LoG 2 : Constant Game Crash At Opening Menu Screen

[Ninjawitch]

Finally got my mittens on LoG2, and after waiting until the standalone version was posted I downloaded and installed.

Then I got a case of the sads.

LoG2 crashed, so badly I couldn't Ctrl-Alt-Delete Or Ctrl-Shift-Esc out of the game crash and back to Windows 7 Professional.

I literally HAD to do a cold shutdown and reboot back to Windows 7 as the computer had froze soon as the key screen loaded and segued to the menu welcome screen where the animated water video froze, the audio quick looped on one tone, the mouse froze and all commands from the keyboard were locked out.

This happened three times!

So I did an internet search on how others resolved their issues of game crashes and did what they did.

From disabling my anti-virus software {Which works for LoG1} failed for LoG2 with no impact.

I went into my nVidia video card Control Panel settings and under 'Manage 3D settings' > 'Program Settings' and 'Global Settings' I set both 'Triple Buffering' and 'Vertical Sync' to ON.

Still no change.

Can't understand why LoG1 runs fast and smooth but LoG2 runs for a brief 30 seconds at best before it crashes.

Any ideas if this is a known glitch or if it simply hates Windows 7 Professional / AMD Athlon 64 3200+ Processor / Sound Blaster Audigy 2 zs sound card / Nvidia Video card 9600GT / 120 Gig hard drive with 100 Gig free / 1200W Power Supply with all drivers up to date?

Game looks pretty but I'm dying to get into it and start playing.

Any hints, tips and clues to what I may try, and please be specific with instructions. Thanks

[Hatman]

I'm afraid your system is too old mate.
Your Athlon is a 2GHz Single Core CPU.
Min requirements state: "CPU: Dual Core 2.33 GHz Intel or 3.0 GHz AMD"
The GPU is slightly above minimum but i guess it doesn't help at that point.

[Dr.Disaster]

LoG2 crashed, so badly I couldn't Ctrl-Alt-Delete Or Ctrl-Shift-Esc out of the game crash and back to Windows 7 Professional.

I literally HAD to do a cold shutdown and reboot back to Windows 7 as the computer had froze soon as the key screen loaded and segued to the menu welcome screen where the animated water video froze, the audio quick looped on one tone, the mouse froze and all commands from the keyboard were locked out.

Sounds like a complete system lock. One possible cause is an overheating CPU/GPU, another can be a RAM issue i.e. bad timing or failing memory segments that otherwise go unnoticed. LoG2 is very CPU and GPU intense so best grab a monitoring tool.

Any ideas if this is a known glitch or if it simply hates Windows 7 Professional / AMD Athlon 64 3200+ Processor / Sound Blaster Audigy 2 zs sound card / Nvidia Video card 9600GT / 120 Gig hard drive with 100 Gig free / 1200W Power Supply with all drivers up to date?

It's pretty old hardware but it should run the game. During beta i managed to get the game running on a Pentium 4 HT with an 7600GT which has about the same tech-age as your PC.

[badhabit]

Finally got my mittens on LoG2, and after waiting until the standalone version was posted I downloaded and installed.

Then I got a case of the sads.

LoG2 crashed, so badly I couldn't Ctrl-Alt-Delete Or Ctrl-Shift-Esc out of the game crash and back to Windows 7 Professional.

I literally HAD to do a cold shutdown and reboot back to Windows 7 as the computer had froze soon as the key screen loaded and segued to the menu welcome screen where the animated water video froze, the audio quick looped on one tone, the mouse froze and all commands from the keyboard were locked out.

This happened three times!

So I did an internet search on how others resolved their issues of game crashes and did what they did.

From disabling my anti-virus software {Which works for LoG1} failed for LoG2 with no impact.

I went into my nVidia video card Control Panel settings and under 'Manage 3D settings' > 'Program Settings' and 'Global Settings' I set both 'Triple Buffering' and 'Vertical Sync' to ON.

Still no change.

Can't understand why LoG1 runs fast and smooth but LoG2 runs for a brief 30 seconds at best before it crashes.

Any ideas if this is a known glitch or if it simply hates Windows 7 Professional / AMD Athlon 64 3200+ Processor / Sound Blaster Audigy 2 zs sound card / Nvidia Video card 9600GT / 120 Gig hard drive with 100 Gig free / 1200W Power Supply with all drivers up to date?

Game looks pretty but I'm dying to get into it and start playing.

Any hints, tips and clues to what I may try, and please be specific with instructions. Thanks

Maybe GPU overheating... LoG1 is notorious for leading to that for old hardware as it is GPU and not CPU bound and due to a unfortunate selection of 120FPS as preset. LoG2 is the same engine, so check you FPS and your GPU temperature (GPU-Z, FRAPS). Consider reducing the resolution and limit the FPS with the internal frame rate limiter to ~40FPS.

PS: a little bit about the LoG1 overheating and other bugs

PPS: maybe not as LoG1 run well for you...

[Dr.Disaster]

Maybe GPU overheating... LoG1 is notorious for leading to that for old hardware as it is GPU and not CPU bound and due to a unfortunate selection of 120FPS as preset. LoG2 is the same engine, so check you FPS and your GPU temperature (GPU-Z, FRAPS). Consider reducing the resolution and limit the FPS with the internal frame rate limiter to ~40FPS.

An old GeForce 9600 GT going 120 FPS in LoG2?


That old pal is lucky when it hit's 60 and that's with low resolution and all gfx settings on low.

[badhabit]

Maybe GPU overheating... LoG1 is notorious for leading to that for old hardware as it is GPU and not CPU bound and due to a unfortunate selection of 120FPS as preset. LoG2 is the same engine, so check you FPS and your GPU temperature (GPU-Z, FRAPS). Consider reducing the resolution and limit the FPS with the internal frame rate limiter to ~40FPS.

An old GeForce 9600 GT going 120 FPS in LoG2?


That old pal is lucky when it hit's 60 and that's with low resolution and all gfx settings on low.

Yeah exactly, that is the problem... the card dies trying... This was happening with LOG1 too for old cards. Part of the solution is reducing this unneeded high frame count to something reasonable like 40FPS, which should be the preset from the beginning (instead of the current preset 120FPS).

But this is currently only speculation... we need the measured FPS and the GPU temperature.

[Ninjawitch]

Thanks everyone for your input, the helpful ones and the snarky ones too.

Decided to wait until I can afford a better computer system on my disability income, or wait until LoG2 is ported over to the Xbox 360. {hey I can dream can't I?} - Besides the port would open up the game to other customers and improve financial costs to the designers and developers to gain maximum profit from the game and cross-platform promote the game in the market place.

I mean shouldn't the Xbox 360 have the CPU and GPU power to run this game?

I figured if the original LoG1 ran handsomely on my existing computer then the same logic would apply to LoG2 since it isn't an Elder Scrolls game but a simple dungeon crawler.

I've learned my bad.

That was partly WHY I got into LoG series was that since it WAS a old school D&D crawler then naturally it would be playable on an older school computer tech machine that can't handle 'The Elder Scrolls' {with the exception of 'Arena', 'Daggerfall' and 'Battlespire'} but it should run LoG2 since it handled LoG1 speedily.

Again my error.

One of you mentioned a fps setting starting out at 120 instead of starting out at 40.

Which makes me ask the obvious question to the developers of LoG2 - Why set it so high right upon start up of LoG2 but instead allow a manual throttle made by the user to make slow increments from 40 up to 120 fps thus we can adjust the game speed and resolution before the main menu screen before the lockup occurs?

That would have been a reasonable option to adjust the game before it even starts then crashes/locks up.

Games used to allow us to do this and since this IS a old school D&D game that would have been a bow to the old style games to have a pre-screen start up to alter clock speed, resolution and machine speed while having a practical operation to give the user an option to play the game at both a lower speed AND lower resolution tradeoff but avoid crashes, freezes and lockups.

Maybe even present a crash report generated by the game that tells the user "what went wrong" and "what can be done to remedy the situation" - like was it a CPU issue, RAM, GPU speed - WHAT EXACTLY?

Instead of leave us blind, deaf and dumb on what happened.

Am I wrong or somewhat on the mark?

Anyways ... I brought up Xbox because many games, even some like The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim function VERY WELL on the Xbox 360 console so why NOT port LoG2 over to that platform? - It SHOULD have both the GPU and GPU power to push the game and allow those like me to play it.

Have the designers and developers thought of that? Hell, are they even entertaining that option, maybe put out a combo pack of LoG1 & LoG2 for the Xbox?

I know I would purchase it!

They would be cutting off their nose in spite of their face to throw away additional profits for both games by denying it to the xbox crowd.

Again, am I wrong or somewhat on the mark?

[Dr.Disaster]

One of you mentioned a fps setting starting out at 120 instead of starting out at 40.

Which makes me ask the obvious question to the developers of LoG2 - Why set it so high right upon start up of LoG2 but instead allow a manual throttle made by the user to make slow increments from 40 up to 120 fps thus we can adjust the game speed and resolution before the main menu screen before the lockup occurs?

Nowadays people are hard on the 3D train so the preset is 120. There have even been first complains that the 120 default is set too low and should be raised to like 150 because newer 3D monitors allow that much! Such is the world of PC hardware: always changing.

There is an easy way inside the nVidia driver to prevent your GPU from rendering more frames then necessary:
- open the nVidia Control Panel
- select "Manage 3D settings"
- select the setting "Tripple Buffer" and set it to "On"
- select the setting "Threaded Optimization" and set it to "On" or at least "Auto"
- select the setting "Vertical sync" and set it to "On" or "Adaptive"
- click apply

Of course i assume you have a more or less current nvidia driver installed (like v337.88) and that you do not run on some Microsoft default *shiver*

Nevertheless you still need to check if you GPU goes into overload/overheat:
- get the GPU-Z tool, install, run and select sensors tab
- start LoG2 and switch it into "Windowed" mode or "Borderless" if you prefer,
- position both windows that you can see the GPU-Z sensors, then play and watch the "GPU Temperatur" and "GPU Load" sensors

When you GPU still runs too hot your system might have a cooling issue.

[badhabit]

Thanks everyone for your input, the helpful ones and the snarky ones too.

Decided to wait until I can afford a better computer system on my disability income, or wait until LoG2 is ported over to the Xbox 360. {hey I can dream can't I?} - Besides the port would open up the game to other customers and improve financial costs to the designers and developers to gain maximum profit from the game and cross-platform promote the game in the market place.

He, don't give up that fast !

I still see several possibilities beside money, or with small money only... so lets debug your issue(s).

Zero, measure the LOG2 FPS
Find in the "\Documents\Almost Human\Legend of Grimrock 2\grimrock.cfg" directory the grimrock.cfg (or search your pc for grimrock.cfg)
Open it with wordpad or another texteditor. Change "debugInfo = false"to "debugInfo = true". Save it. Now on the bottom of grimrocj the FPS will be shown. If your FPS are below 120 FPS (without v-sync) your system is under full load trying and sweating on generating this frames.
You can reduce this burden on the system by reducing the asked for frame rate if your system is generating lets say 80fps and you set: e.g. "maxFrameRate = 40" to 50% , which should lead to an significant heat reduction (for this case!).

First, checking where is the bottleneck/ crash reason. Start with the GPU, here we need your GPU load and temperature.
Download GPU-Z and install it (http://www.techpowerup.com/gpuz/), run it before starting LOG2 and take a look on the temeperature tab (should look like this). If your GPU load is all the time 100% and the temperature goes beyond 80°C this could be your problem... try to clean the GPU cooler, add additional coolers, clock the GPU down etc.

Second, if the GPU is not the limit, maybe the CPU is.
Download this for isntance, http://www.cpuid.com/downloads/hwmonitor/1.25.zip.
Start your taskmanager and take a look in the performance tab if the CPU load is all the time 100% and take a look on the HW monitor if the CPU temperature goes through the ceiling. If yes, try to optimize your cooling situation here too.

Third, if yor system stops crashing but generates not enough frames in general... consider minor updates. If the bottleneck is the CPU, you could try to update to a faster socket 939 dual core processor (Athlon X2 4800 or a opteron) with higher clockfrequency available as substitute for your AMD Athlon 64 3200+ single core Processor (2GHz). On Ebay I have seen very reasonable priced used dual-core opterons ~30Euro with higher cpu clock. Your GPU you could be substitute also pretty cheap against a used model 2-3 years old one which could bring potentially the biggest speed up.