@SylenThunder
It results in a complete system lock up. The only way to exit is to shut the power off to the PC. I am dead serious.
The error log shows that Windows Has unexpectedly shut down (to include one possible cause: Loss of power). This is because I have to force the PC to power off to escape the lock up … then reboot it.
Of course Windows is going to record that error.
The lock up is random because it happens anywhere from a few minutes into the game to longer periods of time. It can happen at any location on the map. The one thing I have noticed that is consistent … is whether or not the engine knows where my character is located on the map. When it loses track of my location (or it cannot establish my location), the game locks up and it also causes my PC to lock up. This is not a hardware problem on my end.
I can tolerate the game crashing, but by God, I should be able to shut it down with the Task Manager if necessary, but I can’t even do that because the system is in a state of total lock up (Freeze).
I’ll repeat this for clarification: I have to shut the power off to escape the lockup.
It’s a programming problem with the engine.
I have run extensive tests on this system to find anything that might cause it, but it’s coming up with NOTHING. It was happening before I ran the system mechanic which sorted out a mess of issues.
(Registry errors, Internet Connection, Trash Files) The game ran fine for the rest of that evening. I thought maybe it was issues in my system causing it. I hoped I would be free of this issue.
BUT, the very next day, it starts over.
NPCs not spawning in locations where they should be.
Lockup forcing a manual shut down then reboot.
Getting back into the game, I find my character in the previous zone adjacent to the one in which the lockup happened. But this time, I go through the zone with no further incident except in some cases … see #1
In one instance I was just in the game less than 5 minutes and standing in my hut. When I moved through the door, the game and PC went into total lockup.
Zone changes? Does that ring a bell to anybody? How about “Cell Loading Calls”?
Hmmmm?
Now, I would appreciate you dropping the insults.
It has locked up within 5 minutes of being in the game and it has locked up a various other times up to more than an hour. It’s not a temperature issue. But as I said, it’s consistent with where the engine knows the location of my character on the map.
I am also getting complete hard freezes and bluescreens. My character starts rubber-banding/stuttering and eventually I will get a freeze. Built-up areas cause more problems. Problems started after last patch.
I have had exactly the same issue with Ark, and what I think happened with Ark was that an early crash caused problems with the graphics driver and a fresh reinstall of the drivers fixed the problem. I was then able to play Ark for a very long time without issue (so I am thinking it was a driver problem as opposed to a hardware issue). Note: it had to be a FRESH install to get rid of the corrupted files else it didn’t work.
So this is what I think happened with Ark
New game update
Out of date mod caused initial crash?
That crash somehow corrupted the graphics drivers
After that I could no longer play with out stuttering and hard-freezes
Fresh install of graphics drivers fixed the problem
(Fresh install of game and mods may have also fixed the problem)
I am now going to try the same tactic with Conan and will report back here if it works.
Windows 7/ GTX960 4GB
Ark and Conan are the only games I’ve had problems with.
Update: A reinstall of the game, mods and graphics drivers has fixed my crashes and freezes.
I remember the Realtek issues people were having in the past.
I don’t / didn’t run the same “popular” setups they ran. Realtek was never an issue on me.
During the EA phase, I was experiencing overtemp issues on my server system, but that was on a completely different PC that had an AMD server board with dual-quad opteron CPUs with an onboard graphics chipset feeding an RX480 8GB graphics card. THAT chipset was causing the crash issues (because specifically that chipset was overheating) until I installed a chassis fan to blow air directly across that chip. AMD was notified of the overheating issue for that specific chipset for any board it was mounted on. It wasn’t long after that when I built this current custom (heavily ventilated) PC running a 4D(8L) core CPU (Vishera) with 32GB RipJaw RAM coupled with a Samsung SSD… feeding a XFX Radeon RX480 8GB GDDR5 Graphics card. That particular card was later renamed to the RX580.
The current issue began after patches just a couple of weeks ago.
Most of the popular fuss at that time was because of broken mods and other mayhem.
I don’t use mods.
The lockup occurs when the engine looses track of my character position and it appears consistent with cell crossings. Except it does not happen consistently. One exception is when the lockup occurred less than 5 minutes into the game when I exited my hut. (This hints that the engine didn’t know where I was but when I moved, it didn’t update causing the lockup). When I rebooted and got back into the game, I was standing in the same position I was in where I logged in previously before I moved through the door. But this time, it didn’t lock up and I went on without further incident for that session.
This is the reason I suspected previously that maybe it was the CPU core conflicts which the system mechanic repaired. But this was not the case and pointed more directly at the game engine.
4D(8L) = 4 distinct cores (8 Logical cores).
Some time ago, during EA when many folks were experiencing disconnect issues (as I mentioned earlier) … the game engine wasn’t keeping track of their location when they lost connection and when they logged back in (as it was also with me at the time), we often found ourselves somewhere beyond the point of where we crashed.
It wasn’t too long after that some patch came out that took into account your position prior to the crash and would send you back to a location somewhere in the cell before the crash occurred. (sound familiar?) But something is different this time around. When the lockup occurs, it also resets the day/night timer. If it occurs at night, you log back in during mid-day. It doesn’t matter when it happens, the day night cycle timer is consistently reset to mid-day.
I may end up putting CE on hold till further notice.
Occasionally I catch some very minor stuttering, but not to the severity you’re experiencing.
It points at Cell Loading Calls. (A function call of the game engine). How much stuttering might depend on how much RAM is available to load into the graphics card from the on board RAM the game is stored in (as it calls from the SSD as needed).
You’re right, it’s putting my system at risk and it’s a risk I don’t like.
@Bella78
I avoid mods like a virulent plague because of the inherent issues with updates.
When I update the graphics drivers, I usually run a manual delete process before running the latest update. This is because of prior issues with updates somehow overlapping, then prompting me to install an older version. (one of which some time back (8.0.x? or 18.0.x?) which caused a big transparency issue that affected a lot of people). The one installed now is Radeon 19.3.1
But I’ve been keeping the option of uninstalling and reinstalling the game in the back of my mind.
Although it’s the last thing I want to do because of limitations of satellite bandwidth allowance,
it’s still an option I have to consider.
I’ve ran integrity checks most times just after a lockup occurs.
But still it leaves me with a very ill feeling that something in the engine is corrupted (or just plain programmed wrong) or something in the order of calls that’s out of place.
I can’t explain why it seems that it’s not affecting others to the same degree, but I tend to think the machine I built tends to be more sensitive and less forgiving of errors.
Here’s a new one.
Same hard freeze again, but oddly different.
But this time, I started a new game.
This happened before the character creation screen.
I was setting up custom settings for game play and when I finished the last section of animal pen “crafting time”, (I had just set it to 0.5 instead of the default 1.0), then I clicked on the “Play” button at the bottom instead of the “Back” button.
The game immediately locked up and so did my PC.
It’s the same hard freeze, forcing me to shut down the power and reboot.
Can anyone explain this?
DEVS? Any feedback from you?
Please …
answer.
Another update:
Second attempt at setting game parameters went smoothly.
Character created.
Traveled north to a small hill east of the Imperial Highway and started building.
Unexpectedly, about 1 hour into the game and whole damned thing locks up again. Forced shutdown and reboot required.
This is B.S.
I have three other games that are just as graphic intensive as this (if not more-so) and this is the only game I am having this insane issue.
Want to know the ironic part?
Those games have much larger worlds than this with a hell of a lot more going on in them than this game does.
Logic dictates that if I’m not having this issue in the other games BUT experiencing this issue only in this game, the problem is with THIS game, not my system.
Don’t you get it?
AFAIK, they do not.
One of them is a heavily modified proprietary version of Havok.
One of them started with Unreal but switched over to Lumberyard.
Yet another (or two of them) uses the Creation Engine.