All, this is getting pretty heated but in perusing all of the forums for minidump information I see far more replies from Annatar than I do from IC on the topic; in fact I see Annatar in a TON of these threads commentating...sometimes helpful and sometimes commentating. You spend a lot of time coming to the defense of IC and some on helping. I must also say that your suggestion to get a refund was something that I took as snide in text when I was reaching out for help to the community after trying a lot on my (our representing my group of gamers) own. Annatar, I know you have a close relationship and I have to say that I work with lots of developers that burn the midnight oil that aren't going to cash in hard but in short IC sold a lot of copies, and splitting it among only 9 people + the distributer 9 I'm guessing that 9 people are going to make some cash for their effort. I know that there are only 9 people and I have some understanding there. Also understand that I spent good money on the game and work hard in IT as well and my clients cut me minimal slack if something goes wrong thus setting my expectations for other IT staff. As I said, it is the focus of the development that I have a problem with it should be aimed at resolving crashes before going on to balance related issues. Myself and my crew played the heck out of the beta as well which didn't crash a much as release 1.3. I think that 1.2 had far less crashing as well...something specific occurred in 1.3 that caused a lot of this.

I definitely love the game. It is a long game....if you're playing multi you can expect to play for a minimum of a few hours and more likely more than that. Crashing constantly means not finishing a game with a heavy investment in time behind it. Crashing constantly means reloading over and over and losing time and doing things over and it builds frustration. We have tried troubleshooting on our own (just to let Wildsage know that coming to the forums was our last resort as far as posting and asking) and examining the dumps ourselves, adjusting our virtual memory, patching, changing hardware, etc. We have tried what people put forward in the forums as well. Nothing works and at this point we're just waiting for the game to get fixed.

As to double posting almost every time I post my browser clocks and doesn't post, I kill it and repaste my post and it's there twice. So be it

Yeah, it is getting a bit heated in here

And yes, that's a lot of what I do. If I *knew* how to fix all of the technical issues that came up, I would do more than just comment. However, I do feel that even a comment such as "IC is aware of this" or "IC has said they're looking into it" will reassure the poster more than no replies at all, official or otherwise. Many posters are also first-timers, and may not know about the support email, or what they should send or why. So while it seems redundant to keep repeating to send minidumps and saves and such to IC support, there have been several cases where people didn't realize they should do that.

This thread is one of the very few where I actually felt compelled to defend Ironclad a bit - on most of them I simply try to explain what is or isn't, but as I've said in an earlier post, that's more of my own principle and feeling that some of the more flamey comments they don't deserve.

I will admit again that the original suggestion to get a refund was part of a jab in response to a flame - but still, the option is there nonetheless.

In principle, I agree that crashing issues should be put before balance and the original plan didn't include a purely balance patch. But there was a very loud outcry on the forums about some of the patch changes and I can't say I blame IC for deciding to split the patch in two, a smaller balance (that subsequently had problems found in and was delayed) and the main 1.1 following. For all we know, though, the extra time may have allowed them to sneak some fixes into 1.04, as well.

Oh yeah, and Wildsage you seem to have the best luck, what is your system config since it seems moderately stable at one crash. I am running the following:

XP SR2
Q6600
ATI 3870
ASUS MB
4 gb RAM

Some of the other systems all of which have crashed at one point or another (before and after Vista SR1):

Vista SR 1
Q6600
ATI 3870
ECS MB
4 gb RAM

Vista 64 Ultimate SR1
E6750
ATI 3870 and prior to that dual and single Nvidia 7950 Configuratons
Gigabyte MB
4 gb RAM

We also tried another system with an ATI 2900...and another system with an AMD FX(forgot the designation but it was dual core) all with 4gb RAM.

Between the 3 of us we tested out at least 5 systems and permutations of Vista, Vista SR1, Vista 64, Vista 64SR1, and XP SP 2. All crashed. Video cards have included ATI 3870, 2900, Nvidia 6800 and 7950. I can no longer remember the combo's and types any longer since we tried so many platforms in problem isolation but in the end they all crashed. I would love to hear what a stable platform is at this point since people do exist that don't crash.

I would also like to add that any time I sat around 'spectating' in ICO there were people asking anyone for help that they could regarding minidumps in chat.

FYI:

WWW Link

Blair posted a detailed response in the other thread.

Well, since you're posting your hardware configs I guess it's open season!   

In my "lab" here are the various configs of several machines I've tested SINS on (since those "mini-dump" threads started rearing their heads) in order to try to replicate some of the issues the community has been reporting...


Monk-tested configs:

Two of the following:
Intel 805D (OC'd to 3.32GHz)
2GB 667MHz RAM
nVidia 8800 GTS 320MB (no OC)
Win XP Pro x64 (incl. all OS updates)
Absolutely NO other software but games installed on these 2 machines, not even AV etc.

Four of the following:
Intel 805D (OC'd to 3.32GHz)
4GB 667MHz RAM
nVidia 8800 GTS 320MB (mild OC)
Win XP Pro x64 (incl. all OS updates)
Absolutely NO other software but games installed on these 4 machines, no AV etc.

Three of the following:
AMD 5200 (no OC)
4GB 667MHz RAM
ATI 3870 512MB (no OC)
Win Vista 32-bit (incl. all OS updates)
Some other software besides games (ie. TS, AV, etc.) installed.

Two of the following:
Intel E4500 (OC'd to 3.0GHz)
4GB 667MHz RAM
nVidia 8800 GT 512MB (mild OC)
Win Vista 64-bit (incl. all OS updates)
Other software besides games (ie. TS, AV, etc.) installed.


.... I have been unable to replicate even one single "mini-dump". Shaft187, I'm in IT myself (in case you didn't already know that ) and believe me when I tell you I've tried to make my game "mini-dump"....it simply hasn't.

the Monk

Making noise does make a difference.. A little information is all we want.

BTW Anatar.. "And yes, that's a lot of what I do." Stop doing it, it pisses a lot of people off.

Worry about your own posting, good sir, I'll worry about mine

Monk, I've read your networking HW guides, etc. definitely good stuff. I have no clue what could be causing the minidumps on our end and they have exclusively occurred in multi. Obviously it's driving us nuts. So you have tested multi on all of those platforms? It seems that the likelihood of a dump increases for us as we play for in excess of an hour or so and there are more variables to track in-game is about the only correlation I have found. Annatar, thanks for the link I'll go hit the other thread.

Just received confirmation in the other thread that what we're experiencing isn't hardware dependent.

Really? How? I got my 3 copies of the game from Best Buy the day after it came out and constantly get Minidumps when i play LAN games. I would love a refund considering this isn't working out for our group.

Well, retail purchases would have to go through the retail store's return policy. The refund I was talking about is for orders from Stardock.

However, you should check this thread for Blair's explanation of the problem, and an opportunity for you guys to sign up to help IC pinpoint the problem and fix it for 1.1.

I agree with your latest conclusion that the mini-dumps you are experiencing are MP-desync related and nothing more. That is not to say that the mini-dumps which other's are experiencing aren't in-fact hardware related. Two very different source causes, unfortunately resulting in very similar effects.

I think what has been especially confusing to the community is the fact that all errors are simply classified as "mini-dumps". People see the mini-dump threads on the forums and assume they're all having the same issues, stemming from the same problems.  :NOTSURE: 


the Monk

Speaking for Stardock, our position is this:

We do monitor the forums and we are definitely aware that some people are having problems. 

But we also ask that those people have some common courtesy too.  I understand the frustration they have but they need to recognize that, as a percent, very few people are running into problems with the game and that almost every time we do go through the trouble of disecting what is causing these problems it ends up hardware related or mod related -- usually after hours of them first insisting that they have no mods and their hardware was "standard" (when in fact they're overclocking something or have a 5 year old sound card driver or buggy network driver).

Purchasing a game does not give someone the right to be nasty and rude to either Stardock or Ironclad. If you run into a problem with the game and you bought it from us, then we'll happily refund you. If you bought it elsewhere, you can pursue whatever their refund policy is.  All we can do is try our best to help you either with software updates that fix bugs in our code or try to diagnose what it is on your end that is causing problems. 

However, no one has the right to spam other people's posts with off topic complaints (as I've seen) or being insulting.  I've already given moderators permission to take away posting priviledges of those who do. I don't think anyone is going to get a lot of traction trying to argue that Stardock doesn't have exceptional support for its games.  All we ask in return is some courtesy, patience, and help in helping you.

i've played about 100 games, and 60-70 have crashed. Everytime I crashed, so did everyone else. Each game had different players, with about 5 names recurring. So, here we have 400 or so players all who have crashed in just the games i've been in. To claim that "10%" are crashing is disingenuous. The most frustrating part is that long games just "end" suddenly, and few return to the lobby. I have a few times now NOT played because I didn't feel like just doing a city build to crash.

I would like to add that i like the game, and don't get the small numbers in the multi room with all the sales. Are those sales to stores, or end sales?

As a %, most people don't play games multiplayer.  It's an issue that we've talked about on GalCiv2.com for years.

Also, as we have tried to tell people, nearly all the crashes in multiplayer are due to one player having made mods to their system that the game couldn't handle. 

What we find frustrating are users who are quick to scream "bug" when in fact most of the time the problem is self imposed. What we can do is try to find ways to keep the game from crashing everyone else.

Personally, there is a basic misunderstanding by some people: We could do without the people who flame us. if that means they never ever buy a product from us again, then great.

We want to help people but we won't put up with abuse. That's all I was trying to get across.

I believe there is a lot of that out there Frogboy (misdiagnosis, no efforts to personally troubleshoot, etc.) but my group troubleshot this hard and have found out that we have the sync issue just recently thanks to Blair. We initially ran into the NVIDIA bug, replaced the hardware, etc. and still ran into the brick wall. As others have stated it was always rough playing for multiple hours and then it crashes right when the major fleet battles are starting to rage. We didn't start hitting the forums for solutions and such until we had spent a *lot* of time and even some cash (replacing the NVIDIA cards). That said we're ready to assist and have requested that we receive the patch with enhanced debugs for sync errors and are poised to submit our data to IC in order to hasten any further progress that may allow us to play the game on a regular basis. In any case I hope you never considered my effort to play the game and get it working as some sort of rabblerousing or abusive commentary; I just want to play the game in short and if I can help to hasten the day when I can complete a game in a stable manner I'm all in. I wouldn't have invested a ton of time and effort if I didn't want to play. Let me also put forward that I don't play MMO's (due to the huge time constraints and multiple MMO-related divorces I have witnessed), have a son and a pregnant wife and work in IT. My single night of gaming is in my middle age now the single chunk of personal time that I retain for my own amusement. Sins is a great game when it works....but when you spend your one personal portion of a day/week troubleshooting weekend after weekend because you like a game enough to burn that minimal amount of personal time for just the chance of getting a full game in or figuring out how to get it to work... you get the idea, it's tough. In any case I think that a lot of people play multiplayer private games but due to the time investment a lot of people don't want to play with strangers considering that playing with a group of 3 or 4 strangers makes it so that a crash kills the whole game potentially and saved game recovery is iffy, etc. Setting them to a comp is great as it keeps the game going but a human being is much more challenging.

Though I would LOVE to see ANY kind of REAL STATISTICS on this game (even how many minidump reports SD receives on a given day might be helpful), most of the reports are, unfortunately, anecdotal. That said, it does SEEM to be pretty rare that anyone would have multiple crashing problems with the game, especially if they are using the software on different systems, as I have tried (to no avail) and some other users claim to have done.

I'm not saying that the game has one giant bug that SD/IC are ignoring. I'm not trying to scream "BUG" and point fingers. I've done what I can - read the forums, played with router settings, changed hardware, drivers, etc. This is above and beyond what I think any user should have to do after paying for a game.

What I am saying is that the code seems to be fragile. I don't know why I have purchased several other games in the past year or so that run without this level of difficulty. Maybe a patch needs to be released, or some ports need to be opened, or a graphics driver needs to be updated on some other games I've played, but I've never really had to do all three of those things. Why is it that other studios/producers can create a game that seems to be more stable and more robust? THAT, I think, is the question. I am dying for an answer.

Re: Op

Not that I've noticed. I just barely tried to play a single-player (the vast majority that I play are SP's) and I mini-dumped 45 minutes in.

Maybe if nVidia would get off their behinds...

to answer the ORIGINAL question that I had, 1.04 fixed my issue! I can play now!

Search the forums for 174.74 or search nvidia, it is a beta driver, and since I installed it, I haven't had a single burp or hiccup.. not sure what the link to the nvidia site for it is offhand tho

as to my specs.... here we go



Operating System: Windows XP Home Edition (5.1, Build 2600) Service Pack 2 (2600.xpsp_sp2_gdr.070227-2254)
Language: English (Regional Setting: English)
System Manufacturer: Dell Computer Corporation
System Model: Dimension 3000
BIOS: Phoenix ROM BIOS PLUS Version 1.10 A01
Processor: Intel(R) Celeron(R) CPU 2.66GHz
Memory: 1022MB RAM
Page File: 259MB used, 1051MB available
Windows Dir: C:\WINDOWS
DirectX Version: DirectX 9.0c (4.09.0000.0904)
DX Setup Parameters: Not found
DxDiag Version: 5.03.2600.2180 32bit Unicode
Card name: RADEON 9250
Manufacturer: ATI Technologies Inc.
Chip type: RADEON 9250 (0x5960)
DAC type: Internal DAC(400MHz)
Device Key: Enum\PCI\VEN_1002&DEV_5960&SUBSYS_20021002&REV_01
Display Memory: 256.0 MB
Current Mode: 1024 x 768 (32 bit) (60Hz)
Monitor: Default Monitor
Monitor Max Res:
Driver Name: ati2dvag.dll
Driver Version: 6.14.0010.6614 (English)
DDI Version: 9 (or higher)
Driver Attributes: Final Retail
Driver Date/Size: 5/3/2006 12:51:00, 258048 bytes
WHQL Logo'd: Yes
WHQL Date Stamp: n/a
VDD: n/a
Mini VDD: ati2mtag.sys
Mini VDD Date: 5/3/2006 12:50:42, 1540608 bytes
Device Identifier: {D7B71EE2-1A20-11CF-646A-0800A0C2CB35}
Vendor ID: 0x1002
Device ID: 0x5960
SubSys ID: 0x20021002
Revision ID: 0x0001
Revision ID: 0x0001
Video Accel:
Deinterlace Caps: n/a
Registry: OK
DDraw Status: Enabled
D3D Status: Enabled
AGP Status: Not Available


Dont know if this helps anyone.... But so far i still have yet to experience the minidump once...

fail
how slow does the program run for you?

not at all.... Runs smooth as silk.

I have sins installed on my dad's computer because it wont work on my laptop. It ran fine for the first week. I go to play it today and it keeps crashing. Nothing has changed on my computer at all. I tried it with mods enable and unenabled and keeps crashing.... Its really starting to tick me off.