Random but persistent crash when targeting an object.

[Eoinoc]

Hello,

I'm experiencing an annoying game crash which appears to be completely at random but is persistent enough (approx. every half hour) to be rendering the game almost unplayable .

Every other aspect of the game seems to be working correctly, I'm running patch 1.2 and am experiencing no sound problems and performance is respectable. However at random times when I target an object the game crashes back to windows.

The crash appears to be random, an object selected during one play session works perfectly while in another it'll crash as soon as targeting the object. The crash is usually instant, however at least one I did hear the computer say the first word of the name, i.e. "Argon .." and then crash. I don't know if thats relevent.

The crash seems to occur when selecting a less common object such as a station or large ship (such as a titan) rather than small fighters. But perhaps that has just been a coincidence so far..

I don't believe I have ram problems because I have run a full memtext86+ (all except the 3 hour test), and I have tried almost all of the suggested sound problem solutions including rolling media player back to v9. I have also fully reinstalled the game & patch. All to no avail.

If there is any more info I can provide just ask, I am also curious is anyone else suffering from the problem.

[CBJ]

The crash is usually instant, however at least one I did hear the computer say the first word of the name, i.e. "Argon .." and then crash. I don't know if thats relevent.

Yes, quite possibly. The common factor here is that when you target something there is speech. This probably means that, despite the lack of other sound problems, you still have an audio codec issue. At the risk of making otherwise stable sound less stable, I suggest you go through the steps in the FAQ for dealing with missing speech and see if replacing or adjusting the codecs helps.

[Eoinoc]

As I memtioned I have already tried most of what that FAQ suggests, but I'll recheck again to be sure.

Is there anyway of turning item description speech off? If there is no such option could one be considered for the 1.3 patch? It actually gets quite annoying after a while anyway and there are enough visual descriptions of what you select to make the much slower audio one unnecessary.

I realise you can turn voice in general down to 0%, but I don't know what other aspects of the game that would affect (if any). And in addition even at 0% the speech is still present (though only audible with the speaker volume up very high). An option to turn speech off would be a very quick way to identify if it is the cause of my crash problem.

Kind regards, Eoin.

[CBJ]

One possible way of checking whether the sound is the problem is to disable or remove your sound hardware entirely and try it like that. If it still crashes then the problem is elsewhere; if not then you know what to concentrate on.

[Hob Anagerik]

I have started a thread with what sounds like exactly the same problem. But what I have found is that it only seems to happen when selecting the target with the mouse. I can use the keys to cycle targets without any difficulties but each and every single time it has instantly CTD'd on me it was when I clicked on something, normally a station I wanted to dock with.

[lankspeed]

I have started a thread with what sounds like exactly the same problem. But what I have found is that it only seems to happen when selecting the target with the mouse. I can use the keys to cycle targets without any difficulties but each and every single time it has instantly CTD'd on me it was when I clicked on something, normally a station I wanted to dock with.

Sorry for the full quote but need to get this straight, I am having this exact same fault. It is very annoyng as i am now at the satge of buying my 1st nova. HELP...

Regards Lankspeed.

[AB14]

I have this problem to- did the priority change codec thing as described on the FAQs did help when passing through a gate but still crash like crazy with even worse results- reboots my pc complete with a chdisk scan! I can be just flying along without touching anything or doing anything sound related.

[CBJ]

If it is rebooting then that sounds like a rather more serious PC problem. If your PC reboots then that is commonly a sign of power supply problems or overheating. Even if the PC runs other games, it may be that X³ is simply putting more load on the system and highlighting a problem that doesn't arise elsewhere.

[markkram95]

If it is rebooting then that sounds like a rather more serious PC problem. If your PC reboots then that is commonly a sign of power supply problems or overheating. Even if the PC runs other games, it may be that X³ is simply putting more load on the system and highlighting a problem that doesn't arise elsewhere.

I think that is highly unlikely as my system is quite new and I have the same problem! Tried it on another PC I have and same result, so I doubt this the problem! It may be for some, but having read the posts A LOT of people would need to have faulty PSUs or stressed hardware for this magnitude of a problem.

[Eoinoc]

I tried the suggestion to disable my audio hardware (Onboard Creative provided by an Nvidia Nforce 4) and it seemed to work . Unfortunatly the game isn't very playable without any sound.

However now that the problem does seem to be audio related I will have to retry everything the FAQ suggests (except a complete reinstall of windows which just isn't possible).

Hob Anagerik made an excellent point though, the problem does indeed only occur when selecting the target with the mouse. This must suggest that there is a bug somewhere with the game and its not exclusively an audio codec problem. Perhaps the bug can be narrowed down to a difference between selecting with a mouse and using keys to cycle targets?

In addition I would still like to see a way of turning item description speech off.

[CBJ]

I think that is highly unlikely as my system is quite new and I have the same problem!

Please do not assume that the answers given to someone else automatically apply to you. When a DirectX game crashes there are only 3 things that generally happen (CTD, freeze or reboot) but there are a myriad of possible reasons these can occur, both within and external the game itself.

To pick up on one point you make, just because your system is quite new does not make it immune from power supply or overheating problems. Many systems are sold with inadequate or insufficiently stable power supplies, not to mention the possibility of hardware faults.

To be clear, since people seem to insist that I always blame hardware, I am not saying that all problems are caused by faulty hardware. What I am saying is that these causes need to be eliminated, both for the benefit of the player who wants to get playing and for the benefit of those chasing up the problems so that time is not wasted on problems that may or may not exist.

[B0rG]

2 CBJ:
I have exactly the same problem. I also offer my help to see the problem gets solved, as it is now stopping me from advanced further. I just bought the second system just to play X3, and I can ghost one OS to another pretty quickly (ha-ha 30 seconds to be exact . So if there is anything I can do to help to solve this and other bugs in the game that I come across don't hesitate to contact me. It looks like my kind of game, and I like to see it get better.

Can you also post a guideline for a bug report in your place, or a template, or whatever you call it, so we don't feel like complete idiots writing essays on the problems' we're having.

THE PROBLEM:
It started as I couldn't fire a missile - every missile lead to desktop (on the older version of drivers I think 78.01 - 05), on the newer 81.* just death - only reset will bring the system back.

Finally I nailed the problem to the second little monitor (on the right) following the missile. Switching it off I was able to play for another few days (3 - 4 hours a day) now even that does not help.

Now the game crashes every time I select something as a target with the HUD on. With the HUD off it's ok, but you can't do much without it... Looks like the second litte monitor is to blame.

What's chnaged in that time:
I got Automated Trader - prolly additinal processor load,
Got a few factories loaded in Mamonth, but not deployed yet - shouldn't make any diff.
Expored sectors in the Spring Of Hope area - large but empty sectors, though that was there the problem started to escalate.
Ah, yeah, I also switched from Mako to the Free Split Mamba found in sector (you know which , probs actually started since mamba.

Now every time I try to select the target I'm either at desktop or crashed dependent on drivers. The prob is I can't switch off the left little monitor, unless I have something selected, but as soon as I select something I'm crashed. How to find the option of switching off the left little monitor?

Tech stuff - the system is stable allright - I was able to play for about 12 hours a day for two days without the crashes - so as far as game concern the hardware is sound. Though is rather new

MB: ASUS 955X P5WD2
Intel P4 3.2
Gainward GeForce 7800GTX Golden Sample
2 Gigs cheap Corsair RAM (not too fast)
Sound Blaster Live! (old reliable one - played X2 for hours).

Not overclocked or anything, sys temp is withing acceptable parameters (checked the NVidia, and Intel docs).

Windows XP SP1, SP2 - problem happens on both of them. Fresh install - no difference, different Intel chipset drivers -no diff, sound on/off no diff, in fact if I turn the sound off the save game won't load at all.

Install is clean, all non essencial services are turned off. Nothing is running except Satek drivers, MS Intellipoint and Intellitype, but I was able to play with those for hours.

I can send the saves, or you can tell me how to get debug info - I can analyse the difference myself (hell, that's what I'm doing everyday). Also if there is any way to check the validity of save files (if there's any) I would like to know that as well. That's because some of the older saves are loading and running allright

Anyway please consider my offer to help.
I also think a lot of people from russian community would like to help in getting bugs fixed.

[Scoob]

I'm getting the same problem where clicking on a target can cause the game to CTD. I'd be surprised if it was a codec issue as the game was working well for ages, it's only recently that it's started doing this.

It did do it once before but I reverted to a much older save and everything was fine for many hours, but it's started playing up again.

The strange thing is I played for a while, got the CTD, loaded an earlier save, but while I'd been able to mouse-target happily before and for some after making that save re-loading game meant that mouse-targeting made the game crash right away.

This is very weird indeed. I think some sort of corruption is occuring in my saved games, making things more unstable over time. Incidentally both times I started to get problems like this was after I'd been capturing in Split Fire, probably just a co-incidence.

Scoob.

[Scoob]

I've done some more checking and this problem appear to be 100% tied in to the HUD.

Basically, with the HUD ON I mouse-target a ship, the game CTDs. If I menu-target by bringing up the sector map and selecting a ship it CTDs. However, if I turn the HUD OFF and menu-target it's just fine, but if I turn the HUD back on at this point it instantly CTDs. Basically anything that causes the mini-monitor to display something it seems. Incidentally the monitor doesn't appear before the game crashes, I get the speach identifying what I've targeted then CTD.

It's most frustrating as ALL of my previous saves appear to exhibit this trait to a lesser degree as I go back. It's always stuff that triggers a change in the mini-monitor of some sort that causes a problem. And now it's got worse just bringing up a mini-monitor will CTD the game.

I really haven't got a clue why this could be happening, the system simply hasn't changed since I installed X3, in fact that's all that machines been used for lately!

I really hope someone can shine some light on this problem I and so many others appear to be experiencing.

For the record X2 never crashed that I can recal and I really played that to death - actually only stopped playing it regularly the week before X3 came out.

If someone else would like to try my saves and me theirs it would be an interesting experiment.

Scoob.

[B0rG]

Have you figured out how to switch the HUD monitor off?

I think it's only possible to minimise it... try to go back to my earlier saves.

[mac.wheeler]

@Borg

That is EXACTLY what has happened to me, it started with missiles and slowly got worse, then eventually I couldn't target a single thing without a CTD. Even my 2 day old saves were doing it. This was after some 60 odd hours of play so I was a bit upset

I was forced to start a new game eventually (well I fancied trying xtreme mode anyway) as I could find no way to fix it.

The crash information when you CTD, if you check the info I bet it's a DirectX error, mine was, I found no way to fix it.

[tass_bur]

@Borg

That is EXACTLY what has happened to me, it started with missiles and slowly got worse, then eventually I couldn't target a single thing without a CTD. Even my 2 day old saves were doing it. This was after some 60 odd hours of play so I was a bit upset

I was forced to start a new game eventually (well I fancied trying xtreme mode anyway) as I could find no way to fix it.

The crash information when you CTD, if you check the info I bet it's a DirectX error, mine was, I found no way to fix it.

So you played for a long time without problems and then all of your save games started crashing? ...same problem as me.....but does a new game help it? ....i played for 3 game days without problems so its not just something i can test i would really feel wasted time if i started a new game and then after a lot of days its all starts again

[mac.wheeler]

Well the new game is working fine.

But I just know this will come back to haunt me again before I get very far.

I actually seriously considered returning the game for a refund when this happened, I had a few days off work so played to the max and now the saves are crashing. I don't usually let anything waste this much of my time but hey, I loved X2 and am willing to give X3 the benefit of the doubt for now.

[tass_bur]

The only thing im hoping for is that Egosoft will fix this issue at the next patch....I love the x games since x-btf and im not giving up this easy...but it serious depressing not being able to play a game like this.

[mac.wheeler]

I just read what CBJ said about sound so I switched over to my other soundcard in the PC (I use 2 soundcards, one for the speakers and the other for my teamspeak headset).

They are both completely different soundcards and the game still crashes when I target something with either of them, if it's a sound problem it is not hardware specific.