[X3TC] Treasure Hunt clue 4 crash DiD

[Blue Wraith]

Trying to work my way through Dead is Dead.

Does anyone have any advice for avoiding the clue 4 beacon crash in Treasure Hunt? I had a good thing going until then.

It's not the first time that's happened at the same place.

[pjknibbs]

What's the "clue 4 beacon crash"?

[Blue Wraith]

It's the crash I get almost every time when I

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fly up to the beacon that jumps you far out in the sector in Akela's Beacon in clue 4 of the Treasure Hunt plot. It mentions my jump drive has problems, but instead of me jumping, my game crashes.

It's about the only place my game consistently crashes, so I figured others had seen this as well. (Well, it also inconsistently crashes periodically, but I've been able to mostly solve that by rebooting before every session and not using Pause.)

[ancienthighway]

That sounds more like a problem with your computer.

[Blue Wraith]

I doubt it. Plays other games just fine. E.g. never had FarCry 3 crash that I recall. Or Civ 5. Or Portal 1/2. Or ... etc. That and in other games, I don't have to do things like autopilot idle to avoid crashing into a station on undock.

[ancienthighway]

You have a site admin that's been on these boards for 12 years and he had to ask what the beacon crash is. I've been around 7 years and never heard of it. You can search the postings and if you find any one else having the problem it would be a surprise to me.

You're having a unique problem that appears to be not related to the game. Or perhaps you found a unique configuration of your game that causes the problem. Are you modded? Does the problem happen in vanilla? If you used the PlugIn Manager to install your mods, you can disable them without losing your saves and check it out, then enable mods to get back to what you have.

[hisazul]

I also never heard of that issue. If you got a steam version verify game files. And disable any scripts you are running that can be disabled without borking up the game.

The only 100% guaranteed crash that I know of is that blowing up HUB results in a crash if gates are aligned. Other then that... 2000 station big plex IS can cause enough strain to crash the game... if you can stomach 1 fps, and property menu at that point also tends to implode. But that's engine limitation.

Try starting normal game and script/save editing your way to that specific point and checking if you crash or not. If you do save crash logs and post it at tech forum or at least your save so people can take a look and see if its just save specific or mod specific or something wrong with your game or pc. With DiD... it's hard to solve problem since you lose your save if you crash or die. Anyway... it's a bit of a wrong place to post this.

Also other games have absolutely nothing to do with this. I don't care how much Skyrim is praised heck I'll even admit that its a "decent" rpg but its a trashy TES game thats nothing more then a haistily slapped bunch of pretty snow textures and trees with more bugs then any game should ever have. And bethesda in past 10 years haven't exactly even tried to patch their games they just release it and let others fix it. 15 years later they still can never remember that your own summons shouldn't be spell absorbed by yourself... 13 years ago was the last time they even bothered to patch it now they don't even try.
And linear FPS games tend to be either mostly bug free or they are just flat out bad. Or made by ea/activision...
Farcry 3 is optimized like crap... because its Ubisoft and all they ever make are console nonsense they couldn't optimize a PC game even if someone pointed a gun to their head and told them either do it or your brains will decorate the wall. Good game... but compared to something properly optimized it's a sad joke.

If your HD hasn't been defragged in past 10 years... that could lead to all kinds of funny things and your game files would be completely fine. A bad sector somewhere in middle of your save... could cause corruption exactly when something saves specific number of bites to overlap it in some wrong way. Wonky settings in audio splitters(actually very much relevant to X3 with later OS... AP has serious sound issues if you let good spliters deal with mp3 or bunch of other nonsense can happen if there are non standard behavior with audio decoding) or bizzare voltage settings on gpu... factory set timings on ram that make less sense then tits on a goat. There are so many things that can cause weird behavior.

[Blue Wraith]

Not modded, but I am overtuning my ship. I'm going to try making sure I am completely still when the beacon jumps me and see if that helps. I was going about 1000 m/s when it tried to jump me and crashed.

[hisazul]

Not modded, but I am overtuning my ship. I'm going to try making sure I am completely still when the beacon jumps me and see if that helps. I was going about 1000 m/s when it tried to jump me and crashed.

Speed shouldn't cause issues, you get loaded into map at 0 speed and then moved away from any collision boxes. Problem could be some random placement of something like asteroid or station or whatever that overlaps with with jump but that's highly unlikely.

Still I'd highly recommend verifying your files, checking if your hd is not too fragmented. And if possible(enough patience) checking if this happens in vanilla so you can provide save/crash log etc.

[Blue Wraith]

It is a vanilla Dead is Dead game.

[hisazul]

It is a vanilla Dead is Dead game.

What I meant is trying it in vanilla not DiD. So you don't lose your DiD save if you crash and you can experiment and try figuring out whats causing it. Plus you could fix up your save and force your progress to that point or there's probably a script that will let you complete plots/unlock plots of your choice. Well at least I definetly recall there was a script that finished plots and gave you rewards from them... shouldn't be too hard to modify it to leave treasure hunt alone and finish the rest.

[Blue Wraith]

Got ya, yeah Treasure Hunt is usually the second plot I do, after the Goner plot, and I start the Hub plot, of course.

I did a pilot run through before I started trying DiD again, and it crashed in the same place there, but went through the second time. I should have saved before hand, but didn't think about.

I did verify game cache, and it was successful.

Sorry, I didn't mean to start a troubleshooting session. With the consistency it happens to me, I figured there was a known work-around like using autopilot idle to avoid an undock death. Or exiting Steam to make sure the save game gets synced before re-opening TC.

[Nanook]

Since it appears to be a problem unique to your game/system, we can better help you if you start a thread in the Tech Support forum, supplying the information listed in the sticky at the top of that forum. Your problem has all the signs of being a codec or driver issue of some sort. After all these years, I highly doubt that you've found a unique bug in the game itself.

[Alan Phipps]

I agree totally with the advice Nanook gives above but you will need to register your X3TC game with these forums first. The two sentences that follow tell me that you have a serious issue with your system, OS, devices/drivers or game installation:

".. It's about the only place my game consistently crashes, so I figured others had seen this as well. (Well, it also inconsistently crashes periodically, but I've been able to mostly solve that by rebooting before every session and not using Pause.)"

Since you have crashes (CTDs), don't forget to include any relevant X3TC error messages from Event Viewer in your support thread.