquidated]

As soon as I try the unpacking thing the game geeks completely.

If I try and load a game the window just drops period on load.

if I start a new game, the moment I try and found a city, the game drops, again no error message.

I am about to throw crap at the walls to be honest. I unpacked all the art into it's own directory to make sure it's all there, but as soon as I place it into custom assests the game will not load a game that has a city on it.


WTH


Cheers!
-Liq

 

[ModernKnight]

Thanks doo, yep you're right, I was trying to Open That's got it now.

Also, the other post answered my other question - yep, I need to delete/rename/move the original FPKs so the game doesn't try to use them. Double thanks then

BTW, I also changed this setting:

; Don't skip frames if falling behind
BinkNoSkip = 1​

to 0, in an attempt to approximate the "snap to" I was worried about. I can only guess that this means "don't worry about skipping frames". Anyway, it does seem to have helped. The game is now working at an "adequate" speed, if not a good one - but I was always after the gameplay, not the graphics, anyway, so that's ok. At least it's playable now. YAY!! BTW - another 6 hours of play, and not a single long freeze. There were a few times where it froze for 5 or 10 seconds, but this is bumpkiss compared to before. Triple Yay!

Liq, wish I could help, but I'm a brand n00b to this, too. Did you move/rename the original FPKs? If they're still there, they could be confusing the game. That's the only thought I have - it may not apply. I hear for ya, bud! As you can see, the gameplay itself looks great... but grinding through all the freezes is awful!

I am still looking to anyone, for a couple of questions:

1) Is there an Ini setting that will enforce "snap to" of units, instead of the current "glide the window to it"? This will save my slow graphics card some time (and me some playing time)

2) New question: In drachasor's original post, he listed a half dozen Ini settings to change. Can Ini settings be "stated again" at the end of the Ini, and will this over-ride all the previous Ini statements (above it in the Ini file)? The reason I ask is that, if this is so, it will be real helpful to us n00bs to put together a set of Ini settings that they can simply "tack onto the end of the Ini file", which performs all of drachasor's changes. I'll be happy to put this together, along with my "expanded" explanation of point #4. If somebody could let me know?

Thanks! - MK

 

[Liquidated]

ok ok for the mentally idiotic like, well, Liq is....

after unpaking delete

C:\Documents and Settings\Liquidated\My Documents\My Games\Sid Meier's Civilization 4\CustomAssets\art\interface

C:\Documents and Settings\Liquidated\My Documents\My Games\Sid Meier's Civilization 4\CustomAssets\art\camera


this cured up the crashing on loading... might I suggest compiling all the nibbly details in the first post so others do not have to go though what Liq had to.

now to see if the game crashes still

Cheers!
-Liq

 

[Liquidated]

nope, game still crashes like always.

another 12 hours down the drain.

Cheers!
-Liq