Beta 0.7.0.609381 - Multiple Crash incidents reported - (seems fixed in 0.7.0.609383)

[marsh ravine]

So, been testing with the beta 0.7.0.609381 that was pushed out March 27. For the most part it's been fine. Although I've had 4-5 instances where the game just crashes. It appears to be when I'm sailing between POIs, but I did have a crash happen while disassembly of a recycler at Sanctuary Dock 12.

All crash reports were submitted through the Steam pop-up.

Unhandled Exception: EXCEPTION_ACCESS_VIOLATION reading address 0x0000000000000000

They appear to be access violation crashes trying to read/write a memory address with probably a zero pointer.

Not a huge deal, just keeps me on the routine saves before sailing. Was curious if others had experienced crashes with this version also. Previous versions seemed a lot more stable.

[sacred barn]

Oddly enough (well, maybe not), I've also had a string of crashes this afternoon (Saturday 28th, 1500 GMT and beyond) whilst on the beta branch. More today, in fact, than I'd had previously in over 620 hours of game play. I've been paying the latest beta branch version (...381) since it came out on Friday 27th but without any issues until now (nor have I had problems with previous betas).

My problems started to occur whilst I was at Exodus Station and usually they were preceded by a massive image lag spike when I was doing something demanding (scrapping a Sabatier) or I turned quickly and the scenery had to adjust quickly to reflect that.

Having said this, I also had a few 'near misses' later on at Lazarus Compolex as well where the game seemed on the verge of crashing but managed to recover.

Crash reports with files were submitted each time, I validated the installation files (nothing damaged) and also reviewed my video settings (nothing has changed for a long time) so neither of these would seem to be the culprit.

[edit] It's now 22:30 GMT on Saturday and the game has just crashed again ... on exiting ... for the second time today [/edit}

[marsh ravine]

Any new video driver?

I did install the NVIDIA driver 595.97 which were released on March 24th today before starting to play today. Rebooted after install also (for other reasons), but wasn't sure if the new driver had caused the new string of crashes.

[sacred barn]

No, not recently. In fact, I checked a short while ago and my drivers are dated back in 2024.

Now that, in itself, might be an issue (albeit not one that has manifested itself to any great degree) but I've recently seen reports that the latest NVIDIA drivers are causing problems (to the extent that even BVIDIA acknowledge this) so I'm in no hurry to update mine.

And, if outdated drivers were a problem, I might have expected this to show up earlier ... unless the recent 'optimizations' have pushed things over the edge for me.

I'd like to see what the devs can do to resolve this before tweaking my PC any more than I have to!

[marsh ravine]

So, I've noticed when I load back in after a crash, the Autosave Backup was last taken 6 min ago. I wonder if the crashes are related to the Autosave, since it would have taken one just as the crash happened.

[sacred barn]

@finite nexus Sorry to ping you directly but ... is this the balance of CPU vs. GPU utilisation that we should be seeing from the latest beta hotfix and its patches from Friday?

I'm running my game with near default settings and 'High' graphics quality (going down to 'Medium' quality makes little difference to these graphs). The laptop itself is a two year old, high spec. Asus gaming laptop with stock settings (no overclocking) and running it in 'Silent' mode where the CPU and GPU are throttled back to reduce fan noise. I did try the using the 'Performance' mode but it overheated and shut down just when running the game's benchmark!

The graphs are screen shots with the boat by the statue spire east of the Quarantine Stacks, calm weather and me just standing around (so nothing that should overtax the hardware). My boat is fairly clean ... just a number of medium wind turbines and small solar panels plus a few oil tanks on deck (per the third image and nothing like some peoples' builds!),

Is there anything that can/should be done to improve matters or is this what the devs were aiming for?

Many thanks ...

[tidal valve]

Hi
can you check if you have the latest NVIDIA drivers installed?
Apparently the latest update has some fixes related to memory access errors

[sacred barn]

Well, I know that I havent as the dates of the drivers in those images is 20/10/2024.
I've seen it mentioned that the latest NVIDIA drivers are somewhat bugged (so didn't want to risk making things worse) but, if you think they're OK, I'll give it a whirl later today (I'm just getting ready to go out IRL ... scary!).

[tidal valve]

What is suggest to do is:

• create a restore point, just in case...
• install the NVIDIA App and update the drivers from there
• also in the NV App there is a graphic optimization per game, if you still have the issue after updating the drivers, try the automatic game optimization from there

Usually when I have any performance issues I try the Nvidia optimization feature or re-run the benchmark in the game

[sacred barn]

Thanks; I'll give that a go later today or tomorrow ...

[sacred barn]

Hmm, OK, I'm not sure about this ... I've updated the NVIDIA graphics driver to the latest version and, if anything, GPU utilisation has gone up! Granted, I've done no optimisation using the NVIDIA app so that might improve things ... but that's for another time.

[tidal valve]

you can try to run the benchmark, this will also change the settings automatically based on the results

you can take a screenshot of your current video and graphics settings just in case you want to revert

[bitter fiber]

I just wanted to add that I'm also seeing a lot of crashed with the new Beta branch. I had only played about 30 hours prior to that but hadn't had any crashes in that time. Since installing the beta branch I've had at least 3 crashes.

[marsh ravine]

Trying the new beta version that was pushed today ~12:00 on March 29 seems a lot better. Have not had any crashes today with this version. beta version 0.7.0.609383.

Beta 0.7.0.609381 - Multiple Crash incidents reported - (seems fixed in 0.7.0.609383)

[bitter fiber]

I've had two crashes that both happened when I exited the game immeadiately after saving.

The save still worked and I was quitting anyway so not a critical problem but still anomolous behaviour. This was with the patch that was pushed today.

[sacred barn]

The first rule of testing is ... never change more than one variable at a time otherwise you won't know why something has happened!

So ,,, take one set of updated graphics drivers, one NVIDIA app game optimization and an apparent/unannounced update to the executable on Sunday ... and there seems to be a marked improvement/reduction in my GPU utilization ... but I've no idea which of these changes (or combination thereof) might have caused this.

However, for the moment, things appear to be more stable than they were ... so thank you to @marsh ravine for the suggestions and the devs for the update. Let's see what the new changes have to offer by way of improvements!

[finite nexus]

@sacred barn sorry for the delay in getting back, I am under strict rules from the wife not to work on Sundays 😛

is everything OK now? anything you'd like me to raise up the chain from your findings?

[sacred barn]

Oh, I quite understand that family must come first ... at least one day a week!
For now, it all seems to be OK. I've run the game benchmark a few times whilst continuing to tweak the graphics settings and, at least at the moment, it all seems to be behaving properly.
Thanks for checking in.