[igufi]

Hi,

I've recently installed FS2 from GoG.com followed with FS Open 3.6.12 using the instructions over here . Both installations went fine, except FSO installer failed to download three packages (brshivans, high res briefing animations and twilight), but I believe they are not essential.

Vanilla FS2 plays ok, except all the pop-up windows (like when exiting a mission via ESC, asking for Yes/No/Restart confirmation) cannot be seen without alt-tab-ing in and out of the game - I can still "blindly" press "Y" to continue past the missing screen. The game saves normally.


FSO plays ok, except for two problems:

1) the game will crash if I try to go to the tech-room

2) I can play as many missions as I like, but once I leave the game (via the in-game menu) and try to restart, the game will crash when I click the "Hangar", only showing the loading screen for a few seconds and the either a black or white screen, followed by a Windows 7 warning dialog for non-responsive application. This in practice means that if I want to play FSO, I have to play it through in one session, never closing the game which really is not possible..

My first thought was that the default installation directory for GoG downloader (under c:\program files (x86)\gog.com\freespace2) might have some file permission problems under windows 7, so I re-installed from scratch both FS2 vanilla and FSO to c:\GAMES\Freespace2, but this didn't help.

I assume that there is a problem in either during the saving of a game or reading the saved game when clicking on the hangar, but I cannot figure out why.

The FSO pilots seem to be saved at c:\GAMES\Freespace2\data\players\single\inferno as <pilotname>.pl2 and <pilotname>.FreeSpace2.cs2.

Here are the system specs:
- Intel Core Duo E8600
- 4Gb RAM
- ATI Radeon HD 4870x2 (with AMD 11.6 drivers)
- Windows 7 64bit
- Latest OpenAL (the sound card is a integrated chip on Intel DG45ID motherboard + latest intel sound drivers)

Any and all suggestions to fix my problem(s) are very welcome.

[Jeff Vader]

Please provide an fs2_open.log, as described here.

I've recently installed FS2 from GoG.com followed with FS Open 3.6.12 using the instructions over here . Both installations went fine, except FSO installer failed to download three packages (brshivans, high res briefing animations and twilight), but I believe they are not essential.

Yeah. "Shivans" is a pack of two campaigns made by Blaise Russel, and is not necessary in any way. If you want to play the campaigns, the pack should be available at freespacemods.net. Twilight is also a user-made campaign and can be dug up manually from somewhere. High res briefing animations would be high res briefing animations (and should be available somewhere), but if the game cannot find them, it'll just use the original low res ones, so no problem there either.

The FSO pilots seem to be saved at c:\GAMES\Freespace2\data\players\single\inferno as <pilotname>.pl2 and <pilotname>.FreeSpace2.cs2.

Indeed.

[igufi]

Here's the log file.

(As I'm away from my main computer, I had to access and run FSO via a remote connection but hopefully that didn't affect the results..)

[attachment deleted by ninja]

[The E]

Well, the exe going unresponsive during mission load is to be expected. It's not actually crashed or anything, it's just busy processing data and not reacting to messages sent by Windows.

[igufi]

Well, the exe going unresponsive during mission load is to be expected. It's not actually crashed or anything, it's just busy processing data and not reacting to messages sent by Windows.

It never recovers - eventually Windows simply waits for me to kill the application.

Also, there is almost no delay for mission loading when playing the campaign for the first time (apps and Windows 7 are on a SSD), ONLY when I stop playing and quit FS2 and later start the game again via the same launcher does the problem present itself - I could play for hours without any hangups/delays, as long as I never close the app.

The issue must be with the game save somehow?

[Jeff Vader]

Erm. This sounds remotely like this, except that dude had performance issues. And was allegedly forced to reinstall FS2 to fix the issue until the next time he shut down the game.

[igufi]

Well, assuming that the game progress is saved on the pilot file(s), is there any way to check that they were saved correctly and that they have correct file system rights?

Are there any other files associated with the saving of the game's progress? When I star a campaign for the first time, is there a initial "save" done on the pilot file that's read when I click the hangar on the "main" menu? Perhaps I could try a known, working pilot file to see if the problem persists?


Edit: Just to add one piece of information: it would seem that when the crash occurs, the graphics card resets itself - the fan blows in full speed for a few seconds before settling to a "normal" speed - jus like when I boot the machine. Which is still strange, considering that playing the game normally (i.e. for the first time) never causes the problem when entering the mission briefing. Maybe a corrupted save file is pointing to a broken/non-existent mission briefing animation causing the gfx card reset and subsequent crash?

[Jeff Vader]

Edit: Just to add one piece of information: it would seem that when the crash occurs, the graphics card resets itself - the fan blows in full speed for a few seconds before settling to a "normal" speed - jus like when I boot the machine. Which is still strange, considering that playing the game normally (i.e. for the first time) never causes the problem when entering the mission briefing. Maybe a corrupted save file is pointing to a broken/non-existent mission briefing animation causing the gfx card reset and subsequent crash?

You keep blaming the save games, but if that were the case, this issue would be more common.

Something that suddenly came to my mind: do you have antialiasing forced through the Catalyst Whatever Control Center? Sometimes it does strange things on Radeons (I get funny black stripes and GPU freezes).

[igufi]

You keep blaming the save games, but if that were the case, this issue would be more common.

Something that suddenly came to my mind: do you have antialiasing forced through the Catalyst Whatever Control Center? Sometimes it does strange things on Radeons (I get funny black stripes and GPU freezes).

You're right, I may be too fixated with the save file; to me it just seems to be the only thing that changes between the game restarts. I will test the anti-aliasing settings on the CCC next. I'll also check if the crash occurs when using the FSO launcher without any MODs, just to narrow the problem down..

[Nerdicon]

I am having exactly the same issue.  In my case I turned off the forced anti aliasing in the CCC.

Additionally i've used my disk version and my gog versions.
It just started happening at random one day,  I am fairly certain it's the graphics card doing it.

UPDATE  When it crashes here's what windows has to say about it

Description:
  A problem caused this program to stop interacting with Windows.

Problem signature:
  Problem Event Name:   AppHangB1
  Application Name:   fs2_open_3_6_12r_INF.exe
  Application Version:   3.6.12.0
  Application Timestamp:   4c588c00
  Hang Signature:   e1e4
  Hang Type:   0
  OS Version:   6.1.7601.2.1.0.256.1
  Locale ID:   1033
  Additional Hang Signature 1:   e1e413be256ccdd76441fa207fbf7974
  Additional Hang Signature 2:   c16c
  Additional Hang Signature 3:   c16c47dec52764d29337765a2690a59a
  Additional Hang Signature 4:   e1e4
  Additional Hang Signature 5:   e1e413be256ccdd76441fa207fbf7974
  Additional Hang Signature 6:   c16c
  Additional Hang Signature 7:   c16c47dec52764d29337765a2690a59a

[igufi]

Disabling the forced AA via CCC didn't help (though in my case it was already disabled).

I went through the Features/Troubleshoot settings and I was able to bypass the crash point by selecting "Disable OpenGL VBO", meaning I was able to access the mission briefing after re-starting the game and continuing a campaign. However, this opened up a whole host of graphical glitches that make the game more or less unplayable - as enemy ships close in, they get a star-like shape of vertexes jumping around them (centering on the ship model), also I had to disable the "space" background via the in-game options menu to cut down on the gfx glitches.

If I could now just figure out how to get the gfx bugs fixed, the game would become playable.

[khamele0n]

game crashed during mission last hope with the typhon in it then tried to reload and crashed, also crashes if i try to view the typhon in techroom, and yes it crashed and wasnt simply taking a long time to load already dealt with that earlier and found the solution in this thread but this problem is different the attached log says something about a "bad chunk" regarding the typhon

[attachment deleted by ninja]

[Nerdicon]

I believe it has to do with my catalyst drivers... I was on the latest ones... Which are the best ones that are confirmed to work?

[Jeff Vader]

http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=76166.0

[Nerdicon]

Well... I tried the driver trick and it worked great, could enter and leave the program.  Then I restarted my computer... and it's back to the same problem.