Minidump crtash at exact point in MP game

from Sins Forums
Hello everyone, My friend and I have been playing SoaSE for a while now and enjoying it. However, at exactly 3 hours 18 minutes and 5 seconds, my friend crashed. The game freezes, at which point he has to alt tab, click "ok" on a minidump error, and then the game crashes out. At first we figured it was random, so we tried again, but it crashed at the exact same point.

He has a 7950gt, athlon x2 3800+, 2gb of ddr2 ram, asus m2n-sli deluxe nforce 570 sli, Windows XP. None of it is overclocked and he's not having issues with other games. He re-installed to the newest video drivers, sound drivers, and then re-installed the game. None of this has fixed it, the error always occurs at the same point in the MP game.

Now the fact that this occurs at the same point in the game regardless of what he has done so far makes me believe it is an issue with the game and maybe the nvidia/creative drivers. Today we'll try lowering his graphics when we both get off work, since I noticed that helped others with some issues. Has anyone else experienced this exact type of problem, where the game crashes with a minidump at the same point in the game?

When he crashes I'm able to continue playing with no issue and no crashes until completion, so its definitely something going on between him and the game.
technical
23,786 views 38 replies
Reply #1 from Sins Forums Top
Have your friend send the minidump with the description to support@ironcladgames.com

They can figure out why it happened very quickly by looking at the dump :) The path to the dump should be listed in the error.
Reply #2 from Sins Forums Top
Thanks, I'll tell him to send that in. Anyone else experience this type of issue yet? Hopefully lowering the graphics will take care of it, but if not, at least its a reproduceable crash, thats the hardest part about troubleshooting usually.
Siege of Centauri
Reply #3 from Sins Forums Top
There have been a number of reports of people with issues using Nvidia-based cards.  Nvidia is investigating them as they're driver-related.
Reply #4 from Sins Forums Top

There have been a number of reports of people with issues using Nvidia-based cards.  Nvidia is investigating them as they're driver-related.
End of quote


Yeah I've been reading those threads. However, the odd thing is how this is so reproduceable while all the reports of crashes on nvidia based cards involves either hanging where the driver kernel resets, or just straight random crashing. None of them have mentioned an error that occurs at the same point, or maybe they didn't take the time to realize that it was happening at the same point.

I've got an 8800gt, p35 based intel chipset, q6600, 4gb ram, vista 64 and no issues whatsoever. Odd indeed.
Reply #5 from Sins Forums Top
I totaly have a crash when i play MP. It only happens in MP and I have played about 4 SP games with no crash. For me the crash happens bout 3-5 min in to any MP game that i join or host. Sent all my info to support already and hope they can find the cause and fix it.


AMD Athlon(tm) 64 Processor 3500+, MMX, 3DNow, ~2.2GHz
1024MB RAM
NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTS


Reply #6 from Sins Forums Top
Ok, I just hosted a new game with the same friend as well as a new friend. At 30minutes into the game, both of them crashed, while me, the host, did not. I then had someone else re-host, but they both crashed and i didn't. So then I re-hosted and the new friend stayed in while i replaced my other friend with a computer, we didn't crash at the same instant we were crashing before. Instead, I crashed for the first time ever.

The crashes all consist of the game alt tabbing with a .dmp file, and on clicking ok, the game exits. I don't think I've noticed anyone else getting this. It appears to be a Multiplayer only issue. Any word from stardock/iron clad on this? My friend sent in his .dmp file, I hate that microsoft made the .dmp proprietary and that you need to load up MS dev tools to view the .dmp file, very lame. The fact that the game is exiting, we're all stable, and this seems to only happen in mp and not actually crash the system, just the game, really points to this being a Game issue. Maybe there is a out of sync and the game isn't handling it correctly?
Reply #7 from Sins Forums Top
I'm not sure. Previous sync issues would never outright crash the game, we would see a desync message on screen and that's it.

Either way, IC's pretty good at figuring out dumps by now, so they'll know what's going on :P
Reply #8 from Sins Forums Top
Did ya ever get any luck getting it to run? I havent. :(
Reply #9 from Sins Forums Top
This same thing happens to me, it's just me and my brother and for some reason i crash out while i have the far superior system.... it just makes no sense.
Reply #10 from Sins Forums Top
I get the same problem. Ive been playing an MP game today (Just bought it today) and about 3 hours in, a dmp file pops up. Im thinkin, oh its nothing it probably wont happen again, then I revert to my save. Same point as before, dmp file pops up.

Why is it doing this?  :SNIFF!: 
Reply #11 from Sins Forums Top
We have had similar issues, after receiving the crashes intermitantly and then finally, consistently at the same point, though only a couple of players actually crashed. We've sent in minidumps.

Reply #12 from Sins Forums Top
This also happens to me in SP right before I am about to launch a major late game assault (But thats probably coincidence) I do have a Nvidia so its probably that :P Just saying it can happen in SP aswell
Reply #13 from Sins Forums Top
Ah hell, ill send in mine just for the heck of it. :P
Reply #14 from Sins Forums Top
YEAH this happens also to me.(TIP IF YOU are playing with an buddy SoaSE and you crash becouse of that mini dump save, just wait for your buddy to get the next autosave so he send you his latest autosave so you can pass that bug BUT IT HAPPENS AGAIN LATZER this minidum error apears again.....)
have anyone of you reseve a answer from stardock becouse of this problem?
Reply #15 from Sins Forums Top
Actually, we all got the minidump (atleast 4 players) when a MP game crashed like 1 minute into the game yesterday.
Atleast 2 of us had Nvidia cards, the others i do not know.




This is NOT the same as the Runtime error where the "highest" setting was the problem, i lowered to high and havent got any runtime errors anymore atleast.

Reply #16 from Sins Forums Top
Oh man, i hope this problem gets addressed soon. I really like this game. :CONGRAT:

We had a crazy 3 player game going on a LAN session, 6 hours into the game with the pirate base destroyed we were moving our fleets into range to finally attack each other and boom, game freezes on both my friends systems and they get a minidump. we loaded a few more times from having saved the game periodically but they would keep crashing, i guess maybe at the same point. hosting system unaffected.

We ended up dropping the AMD system out of the game and tried to continue with just 2 systems after a new save. This time i had the host system crash and the 7950 continued
to play.
:SNIFF!:
dont get it, could the problem be with the 7950 card/drivers?
Anyone having this problem with the 102 patch?

System Specs,
Host system: Core 2 Duo E6600, 4gig ddr2 800MHz, 8800 GTX
2'nd system: Core 2 Duo E6600, 2gig ddr2 800MHz, 7950 GT
AMD system: Athlon 64 fx, 2gig ddr2 800MHz, 8800 GTX


Reply #17 from Sins Forums Top
I get this problem and I have an Radion X1600 so I dont think its Nvidia. My clan and I have noticed we get these errors after someone has fired off a superweapon when another player is playing on an older computer.
Reply #18 from Sins Forums Top
So far, from what we've been told, Nvidia hasn't been able to reproduce any of the issues reported. They're going to continue investigating, however.
Reply #19 from Sins Forums Top
i get very similar problems i am lanning with 2 other buddies both using mid range vista laptops, the one with nivdia card got the mini dump and locked us both up.. i am using a much more powerful pc with 3 ghz e6400 and 2 gigs of ram, 7600 gs, i am currently downloading older display drivers to try and fix the display driver crash, but before i get the minidump and crash the whole game and a similar point..... so this is making me very mad cause this game is great
Reply #20 from Sins Forums Top
I've never experienced a crash in live singleplayer or multiplayer games, but always get a crash at same exact points in time when viewing some replays. Other replays pose no problem. This one, for example, always crashes at 6 mins 32 seconds.

Minidumps sent to support.
Reply #21 from Sins Forums Top
I have mentioned this in a few other threads already. I had all these issues as well and installing the new Vista Service Pack 1 seems to have alleviated all my issues. Replays play back fine and Multiplayer is no problem now.

No idea what's in that Service Pack that fixes it but it did it for me. This would lead me to think the problem isn't nvidia's but more just Vista in general.
Reply #22 from Sins Forums Top
Huh, Vista SP1 is out? I need to go grab it. I've actually had this minidump issue as well now.
Reply #24 from Sins Forums Top
Completely wild guess here (:P) but the Windows Update page seems like a logical place :P
Reply #25 from Sins Forums Top
I've never experienced a crash in live singleplayer or multiplayer games, but always get a crash at same exact points in time when viewing some replays. Other replays pose no problem. This one, for example, always crashes at 6 mins 32 seconds.
End of quote


False alarm, it's an older version replay. Maybe some of these other crashes are version or mod issues too? Does the game display a warning if the host's version differs?