First of all, even though 32bit Vista only sees around 3.6GB or ram, applications and games see all of it, and will use it accordingly. High end hardware, like 8800 GTX's will also use it.

Anyway, yeah. Another crash victim here. Here are the details:

1) 4 players (2 humans, 2 CPU).
2) Fully legit, patched (1.2), copies of the game. (NO MODS)
3) It is occurring on a 1 Star, 35 planet map.
4) It starts happening about hour 8.
5) It only occurs on multi-player games.
6) This is on a Giga-bit, hardwired Cat 6 based network, with an HP 6108 Fiber Switch.
7) Both computers are high end. My computer (the host) is an OC'd E6850 Dual Core, 4 GB of Corsair 6400 C4 Pro XMS2, 2 Raptor X SATA 10,000rpm hard drives, Nvidia 8800 GTX, I could go on... (In other words, it's not the computer)


Here is the story:

I was originally running all the graphics in the game on very high, but was having a ton of crashes in the MP game when I was hosting. They were random and not in any set pattern. I turned everything down to high, and those crashes stopped.

We started up a game last night, and played 8 hours straight without a stutter or problem. Got up to 30 save games until it started to get bad. It's crashed so much at the same point that we've figured out what was causing it.

First of all, the lag on his end is so bad, that it's displaying things on his screen that occured over 20 minutes previously. We've reloaded many times, the lag is still there. In other words, what is on his screen is TOTALLY different than what it on mine, yet he can send me money and resources, and interact with me on a real time level. Just what he sees is not right.

The first crash occurs when I select 10 Enforcers and send them to any of my planets. The result: He crashes.

The second crash occurs when he sends ANY of his fleet to the center star. The result: I crash.

This crash cites no specific file other than the main executable and is ALWAYS accompanied by a mini-dump.

Currently, the only way to progress the game is for him to sit there and do nothing. If he tries to make anything, or move his fleet, I crash. If I make fleet or move my fleet to any one of my planets, he crashes. The only way we can attack anything right now, is by using one of our AI allies and targeting the enemy bases and telling our AI ally to attack it.

Now keep in mind, this is nearly the 9th hour. All of us (including the 2 AI) have incredibly large fleet.

I've been in IT for 17 years, been playing games since the Atari came out, and even been involved with development on a few occasions. No offense to Stardock (LOVE their stuff), but this looks like a problem with their network code. I mean, it's only occurring in multi-player. The longer a game goes, the bigger it gets, the more the game's network code is put under stress. Apparently it doesn't handle big multi-player games that well, causing lag to the clients, and then something as simple as sending 10 ships to a planet causes a fatal exception with the game's exe, which mini-dumps and crashes.

I really hope they fix this, because after spending 9 hours playing this game with your friends where you finally have all the "end game" upgrades and fleet, and then not being able to actually use it all without crashing, really blows.

PS. Can't post any reports right now. I'm at work, and all those reports are on my computer at home.

N

First, same here (NO MODS). Just the retail copy, and v 1.2. And your right BlkSheep, thinking back after we read your post, we recalled that any time we moved a fleet to another planet or star, the lock-up happens. And again, your right, it only happened MP, never has happened in any of my solo games.

This remindes me when we all got HoMM5, and when we played MP, sometimes the maps would suddenly be different from each other; and when any of our armies met on one computer (but not on another, since they were different), we had a lock-up. Of course, we were told it was our fault, or bad Lan, on and on, until they fixed it with a patch :/

I feel your pain, but others have been running large multiplayer games for quite some time without similar problems. I don't think it's just the game's network code at work here.

Well, I know it's not my network, or computers. I mean this is on a giga-bit network, running through a $500 dollar fiber switch. It can transfer an 8GB Dual Layer DVD in less time that it takes to smoke a cigarette.

The PC's, especially mine, are both extreme high end gaming machines. We can play LAN games in Crysis and COD4 with the settings ramped up to max, smooth as silk. Heck, we had alot less problems playing Hegemonia for 24 hours straight (Lot's of Beer involved) with everything set to max, and 8 AI players, than we have with Sins for just 8 hours, and Hegemonia is 3 years old and uses DirectX 8.

No, it may not be JUST Sin's network code, because apparently the crash and lag conditions only become a problem under specific environments, stipulations and/or hardware configurations, but it's obviously common enough that many people are having this problem to warrant a hard look at the code.

When something like this only manifests in multiplayer, with 5-6+ hour long games that contain ALOT of fleet and planets, and go hand-in-hand with a ridiculous amount of time differences between the clients and the host which distorts real-time, which ironically enough, gets worse the longer you play, and ultimately ends in a massive fatal exception with the game's primary exe, then yeah. I'm thinking it's a problem in the network code.

But, Star Dock knows what they are doing. These guys put out some good stuff. I'm confident they'll come up with something. But until then, this is a game killer.

Yeah.. hoping for a fix

I haven't seen the game crash or lockup but my buddy and I have seen that the longer the game goes on the more likely it is that one of us gets disconnected. This has happened in both internet and LAN games. We play 2v2 normal. We can usually go back to the most recent autosave with no problem if we exit to Windows and restart the game.

Where does the game memory get sotred and how can I delete it! Cause I read that the game after a long time occupies alot of memory. What memory? Where can I increase this? etc.

Had the same issue last night (I made my own thread, but thought I would just post here).

6 player LAN game. Free for all, locked teams.
3 stars. (3 players in a star, 3rd star was empty).
All fresh copies of the game patched to 1.02 (no mods).
An hour or two in (not very long at all .. about at the point where we starting hitting each other)
Already played 2 complete games earlier that day.

We got to a point where it would crash .. luckily it was just after an auto-save. But about 30-60 seconds after reloading .. same thing. Three of us would crash (the three of us in the same solar system). Same three people.

After several retries, one of our players discovered he was causing the crash by selecting his newly built capital ship. As soon as he would select it, three other people (not him) would get the mini-dump errors.

A very depressing end to a great day. Since it was about midnight when we gave up, we dare not start another game.

I sent MY dxdiag and mini dump files to [email protected]

Here's big question that no one here has answered:

Is every copy of the game each player is running legit? That means: is each person running their own copy of the game that they either purchased online or through retail?

Yes, and even if it wasn't - shouldn't be any difference.

Yes .. but it shouldn't matter. The game supports 2 players per serial key via LAN play.

Try turning the game-record function off guys. For whatever reason it seems to being recording EVERY player's clicks and such, so 4 player game = recording 4 games worth at the same time etc (and AI follows set patterns/just responds to your actions). Which is why its never a problem in singleplayer, only in multiplayer. Seemed to fix it for the most part for me and my group.

Turning off Auto-save helps too especially if your playing with a lot of different levels of system types (One player has a god comp, one has a mediocre, one has a crappy, etc). Re-synch after an autosave can be ugly

Legit and non-legit copies don't matter in this particular case (as I know legit and nonlegit copies who have had this problem.)

I highly recommend buying this game though. (and both of the nonlegit ones I play with are just waiting until their country actually sells it in stores sucks to live in Asia eh?)

I get the same issue, it's not a memory build up, as the first system to crash in the first game was the 4GB Vista Home Premium machine. The second game was the 2GB Vista Ultimate, Vista Home Premium,and 3GB Windows XP.
Also the second game was much smaller than the first one, and we didn't crash on the first one for 5 hours. The second one we crashed at one hour, after a restart.

My group of players had exactly the same problem for a while. I can't speak to the exact nature of the problem, but having the players who had installed it on an external HD reinstall on the computer's HD fixed the crashing problem. We didn't try anything else and we haven't had a crash since, so...take that for what it's worth. I have no idea why reinstallation helps, but it helped us.

My theory is that since our crashes started after patching to 1.02, the people who were crashing patched badly and reinstallation of 1.02 as the base worked better. No idea. Also, they were using Macbook Pros and XP...that's the only other similarity.

Hope some of that helps.

I patched to 1.02 before I even played the game, right after installation, so I don't think that's it. But hey, keep the ideas coming. Until they fix it, it's all we got.

Using Macbook pros? You need to make sure they aren't allowed to play games, as punishment for choosing the wrong operating system.

Another thing to help. Tryp updating your drivers everyone or try this:(yeah i know im preaching it but it worked for me and a buddy)

boost your page file size to 4 gb(max ammount in windows XP)

Me and a friend running COMPLETELY different hardware were doing comp stomps against a full game of hards and mediums. Midgame we would crash. Me, being the curious cat and the hands on type of guy. i HAD to look for a solution so i woke up sunday morning, did some research and testing and found out that by boosting the pagefile it solved the problem for my PC AND my friends laptop, we resumed a huge game that had saved just before the crash and we were able top resume it smoothly AND finish it without ANY problems.

Oh and

for those running mods or custom downloaded maps, under XP they have to be in:

documents and settings/username/local settings(hidden folder)/application data/ironclad games/sins of a solar empire/galaxy(for maps) or Mods(for mods lol)


Instead of quitting the game, be like me and try stuff lol

Most of the crashes people are describing on here sound like classical 'De-sync' errors, which are a long term bugbear of the RTS genre.

Your computers aren't actually playing the 'same' game at all. They are each playing their own completely separate game which JUST SO HAPPENS to have the same starting point, and your clients each send each other all the orders you issue - but not much else. The RNG(random number generator) seed on each machine is also locked so that all the 'random' events play out the same way on each machine in what is basically a complex choreographed dance.

The problem is, if even ONE of those messages between machines gets dropped (and isn't re-sent properly) or there is an accidental discrepancy in the RNG, the game on one person's machine will begin to diverge from the others. This divergence tends to rapidly grow worse (much like the chaotic Butterfly Effect in weather patterns), until within a few minutes the game that player X is playing no longer resembles the others at all.

Strangely enough, an RTS often won't even realize it is out of sync until something very specific happens - usually when you try to give an order that manipulates or targets a unit that no longer exists on another player's machine because of the divergence - usually because it is dead, or is someplace else entirely, or was never built in their version of the game. Once that happens, the other machine throws a fit because it is receiving orders for units it doesn't even recognize any more and the game crashes.

If you save or auto-save after the original 'event' that triggers the de-sync, you are screwed. The game will inevitably de-sync within a few minutes, because you're actually saving different versions of the game. Nothing you do will fix it, and it has nothing to do with your hardware or settings at that point.

De-Syncs are a PAIN IN THE @$$ to reproduce and debug without logging files. Just describing the events that lead up to your crashes is futile so stop spamming them with those. Do what the Star-dock reps ask and send them whatever save/log files they ask you to send them.

BTW, this isn't to say that there aren't memory issues or hardware issues AS WELL - just that the types of crash that most of the people on this thread are reporting sound an awful lot like undetected de-syncs by their description of the symptoms.

That was very helpful

well, i have the problem in singleplayer, but i had my virtual page file set to a minimum (100MB to 800MB)

For me the crash came rather early, maybe to a max of 45minutes within the game.
I've now increased it, and will test it again.

i played with 9 computer in a world of 12 (was the largest map hehe ). This happened to me also. no mods

Just to throw in my experience here.

I've had crashing problems ever since I updated to 1.2. However, I get these in single player and while running the Distant Stars mod or Mars Effect mod. I'll go ahead and try turning off the autosave, cause it does seem to like to die at that point. I've sent my mini dump reports and dxdiag off to the devs.

I know it's not very fair to ask Ironclad to help if we've modified the game, but it is in their best interest to do so, otherwise their modding tools were kind of a waste.

Great game though!

how do i get my computer to not de-sync?