game crash in both dx9 and dx11

[W1ntermute]

I'm experiencing game crashes in both dx11 and 9.

In dx11, I can get 5-10mins of game time before I get a CTD. The game still "runs", I can push keys and hear the sound FX that correspond with the commands pushed but the screen doesn't show anything, it's completely transparent to the desktop and the icon of the program running is still in the taskbar (task manager also shows the game still running with no 'not responding' error message). If I press alt-enter, the games window frame is empty with the desktop seen through it.

During gameplay prior to any crash, the game runs very smoothly with all setting turned up to high. In this log, I turned off SSAO in this playtest. No change to other results. Exactly the same. And yes, I've tried all available workarounds and nothing works. All drivers and bios are at their latest versions. Files verified on steam. Visual C++ installed (and both repaired and re-installed) The graphics card doesn't even exert itself

I've owned the game for a month and it's the same result. Even after the Jan 8 hotfix update, no change. Regardless of the map, it's always the same result, 5-10mins of gameplay, then kaput. Also the game is prone to 1, sometimes 2 temporary freezes at random times during a click on items, then corrects itself after 15-30 seconds. The link to dx11 output log is below

http://pastebin.com/V3GWAR9t

In dx9, it's a different story. The game freezes permanently at around the same length of playtime as dx11. When tis happens, there's no response to any key press, no sound, nothing. Just the last screen it was on, frozen. This output log occurred when I was looking in my inventory. Game also runs smoothly just like in the dx11 version. The link to the dx9 output log is below

http://pastebin.com/wjyAhHHy

[W1ntermute]

Here's another session.

Loaded up the game, went into a random sandbox and this time decided to do nothing at all. No key presses, nothing. Just waited to see what would happen. Exact same results as the Dx11.

output_log.txt

[Bill Tarling]

I'm running almost the identical setup (except that I have 16 GB RAM instead of 8 GB -- otherwise all my other system specs are the same), and everything runs fine is Ultra mode at the same resolution you're using.

Couple of things to check:

(1) Try verifying your Steam files to make sure nothing was missed

(2) Make sure you're NVIDIA drivers are current

(3) You can go through this thread and see if anything else is missing viewtopic.php?f=56&t=7888

Not sure if any of the above will help, but as said I'm running almost the identical specs, and haven't had issues (even when running multiple other resource hog programs and browsers at the same time)

[W1ntermute]

C'mon Bill, had you read my 1st post you'd know that:

1) I did already, stated in 1st post. I've also completely reinstalled it.

2) They are already updated as stated in 1st post...

3) Yes, I read the "BEFORE YOU POST A BUG" thread and did that. As stated in the 1st post, i've tried ALL available workarounds...

Knowing you have the same specs and it's running fine is frustrating.

My next thought was "Is Hinterland receiving analytics of the games usage from users?" If that was the case it may be conflicting with the firewall, causing the crashes. I have Comodo Firewall (just the stand alone, not internet security) and checked it to see if it was blocking anything but nothing was listed as blocked or sandboxed. It's a trusted program. In any case, I closed Comodo, unplugged the net connection to test it out. TLD runs for about 20mins this time. Then it crashes on its own with a pop-up from windows. It states that it conflicted with NTDLL.DLL. No other program on my computer has conflicted with this particular file ever.

Here's the log file for that. It mentions that you are receiving data from gameanalytics.com and in this instance, because there was no net connection, it was unable to connect to it. Crash happened shortly after that.

output_log.txt

[W1ntermute]

Back to the original crashes, i've noticed a pattern. I accessed Windows Event viewer and it is telling me that at each moment the game crashed, there's a conflict with tld.exe and Desktop Window Manager (dwm.exe.) at the exact time CTD happens. TLD is disabling it, then dwm tries to start back up again and then a conflict occurs so it kicks back to the desktop. Could be a video card setting issue

Bill, do you mind my asking what your video card settings are in Nvidia control panel for comparison?

Mine is:

Ambient Occlusion - Off

Anisotropic Filtering - 16x

Antialiasing FXAA - Off

AA Gamma Corr. - Off

AA Mode - App. Controlled

AA Setting - App Controlled (greyed out)

AA Transparency - Off

CUDA GPUs - All

DSR Factors - Off

DSR Smothness - Off (greyed out)

Max Pre Rendered Frames - 1

Multi display/Mixed GPU - Multiple Display Perf. mode

Power Mgmt. - Prefer Max Perf.

Shader Cache - On

Tex. Filtering Anis - Off (greyed out)

Tex. Filtering Neg LOD bias - Clamp

Tex. Filtering quality - High Quality

Tex. Filtering Tri. Optimization - On (greyed out)

Threaded Optimization - On

Triple Buffering - On

Vertical Sync - Adaptive

VR Pre-rendered frames - 1

Physx is set to CPU

All other settings are default stock

[Bill Tarling]

Bill, do you mind my asking what your video card settings are in Nvidia control panel for comparison?

Mine is:

Ambient Occlusion - Off

Anisotropic Filtering - 16x

Antialiasing FXAA - Off

AA Gamma Corr. - Off

AA Mode - App. Controlled

AA Setting - App Controlled (greyed out)

AA Transparency - Off

CUDA GPUs - All

DSR Factors - Off

DSR Smothness - Off (greyed out)

Max Pre Rendered Frames - 1

Multi display/Mixed GPU - Multiple Display Perf. mode

Power Mgmt. - Prefer Max Perf.

Shader Cache - On

Tex. Filtering Anis - Off (greyed out)

Tex. Filtering Neg LOD bias - Clamp

Tex. Filtering quality - High Quality

Tex. Filtering Tri. Optimization - On (greyed out)

Threaded Optimization - On

Triple Buffering - On

Vertical Sync - Adaptive

VR Pre-rendered frames - 1

Physx is set to CPU

All other settings are default stock

I don't know whether these are the best settings or not, but I've yet to have any issues in any game, and it seems to function very nicely in DX11 mode (which is what I usually use) and DX9 mode. Here's what mine are at for the same card (differences are marked in red):

Ambient Occlusion - Off

Anisotropic Filtering - Application-Controlled

Antialiasing FXAA - Off

AA Gamma Corr. - On

AA Mode - App. Controlled

AA Setting - App Controlled (greyed out)

AA Transparency - Off

CUDA GPUs - All

DSR Factors - Off

DSR Smothness - Off (greyed out)

Max Pre Rendered Frames - Use the 3D application setting

Multi display/Mixed GPU - Multiple Display Perf. mode

Power Mgmt. - Adaptive

Shader Cache - On

Tex. Filtering Anis - Anisotropic sample optimization Off (*not greyed out)

Tex. Filtering Neg LOD bias - Allow

Tex. Filtering quality - Quality

Tex. Filtering Tri. Optimization - On (*not greyed out)

Threaded Optimization - Auto

Triple Buffering - Off

Vertical Sync - Use the 3D application setting

VR Pre-rendered frames - 1

Physx is set to Auto-select

[W1ntermute]

Changed it and it didn't work, same results a first post

[W1ntermute]

More of the same with another random crash. This time I switched off Steam overlay and had some extended playtime around the Dam area. Same bs in the end

Tbh, this is getting to be real annoying on a number of levels. It's pretty clear that nobody knows what's causing it or how to fix it. The worst part is, because of that, the bug won't be located and will remain within the source code and continue to behave in the same way in later versions. So i'm more or less screwed. I think this will be the last time I purchase anything early access from now on.

output_log.txt

[Support]

First my apologies for not replying sooner to your post. The mention of DWM from the event viewer is interesting. Have you tried disabling Aero/Accelerated desktop? (Right click the Desktop Click Personalize Under 'Basic and High Contrast Themes, click 'Windows 7 Basic') It sounds like the game is crashing when Windows is switching the DWM to unaccelerated mode.

If that doesn't work I have a couple quick questions:

Are you running anything else while playing that may also be acting as a render target, like a media player or capture program?

Sorry if you've already tried this, but have you tried deleting, rebooting (to ensure no stale temp files), then reinstalling the game? This could potentially happen from missing files as well. I know you've mentioned that you verified the cache, but I just want to make sure this option was explored as well.

And lastly, could you email your saves? I'd like to check to make sure they are not causing an issue. You can find them here: c:\users\username\AppData\Local\Hinterland\TheLongDark - just zip up the "TheLongDark" folder - and email them to me - skylar@hinterlandgames.com