City of Heroes: Live Forum Archive

Ultra graphics causes Ouroboros to crash.

Dark_Respite

By Dark_Respite,
Posted on: 2010-11-10 24:53 in ALL ACCESS Gameplay Technical Issues Bugs

 

Posted

When I try to access any mission in Ouroboros while my graphics quality is set to "Ultra", the game freezes. There is no crash dialog, and I can't use Ctrl+Esc or Alt+Tab to switch tasks. The only way out is by hitting Ctrl+Alt+Del and using the Task Manager to kill the program. With my graphics quality set to Minimum, everything works fine.

Here's a video of the problem: http://bit.ly/aieiuL

OS: Windows 7 64-bit
Video card: Radeon HD 5770
Graphic drivers: 10.10 (latest version; I did a clean reinstall to make sure they were OK)

www.SaveCOH.com: Calls to Action and Events Calendar
This is what 3700 heroes in a single zone looks like.
Thanks to @EnsonsDeath for the GVE code that made me VIP again!

 

Posted

I watched your video, and I admit it's quite strange, but I don't encounter the same issues at all. Normally, I have Customized settings (that include Ultra), but for the purpose of this thread, I turned off the Advanced Settings and made sure the slider was exactly on "Ultra" like you had in the video.

I used a Villain for this test, just so I was using the same version of Ouroboros that you were. I even selected the same missions you did, and the info loaded just fine.

My info for comparison:
OS: Windows XP Pro SP3 32-bit
Video card: Radeon HD 5770
Graphic drivers: 10.8 (will upgrade driver now and test again)

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Master-Blade View Post
Graphic drivers: 10.8 (will upgrade driver now and test again)
After a quick update to 10.10, I logged back into the same character and made sure the Video settings were still set on "Ultra". I once again browsed the Ouroboros missions without any issues.

My question for you, is does your Contact list load correctly while viewing Ultra mode? Selecting an arc is the point where the Contact's image is displayed. As I'm sure you know, that image is actually a 3d rendering of the contact standing in a separate 3d environment. I'm wondering if that's where the real issue is coming from. It still doesn't explain why it happens, but it would get us closer to the underlying cause.


On a completely unrelated note, I thought it was cool that there was an Advertisement for Going Rogue displayed while i was installing the new driver, so I took a screenshot. lol

Click for enlarged image

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by je_saist View Post
Which driver set Leo?

There's 10.10, 10.10a, 10.10b, and 10.10c so far:

http://support.amd.com/us/kbarticles...10cHotfix.aspx
"Plain" 10.10 apparently, I downloaded 10-10_vista64_win7_64_dd_ccc_enu.exe

I'm downloading the hotfix to see if that helps. Geesh, the regular drivers are 77MB and the "hotfix" is 118MB?

www.SaveCOH.com: Calls to Action and Events Calendar
This is what 3700 heroes in a single zone looks like.
Thanks to @EnsonsDeath for the GVE code that made me VIP again!

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Master-Blade View Post
After a quick update, I logged back into the same character and made sure the Video settings were still set on "Ultra". I once again browsed the Ouroboros missions without any issues.
I'm not surprised; the way graphic drivers work in WinXP-32 and Win7-64 is very different. Thanks for testing!

www.SaveCOH.com: Calls to Action and Events Calendar
This is what 3700 heroes in a single zone looks like.
Thanks to @EnsonsDeath for the GVE code that made me VIP again!

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Master-Blade View Post
My question for you, is does your Contact list load correctly while viewing Ultra mode? Selecting an arc is the point where the Contact's image is displayed. As I'm sure you know, that image is actually a 3d rendering of the contact standing in a separate 3d environment. I'm wondering if that's where the real issue is coming from. It still doesn't explain why it happens, but it would get us closer to the underlying cause.
Actually, THIS is something I've been having a repeated problem with ever since I set all my graphics to Ultra Mode. Anything that causes a contact picture or graphic to appear in the dialogue box (such as opening the 5 costume slots, whether by attempting to change costumes or selecting one for the Tailor), the game either immediately crashes (alt-tabbing shows the CoH error message) or locks the computer up completely.

I'm on Windows XP, latest patches, and a Radeon 5850 Black Edition, 10.10 patch.

Michelle
aka
Samuraiko/Dark_Respite

Dark_Respite's Farewell Video: "One Last Day"
THE COURSE OF SUPERHERO ROMANCE CONTINUES!
Book I: A Tale of Nerd Flirting! ~*~ Book II: Courtship and Crime Fighting - Chap Nine live!
MA Arcs - 3430: Hell Hath No Fury / 3515: Positron Gets Some / 6600: Dyne of the Times / 351572: For All the Wrong Reasons
378944: Too Clever by Half / 459581: Kill or Cure / 551680: Clerical Errors (NEW!)

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Leandro View Post
"Plain" 10.10 apparently, I downloaded 10-10_vista64_win7_64_dd_ccc_enu.exe

I'm downloading the hotfix to see if that helps. Geesh, the regular drivers are 77MB and the "hotfix" is 118MB?
The hot-fix driver releases contains Avivo and Hydravision, stuff that's normally listed as an optional download: http://sites.amd.com/us/game/downloa...win7-32.aspx#3

 

Posted

I am having the same problem on Ouro... Ultra making it crashes...

** Guardian�s Crazy Catgirl **
************* 22 XxX 10 *************

Yes. I can get lost on a straight-line map.

 

Posted

Thanks Father X-Mas...

Downloading it.... with my connection speed it will be here before I finish typing this...
Ok... done... downloaded.

** Guardian�s Crazy Catgirl **
************* 22 XxX 10 *************

Yes. I can get lost on a straight-line map.

 

Posted

But no hotfix for Windows XP? (Or is my only solution to drop my resolution back down to something else?)

Michelle
aka
Samuraiko/Dark_Respite

Dark_Respite's Farewell Video: "One Last Day"
THE COURSE OF SUPERHERO ROMANCE CONTINUES!
Book I: A Tale of Nerd Flirting! ~*~ Book II: Courtship and Crime Fighting - Chap Nine live!
MA Arcs - 3430: Hell Hath No Fury / 3515: Positron Gets Some / 6600: Dyne of the Times / 351572: For All the Wrong Reasons
378944: Too Clever by Half / 459581: Kill or Cure / 551680: Clerical Errors (NEW!)

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Leandro View Post
I hate you.

I'm downloading it now, it'll take about an hour.
Hang on a second here. Are you on dial up Leandro? I know some of the players are but I've forgotten who. Maybe this is a data bottleneck crash. The same sort of thing that causes (or at least caused) all sorts of problems for dial up users in Dark Astoria.

Does anybody else who is experiencing this have a slow connection?

It could be that ATI handles the video information differently from Nvidia. In other words something that only lags the Nvidia cards on slow connections causes the ATI cards to freeze up when they don't get the data they were told they are about to get.

Just guessing since I haven't worked with an ATI card since the all-in-wonder.

Don't count your weasels before they pop dink!

 

Posted

Hey, something that folks might want to try (since this seems to have worked for me):

I tried disabling the Geometry Buffers to see if that would resolve the issue for me (while leaving everything else maxed out in Ultra Mode), and voila, no more problems. Contact windows, dialogue boxes, tailor stuff, all of it now works. If you're running into the same problem, give it a go and see what happens.

Michelle
aka
Samuraiko/Dark_Respite

Dark_Respite's Farewell Video: "One Last Day"
THE COURSE OF SUPERHERO ROMANCE CONTINUES!
Book I: A Tale of Nerd Flirting! ~*~ Book II: Courtship and Crime Fighting - Chap Nine live!
MA Arcs - 3430: Hell Hath No Fury / 3515: Positron Gets Some / 6600: Dyne of the Times / 351572: For All the Wrong Reasons
378944: Too Clever by Half / 459581: Kill or Cure / 551680: Clerical Errors (NEW!)

 

Posted

Further developments.... It finally happened to me!

I was on a fresh client, logged onto a Praetorian-gone-Villain (lvl 28) who was in Ouro. I zoned in to Sharkhead. I was about to check on my tips, so I opened the Contacts tab... As the window was opening, CoH stalled. Not only that, but as Leandro encountered, I couldn't Alt-Tab out to anything else either. I couldn't even Control-Alt-Delete to kill the process. I ended up getting an error message from ATI saying something about VPU Recovery errors. I couldn't read the whole thing because the screen eventually just turned black and I had to hard-reset my whole system.

I tried to take a picture of the Contacts window loading and/or the ATI error message, but since I had to reset my system, I wasn't able to save anything. It's hard to describe. The window wasn't even it's full size yet, and it definitely crashed when the contact icons loaded because only the first contact image had appeared. lol

It's like the mini-environments simply refused to load to made the rest of the system hang.

After rebooting the system and logging in, I was surprised to see the contacts window was already open. I didn't realize window status would persist like that, but anyway.. It seems to be working just fine now. I'll head to Ouro so I can try to repeat the exact steps to see if it happens again.

In the meantime, here were my graphics options when it happened:
My bar was set to Ultra from the last time I tested this, but I since made a few modifications.
I turned on Advanced Settings.
Turned Occlusion down to "High Performance"
Turned World Detail to 200%.
Turned off DoF.
I didn't get a chance to fine-tune anything else past that yet.

Edit:
After bringing the same character back to Ouro and logging off/rebooting the system and opening a fresh client again, I zoned to Sharkhead and opened the Contacts tab again... It happened AGAIN!

This time, about 10 seconds went by and it refreshed the screen with the text all jumbled around and missing, then refreshed to a bunch of nasty colors on the screen, then I got the ATI error again:

Quote:
VPU Recover has reset your graphics accelerator as it was no longer responding to graphics driver commands.
I had to reset the whole system again. Blah!

Edit2:
After rebooting again and logging back in, the Contacts window was already open again, and I watched each contact image slowly load from top to bottom. It was quite strange.

I also closed the window and went back to Ouro and tried it again on another fresh client. This time I didn't rezone. Clicking on Contacts as soon as I logged in triggered the freeze again, forcing another hard reset.

The really strange part is I tried it yet one more time, but on another character this time. I found any random toon on my list that was already in Ouro. It happened to be a lvl 32 PB. The window opened just fine.

I went on to try it again. I wondered if maybe this problem was isolated to Praetorians, so I logged into a Praetorian who was still in Praetoria. She only has 2 active contacts, but there was a 2 second hesitation when it loaded. That seems a it odd to me.

Edit3:
Worse news... I logged onto the first toon again and this time it instantly froze when the Contact window automatically loaded. It seems I might have to wait about 20 minutes for it to reset the serverside status so I can log into the toon again? I guess I'll have to lower my preferences on a different toon so I can relog back to that toon.lol

Anybody else have more info? This is driving me nuts now. lol