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Bad crash during conversation.
Posted: Fri Aug 07, 2009 2:06 pm
by Tricky
I like her, but.. Neverwinter Nights 2 just doesn't like me. I got over the first gamebreaking bug only to step into another. I'm at Fort Locke, arriving at the point where Neeshka gets harrassed by guards. The conversation that takes place here is a bit long.
No matter what, at some random interval during this conversation the game will crash. Always. And it doesn't just hang, show some artifacts or give me a blue screen.. it crashes badly. There's ASCII characters all over the place and I can even make out some words here and there. Apparently some kind of memory error took place and something or other is trying to write a memory dump to my hard disk. I don't really remember what that means anymore.
All I wanted was to test out some builds.. sigh. Anyway, I don't suppose anyone has a magic solution for this one too?
Posted: Fri Aug 07, 2009 2:28 pm
by Tricky
Yes, yes, I am amazing. I figured out what it was, surprisingly enough. Before I made my save, I remembered the battle following the conversation being bit tough. I figured I'd cast Mage Armor prior to the conversation (and my save).
I noticed the crashes weren't so random, they happened every time the player character got to the point where he got to say some lines. So what happened? When the game is both in dialog mode & has graphic Mage Armor effects on screen at the same time, the game crashes. Voila.
Killer game.
Edit: Ah lovely. This also means the game crashes every time after finishing a battle that involves some lingering spell effects and ends in another dialog mode. Like Neeshka thanking me for rescuing her. I foolishly had Mage Armor cast on Kelgar again, only this time during the battle itself. Silly, silly me.
Posted: Fri Aug 07, 2009 5:31 pm
by Tricky
After spending way too much time on trying out every single graphics setting, I have come to the following conclusion. I have to make her real ugly if we want to be together.
Only 'Texture Detail/Resolution: Low' causes no problems. Medium and High make the game crash whenever I am both in Dialog mode and looking at an active Mage Armor ('DMMA' for future reference) on a character. It isn't some kind of stressed-out CPU/Memory/GPU error. I can turn every single graphics setting to it's highest, the game won't crash until I try the DMMA test on the highest texture setting.
The only thing that changed since I last played NWN2 frequently is my graphics card. It's more or less the same horsepowers underneath the hood, only I switched from an Ati to an nVidia card. A Geforce 7600GT with silent cooling. While looking for problems related to the 7600 series, I can find no similar issues. I searched Google extensively.
Still open to suggestions.
Posted: Sat Aug 08, 2009 1:41 am
by Tricky
OK, I was wrong. For whatever reason, what worked last night doesn't work as of this morning (I did try it a bunch of times last night and it worked fine). Now, the game will also crash when putting the texture settings on low while trying 'DMMA'.
Also (the fun never ends), whatever graphics effect is to blame here (I really have no idea), it's one of the first things Safiya casts when you wake up at the beginning of the Mask of the Betrayer expansion, making it crash & sealing off the entire expansion.
Hurrah! Hurrah! I'm going to eat fish today.
Posted: Sat Aug 08, 2009 2:01 am
by Xandax
Hmmm - that is a tricky one indeed.
I will forgo the obvious reply about updated drivers and patched game and all that, but it could sound as if there's some sort of corrupted texture, so you're doing it right by trying to fiddle with those settings.
But from your description, it seems you've already tried setting it all down, removing anti-aliasing and all those settings etc, so I'm not sure I can add much at all. But it might be all the way down to corrupt files.
Also try to remove all sound options as it might be connected to that, if those things are enabled. I've often had problems in other (usually older) games with various sound options enabled.
Other then that - perhaps a reinstall might in order, possible to another drive if you have that option.
Sorry I can't help more.
Posted: Sat Aug 08, 2009 7:27 am
by Tricky
Thanks Xandax. This morning I tried to install an Omega driver, but that really broke my computer somehow. I spend the next three hours trying to fix things from safemode, now I am back to using the Geforce driver once again (a slightly newer version I think). The crash still happens.
I scanned both drives (I figured the game might still cache on C: ) for surface errors, but nothing came up. Unfortunately I have no space left to install it on C:, it has to be E:.
Fishsticks.
Posted: Sun Aug 09, 2009 2:42 am
by Tricky
Good news: NWN2 isn't at fault here.
Bad news: Every single game is affected.
I posted this issue on the support boards, but now it seems this crash isn't limited to Neverwinter Nights 2. I feel a bit like an idiot, because this should have been one of the first things I should have tested.
So far I've confirmed Oblivion, Jade Empire and Half Life 2: Episode 2. I'll open up a new thread at the tech support forum, this one can be closed.
Posted: Sun Aug 09, 2009 5:39 am
by mr_sir
As requested by Tricky, I'm closing this thread
