This the oldest game I play.
By
Chad Gulzow-Man,
Posted on: 2012-06-17 04:00 in ALL ACCESS Gameplay Technical Issues Bugs
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Originally Posted by New Dawn
How comes that this, the oldest game I play happens to give me the most crashes?
I can't even fly through a zone on a barren server on mediocre graphics sometimes and yet I can bugger off and log into another game such as: I know things can be "it must be ya poot poot" but I just do not understand the "lack of memory" business when some large packet gets sent whilst I am trying to play the game. I know things could be me, so this is not a dig or pop or anything. I am hardly the most poot poot literate person kicking about. |
As there are a number of people who're operating the game without your level of incident repetition, likely the issue is with you or with your network connection.
Clicking on the linked image above will take you off the City of Heroes site. However, the guides will be linked back here.
Its worth saying that despite the CoH client running on more or less anything (I'm even able to run it on my Samsung NC110 netbook!), it's never been the best optimised piece of software ever written imo. On the other hand, I've never experienced it crash particularly frequently, so the issue is more likely to be local.
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Thats the thing, if it is with me and my network then why dont I crash on my other games?|
Originally Posted by Hyperstrike
As there are a number of people who're operating the game without your level of incident repetition, likely the issue is with you or with your network connection.
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They are newer games, potentially more demanding I would of thought.
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Maybe the other games have been optimized to use less memory? I haven't tried it lately, but when Champions came out, I tried it and it was so choppy for me I couldn't play it. I had a good 5-10 second delay of hitting jump and actually jumping. Yet...CoH plays perfectly fine (other than my internet giving it problems every now and again, but that's an ISP problem).
The help staff helped me when I came back and was having some problems with my client freezing on my desktop (not on my laptop though). It was something with my video card not being compatible at the time when it updated its software. I reverted back to an older version for a while. I recently went back to a new one and it is now fine. Try shooting a request to them and seeing if they can do anything to remedy the situation.
Good luck!
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First guess is that those newer games are probably DirectX based, while CoH is OpenGL based... making it an issue with not your hardware, but the specific drivers your video card is using.|
Originally Posted by New Dawn
Thats the thing, if it is with me and my network then why dont I crash on my other games?
They are newer games, potentially more demanding I would of thought. |
That said, everyone else has been right... CoH is by no means optimized the way an OpenGL game from a larger studio (like Diablo III) would be. A lot of the groundwork for the game was hacked together by people who had little idea what they were doing and no care whatsoever for the programmers who would follow behind them. (Supergroup Bases, for example, are a mess of spaghetti code that was not commented... that's a big reason that bases haven't gotten much added in the way of functionality over the last 6 years.)
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Originally Posted by Nethergoat
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What do all those other games have in common that CoH doesn't share in?|
Originally Posted by New Dawn
Thats the thing, if it is with me and my network then why dont I crash on my other games?
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DirectX.
CoH is an old, somewhat apathetically optimized OpenGL game. The portions of driver code used to run the game are different and in some cases, not as heavily optimized.
It stresses your system differently than a DirectX game does.
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| They are newer games, potentially more demanding I would of thought. |
DX has a lot of nice little hacks and "performance optimizations" that are essentially low level system calls that bypass certain subsystems for greater performance.
OGL pretty much forces you to use the OGL method of rendering. This way OGL, nominally, maintains platform neutrality. Plus, OGL is extensible. If you don't have a function in OGL that does what you need it to do, you can write yourself a module that does and tack the calls on.
Clicking on the linked image above will take you off the City of Heroes site. However, the guides will be linked back here.
The only time I've had problems was on a REALLY old computer I had back in the early days- it had trouble loading stuff & every map change was a heroic struggle against being mapserved. That went away when I got some better hardware.
And a few years back I had some graphics issues with a Radeon card, which I resolved by switching back to GeForce.
My guess, like some other folks here, would be a driver issue with Open GL.
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CoH Helper and Hijack this reports would be lovely, and we can start to find out how to help you better, Dawn. There's a sticky at the top to show you how to do that. Post the results in here.
As to your question, quite simply, as has been said, others aren't having the issue. I personally *never* have this issue, and haven't had anything like it in... oh... 4 years now? Of playing Co*. It just works for me. The few times were when I was experimenting with page files or lack thereof, or memory, or... other reason that I wouldn't normally find myself doing.
Co* is quite simply a computer killer. If it doesn't run on your computer, it is not worthy in some way. Memory, graphics, cpu, software bloat... whatever the reason, the computer on your end is the problem. Co* does that to computers. The other games you mention are newer coded game platforms, and most likely also optimized to use lesser components than Co* is. Like integrated graphics... *shudders*. But they are less stringent on what they will and won't run on. Co* is more perfectionist than they'd like to admit it is.
The CoH helper and Hijack This will help us figure out what is needed to get your computer to 'like' Co* again. Otherwise, we simply can't help, and you'll be forced to continue to suffer, unfortunately.
Don't suffer. Help us help you. 
Co* is awesome, and you should totally keep playing it. 
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IIRC, Dawn's posted their HJT and COHH logs before with nothing usable out of them.
But, then, I've seen so darn many in the last couple years I could simply be remembering someone else...
Now what was my name again...
What? Did I say something?
Clicking on the linked image above will take you off the City of Heroes site. However, the guides will be linked back here.
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You're in the Forum Cartel therefore you don't exist and you did not say anything.
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Originally Posted by Hyperstrike
Now what was my name again...
What? Did I say something? |
It's probably just me, but I still play games now and then that were made before Windows XP was in the planning stages and they run fine (when I'm using an x86 compatible OS)...just sayin :-p
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Originally Posted by New Dawn
Thats the thing, if it is with me and my network then why dont I crash on my other games?
They are newer games, potentially more demanding I would of thought. |
Also the game has been updated to take advantage of more modern hardware - generally by increasing the level of detail/effects that are displayed. The game engine is still basically the same as when it was launched but the graphics engine is only a couple of years old and so is comparable if not newer than those used in the games you are comparing it with. However this has been done as an upgrade to the old engine such that it will continue to work on lower settings on older hardware. A full rewrite with an increase in minimum specs and especially if it involved changing to a DirectX architecture would no doubt have given better performance and stability but would have meant that a sizable amount of the playerbase may not have been able to continue to play.
This can be why it can be easier to produce a completely new game than to update an existing one.
Unfortunately OpenGL support from NVidia/AMD is nowhere near as high as DirectX generally because most games use DirectX which in turn is generally because there is better support. Its a vicious circle.
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Because DirectX is M$FT's baby perhaps?
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Originally Posted by Gaia
Unfortunately OpenGL support from NVidia/AMD is nowhere near as high as DirectX generally because most games use DirectX which in turn is generally because there is better support. Its a vicious circle.
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How comes that this, the oldest game I play happens to give me the most crashes?
I can't even fly through a zone on a barren server on mediocre graphics sometimes and yet I can bugger off and log into another game such as:
I know things can be "it must be ya poot poot" but I just do not understand the "lack of memory" business when some large packet gets sent whilst I am trying to play the game.
I know things could be me, so this is not a dig or pop or anything. I am hardly the most poot poot literate person kicking about.
He will honor his words; he will definitely carry out his actions. What he promises he will fulfill. He does not care about his bodily self, putting his life and death aside to come forward for another's troubled besiegement. He does not boast about his ability, or shamelessly extol his own virtues. - Sima Qian.