32 replies to this topic

[ThetaOrion]

ONE: I am one of those who always gets a CTD five or ten minutes into the game if I run the game from the AutoMenu. To prevent those CTD's, I have to reboot with the WA CD in the drive, and then run the game from the START menu. If I boot up with the drive empty, then insert the CD, get the AutoRun Menu on the desktop, and Play from that, then about 5 to 10 minutes into any game, I get a Crash to Desktop on almost every map. The AutoRun Menu being resident on the desktop seems to cause CTD's for me on every map. Otherwise, if I boot up with the CD in the drive, and use the start menu, that repetitious CTD is gone.

TWO:
On the Cliffs of Carcythe Map with Plain Vanilla AI, I experienced some lag and then an occasional CTD preceded by skipping sound. It's been a long while, but I think the Eldar were involved.

THREE:
Around 1.65 Beta 2, or somewhere there on the Castle Assault Map, I would teleport an Eldar Bonesinger into the NorthEast corner of the map and build a Webway Gate and build a secondary Base there. About one time out of ten, when transporting something through the Webway Gate, I would get a CTD. It didn't happen every time, because I put a lot of things through the Webway Gate into the NorthEast with no problem or incident. Like I said, I built a whole secondary base there, or I teleported my inner base there when it was being overrun on the inside. I had a replay there where I won as the Eldar, and I won by teleporting my whole inner base outside, so I didn't have a CTD that time. But, the CTD seems to come when I have a FarSeer attached to some squad and I put the whole thing through the Webway Gate, but it doesn't seem to happen every time.

FOUR: As far as memory serves, I didn't have a single CTD with Beta 3 or Beta 4, but I always start my machine with the WA CD in the drive, and it has been a very long time since I have played as the Eldar.

--

GOING FORWARD, others will have to report what they are seeing. You can be sure that if I have a CTD, I will report it.

Edited by ThetaOrion, 25 January 2006 - 10:05 PM.

[Excedrin]

Since I've been having CTD with the Rebirth AI, I started going thru and disabling functionality.

So far I've tried:
disable jumping troops (including bonesingers)
disable all Eldar specific tactics
change all unitstats ratings to 1, including weapon effectiveness (I thought this might be related since I'm automatically generating unitstats)

So, this morning I ran a 7 way all Eldar FFA (QS, fast speed, insane AI) with 1.6b4 and WA. It ran for something like 56 minutes without crashing or having any errors. Just for comparison, the same thing with my hacked up Rebirth AI (based on the last released DoW Skirmish afaik...) crashes in about 10 minutes (+/- ~2 minutes).

ThetaOrion, if you have time, please try a large Eldar AI FFA.

[LarkinVB]

I cases of CTD which are hard to find I suggest making use of profile_start() and profile_end(). Log them to file, add a few more and you can nail down the function which is responsible.

[ThetaOrion]

ThetaOrion, if you have time, please try a large Eldar AI FFA.

I tried a medium FFA with Eldar. I played as Chaos, and I had Eldar on teams 2, 3, 4 on the Mountain Trails Map.

The Eldar are pretty good, or they were on that map. The one faction of Eldar on the far side of the map built three of their Strongholds, at least.

Of course, the reason you wanted me to try was to see if I would get a CTD. Well, there was no crash to desktop. And it was a very long game, like around 2 1/2 hours of real time or 88 minutes of game clock time. No CTD from the three different factions of the Eldar AI. I even have a replay.

So, that probably means that I will have to play as the Eldar and transport my Eldar troops through the Webway Gates if hoping to duplicate my CTD's with the Eldar. Or maybe a much larger map with 7 different factions of Eldar. But, I was wanting it to be a short game, however it didn't work out that way.

The only thing wonky was that none of the Beta 4 Eldar AI built an Avatar, though the last faction should have had plenty to work with. I built and went through around three BloodThirsters if memory serves. Oh, and the Eldar did gather in the center of the map for their Beta 4 picnic, but they seemed to come back to base at times to defend it.

I have only gotten my CTD's playing as the Eldar and doing so with previous Betas. I don't think I have had a single CTD with the Mod after Beta 2. Beta 3 felt stable to me.

--

My FFA didn't have any Eldar AI allies either, and I don't know if the bug could be hidden there in their code.

I have Windows XP Home, 1 Gig Ram, an unlocked Athlon XP 2400 35Watt Mobile overclocked to 2300Mhz on an Abit NF7-S V2 Nforce 2 motherboard, onboard sound, 80 Gig Western Digital IDE drive, NEC DVD Burner, with an EVGA GeForce 5900 SE graphics card.

My crashes with the Eldar sound different than what the rest of you have been experiencing recently.

Edited by ThetaOrion, 27 January 2006 - 09:46 AM.

[ThetaOrion]

More Talk about CTD's:

http://forums.revora...ndpost&p=246872

For Future Reference.

[Danimator]

The only thing wonky was that none of the Beta 4 Eldar AI built an Avatar, though the last faction should have had plenty to work with

It's not an ai problem, the costs for the researches and for building it are just too high for the ai to concider it as a vaible option near the end of the game. Stats just need adjusting. My 2 cents.

[ThetaOrion]

Brief Prime95 Tutorial for use in dealing with CTD's:

I don't know if this will be helpful, but this information has been very helpful to me in the past, both with my machines and my client's machines. So here goes.

If other people can duplicate the crash, then it's the software's problem.

But, if only one machine is crashing and no other machine crashing, like I had happening to my machine at one time about a year ago, then the program Prime95 will help you to determine what part of your machine might be the weak spot.

You install Prime95, a free program, and run it and tell it that you are just benchmarking. Then you run the torture test that uses the most power and produces the most heat. The program runs your machine through complex calculations and then every minute or so checks the results with a built-in table. It checks the results that your machine is producing against the known values. If it doesn't check out, the program quits and reports that there is a problem.

If your machine is NOT Prime95 stable, then you have a problem. You can run the test for hours if your machine is Prime95 stable, and then you are not likely to get CTD's due to hardware issues.

But, if Prime95 stops running in a couple of minutes, then that tells you one of a few things:
1) Your CPU is buggy or damaged, very rare now, but common back at the Pentium stage where this program was first being developed and used.
2) Your CPU is not getting enough voltage. Up the voltage a notch in the CMOS and test again. If the thing runs for 15 minutes to an hour with the same results as the tables or known values, then the CPU is now calculating properly and it is now Prime95 stable. This is actually a critical process for those unlocked processors that you are trying to overclock. You have to make sure that the CPU is getting enough voltage, or the prime number calculations won't check out and the thing won't be Prime95 stable. When doing a custom setting on an unlocked processor, Prime95 helps you find the right voltage, not too little and not too much. Too little voltage, and it crashes to desktop, and too much voltage and the CPU runs hotter than it needs to. I use MotherBoard Monitor, another free program, to keep track of the heat produced while running Prime 95. Overheating can cause CTD's and can make a machine so that it is not Prime95 stable.
3) If the Prime95 benchmark quits on you after a couple of minutes, then it could also mean that your power supply is on the fritz or not producing clean power. With my old stock PSU, I had to run the unlocked processors .05 volts higher (two knotches higher) just to achieve Prime95 Stability. With a new Name Brand Enermax, I was able to drop the voltage down two notches and run Prime95 stable for half an hour or an hour, and the CPU runs stable and cooler.
4) If you don't have enough case fans or your CPU fan is not working optimally, then your machine's CPU or Graphics Card or motherboard can overheat and that can also prevent your machine from being Prime95 stable and cause CTD's. During the summer here, I get four times as many CTD's and most of them are due to overheating. If I can get my system Prime95 stable during the summer under the torture test that produces maximum heat, then I know that I have my fan and cooling in the case the way it should be.

Anyway, if your machine can't run Prime95 without it reporting errors, then that means that your machine is not Prime95 stable, and that means that the CTD's are due to your hardware. Something in your hardware is not right. Either you are overheating, or the CPU and motherboard are not getting the power they need. Usually if it is not Prime95 Stable, then you know in about two to 8 minutes of torture testing. The values your CPU calculates doesn't match up with the known values if your system is unstable and can't pass the Prime95 torture tests.

If your machine passes Prime95 tests and runs those tests for hours or even a half an hour, then you know that the CTD's don't have anything to do with your hardware, and then you can start looking at software drivers and CPU drivers and software programs for the cause of the crashes.

If your machine is the only one crashing, then Prime95 will tell you whether it is your Hardware or whether it is some other software.

If your machine is the only one crashing, and it is Prime95 stable, then it's either the program or the drivers you are using.

And, like I said at the beginning, if a program is crashing on other machines or on everyone else's machines, then you pretty much know that it's the software program.

You only need to start worrying about your hardware and your drivers if you are the only one experiencing the crash.

Edited by ThetaOrion, 04 February 2006 - 11:44 AM.

[ThetaOrion]

I was thinking about this all last night, the CTD's.

I was wondering if the reason why I got the CTD with the Eldar back in Beta Two was because I built that webway right next to the castle wall there on the East of the castle. Maybe when the FarSeer and SeerCouncil came through that webway, the computer had a hard time determining how to place them on the map, because part of their footprint might have been up on the castle wall where you can walk around the edge of the castle looking down, and part of their footprint in the valley floor outside, and the computer might not have know how to resolve the discrepancy.

I might not have been getting Eldar CTD's recently because I'm either not building the WebWay Gate as close as I can to the castle anymore and/or I'm not sending large enough squads through the webways.

Anyway, I don't think my CTD's have anything to do with the AI Mod. It would be more of a weakness in the Relic code. Gee, it could even be a machine that's getting too warm if I have the door closed and the heater running. Who knows? But, I don't think and didn't think that my particular crashes have anything to do with the AI Mod.

If I can keep them from happening by building Eldar Gateways a ways away from the castle wall or by opening my room and cooling it off or some such, then that speaks to Relic or my overclocked mobile Athlon XP Processor as the potential source and not the AI Mod, in my not so humble opinion. I'm not going to rule out my machine as the culprit. Yes, my Athlon XP Mobile processor is overclocked, even though it is running at 1.55 volts instead of the 1.65 volts that locked Athlon XP's run at and even though it is running cooler than a locked processor runs, it is overclocked. And, even though the CPU probably isn't overheating in my machine and running cooler than they normally run, and even though the CPU probably isn't crashing at all, the overclocking could be making the northbridge and the southbridge on the motherboard run hotter than they normally like to run, hence I get a few more motherboard caused CTD's on average during the summer than during the winter. I never rule out the possibility of the machine. You can have a machine that is perfectly Prime95 stable and yet the machine will start crashing if the room gets hot enough. If I get the CPU temp around 48C or higher, then I start noticing instabilities. Imagine how hot the SouthBridge is getting with no fan or heatsink on it. If I severely overclock the CPU and get it above 50C, then every program starts behaving erratically. But, I can't get the CPU above 44C even under heavy Prime95 load at my current 2300Mhz, unless I close off the room and heat the room.

Therefore, the temptation is to do a lot of air cooling or air conditioning during the summer while running the computer or turning off the overclocking during the summer. Those Athlon XP Mobile Processors are neat in a way. They run cooler and can be Prime 95 stable at lower voltages, and they really don't seem to have a default setting, so you can overclock them and have them running Prime95 stable and cooler than normal XP processors with a lot less voltage or heat.

[ThetaOrion]

Further Talk about crashes with Beta 7, starting here:

http://forums.revora...ndpost&p=249143

For point of reference.

--

Follow up regarding Prime95 Tests:

http://forums.revora...ndpost&p=249494

[ThetaOrion]

Black Screen of Death:

BTW, I pressed the 1.6 Dawn of Skirmish Icon on the desktop with Beta 11, the WA CD spun up, the screen went black like it does, the machine clicked and then rebooted, doing a reset or a warm reboot.

I haven't had that happen to me since Beta 2.

I think it's something to do with the graphics card, but not sure. Maybe it is mandatory to do a defrag of the system after uninstalling and reinstalling Winter Assault, as if I have time for defragmenting right now.

[ThetaOrion]

After defragmenting, and running a bunch of spyware blasters, I ran Dawn of Skirmish Beta 11 again, and this time it came up in a window. That's a first. So, I ran the DoW Graphics Configuration Tool and got it unchecked for running in a window, and I tested and reset it.

Hopefully, all is kosher again. I have a GeForce FX5900 with the most recent drivers. I hope that there isn't a mandatory new graphics card in my future. I paid quite a bit for the GeForce 5900 at the time.

[Malkor]

FX5900's aren't technically even capable of dx9(they run like complete ass), so the fact you can run DoW at all amazes me.

Edited by Malkor, 23 February 2006 - 09:17 PM.

[ThetaOrion]

Yes, it is what it is.

The Graphics Option Tool is a critical run with the 5900. I think the problem was that I forgot to run the DoW Graphics Option Tool or properly complete the TEST there after upgrading to 1.41.

Anyway, you need to run that thing and let it set the settings. With a 5900, 1024X768 32-bit, the Graphics Option Tool sets most everything to the Medium settings, and puts one of the options at low setting, and keeps off persistent bodies. The 5900 has plenty of umph as long as the Graphics Options are set to medium or low. I was running Dawn of War with Windows ME and a Geforce Ti4200 800X600 and 16 bit graphics for awhile there. But, now that they are making WA so that it only runs on 32-bit, that would probably give me problems with the old Ti4200.

I was holding out for a 6800 AGP, but then the world went PCI Express. I just can't bring myself to buy an AGP version of a 6800 or a 7800. If I'm going to spend that kind of money, I want it to be the PCI Express version, but that then would also require a new mobo and CPU, in my case. If it's not broke, I don't really feel the urge to try to fix it. But, when it's clearly broke, that's a whole other story. Someday it will be mandatory. You can just feel it coming.

[Malkor]

My 9800 pro can handle a 8way Dawn of Skirmish FFA battle in Doom Chamber at tier4 with ALL settings at maximum 1284x1024 without the slightest bit of lag.

What you could try to get more performance on the crappy ass FX series mostly relates to reformatting with a nlite-configured windows XP and not running anything strange like norton anti-performance in the background.

God I can't type anymore. :(


Oh... and.... I've not had one unknown CTD since like, DoW 1.01. That was more or less related to my drivers at the time, as well. All the other crashes I had were from eldar vehicle jumping bugs.

Edited by Malkor, 24 February 2006 - 09:32 PM.

[ThetaOrion]

After running the Graphics Option Tool, I had no further problems with Beta 11. No more Black Screen of Death reboot, and no CTD's with B11.

B12 CTD:

But, last night on a restart of a game, I had a crash to desktop with Beta 12, it gave the Send Don't Send Error message. This was a real CTD, on Mountain Trails, I as Chaos with Ork ally vs IG and SM. The IG enemy was eliminated, and I was attacking the SM base with my Chaos when the CTD happened. One of my units said, "Blood for the Blood God," the sound stuttered, the screen froze, and then I was looking at the desktop.

[ThetaOrion]

BTW, I got a B13 CTD, with a Send or Don't Send message today.

The Eldar I was playing said, "We are ready to face dea?? . . ." Anyway, they died when they tried to say death. It was a Necron Final Map, which is one of the specialized maps that Aralez made for me.

I got the same kind of CTD early in B12, and now I get one here at the end of B13. Unlike others who are loathe to blame their machine, I think the random and distant CTD's are most likely a result of my aging machine, or a result of the Athlon Mobile Chip that I'm overclocking and the heat that overclocking might be causing on the sound chip of my motherboard. The CPU is running a lot cooler and with a lot less voltage than a locked Athlon XP normally runs, but I am running at 2300 Mhz, which the motherboard might have problems with at times. When I was running the chip at 2400 Mhz, I was getting crashes a couple of times a week. I'll probably try an experiment and back it off to 2200 Mhz, the native speed of a locked Athlon XP 3200+. The motherboard was designed for the Athlon XP 3200+ and a 2200Mhz true speed, before those CPU's were discontinued.

Backing off the CPU speed might not make any difference, but it's worth a try.

[Finaldeath]

Necrons might not be a recognised enemy and the AI tried to do soemthing with them.

If you place the daemon prince, the AI also may "except to be able to do something" usually with unit stats on it, and it crashes.

I actually was going to find and fix this, since for version 1.4 or so for DOW, I made it work with the OC on the final mission 11, without crashing.

[ThetaOrion]

Well, there weren't Necron's nor the Demon Prince on the map, but there were Three Titans. It was a concept map that Aralez only gave to me, a map that I hadn't played for over a month, and I decided to give it a go. I liked it.

I put my computer CPU down to Athlon XP 3200+ speeds, aka 2200Mhz, which the motherboard was designed to handle, and then I went back at Necron Final, and I didn't have any more crashes so far. Necron Final is a 2vs6 map, and after an hour of play, I did find that the 6 AI outside never made it to Tier 4, even though we inside had our Titan Uber Avatars (Eldar Avatar and BaneBlade and Fire Prisms). It was kind of weird to play for over an hour and never see any Tier 4 units from the enemy. I had seen them in the past with other Beta's I'm pretty much sure.

Anyway, as it warms up here, I'm going to keep the Mobile Athlon XP at 3200 Speeds. The Chip is now running Prime 95 Stable on 1.475 volts. At 2300 Mhz it was running Prime 95 stable at 1.550 volts. The locked Athlon XP's run natively at 1.65 volts. Anyway, I'm running my CPU a lot cooler than Athlon XP's normally run. Someone was teasing me and saying that my puter was siezing up or crashing because it was running too cool. But, I think the sound chip on the motherboard is overheating and causing crashes at the 2300 speed. The mobo really wasn't designed and tested for the Athlon XP 3400+ that never really materialzed, which was the speed I was running at. That speed worked 99 percent of the time, but not under prolonged heavy gameplay -- and it was always a sound stutter that caused the crash.

We'll see if the slower speed makes any difference over the long haul. I was figuring that I was going to have to go with a slower CPU speed anyway for the summer, if I wanted to continue using this machine during the summer. And, it's all because they stopped making and selling the Athlon XP 3200+. Gee, you can't even get the Athlon XP Mobile chip that I'm using any more.

I am saving up for another computer, but I kind of want to wait until Window XP's replacement Vista is out and the mobo's and drivers and chipsets have had a chance to adjust to Vista, and vice versa. So, I might be looking to hold out for a couple more years before Vista has a Service Pack One and has been debugged and hit mainstream. I don't want to jump in too fast. I have five computers here built upon the Athlon XP, and I should be able to piece something together that will keep me going on DoW for the foreseeable future, hopefully. I should probably get me an AGP version of the GeForce 6800, since I have so many Athlon XP AGP motherboards around here, but the Good APG GS version of the 6800 is $70 more than some of the comparable PCI Express versions. And, I am able to play DoW with my humble 5900. I keep thinking that when I'm no longer able to play DoW, then I'll have to get something different.

--

1) Somebody does need to try Rayden's Artefact 1.0 Map with B13 and see if the demon prince still works.

2) Aralez was indeed going to have Necron on the Necron Final Map, but they kept crashing with 1.60 of the AI Skirmish Mod, so he removed the Necron and never released the map. The version I have is the final that doesn't have the Necron.

3) The Winter Gauntlet is the one that was released with the similar layout as the Necron Final Map. If I get time with B14, I'm going to have to play Winter Gauntlet with 1.60 Official Release and with B14 and see if the 1.60 Official gets to Tier 4 and see if B14 does not get to Tier 4, and how long it takes for them to get there or not get there on the Winter Gauntlet map. I'll have to do a comparative analysis on that.

4) Meanwhile, if I have any futher Dow crashes at the slower CPU speed, I'll report them here. I still think it's my machine and has nothing to do with the AI Skirmish Mod, at least this B12 and B13 couple of crashes.

[ArkhanTheBlack]

Theta, the only way you can find out if it's AI related is to go to the skirmish AI folder data/ai/core and open the utility.ai file. Change g_bAITrace = false to g_bAITrace = true at the top of the file. Then an AI trace is written to C:\. It hurts performance but it's the only way to find the cause of the problem.
Normally, all files end with something like

AI1000 17080 AI Difficulty Setting
AI1000 17080 2
AI1000 17080

if not, then the AI has crashed the game.
Since nobody has reported a crash and I didn't get one either it's probably your computer. But we can't be sure before we've found out.

[ThetaOrion]

Yes, this is indeed the proper place to teach us how to do the AI trace.

I never pursued the AI trace, because I sincerely believe that it's my machine causing the problem, and because I have only gotten one crash once per week while playing dozens of DoW games per week. I didn't want to play with the AI trace on for two weeks in a row and dozens of games in a row hoping for a crash that's probably related to my onboard sound chip getting overloaded or related to my mobo chipset getting overclocked and overheated.

I don't think it's the AI, especially if Zenoth, Malkor, FinalDeath, and Arkhan aren't having any crashes. I think it's time to run my machine slower and cooler, which I am now doing. I'll see where it takes me.

Edited by ThetaOrion, 16 March 2006 - 12:02 AM.