98% Game Crash!

When Is this BS going to end...ugh!

I have tried the restarting and Graphics change methods.

 

I am sorry you are having problems. I am not making light of your problems but I am not having a disconnect problem at all. If you can explain more of what is happening. Is it your system that is is conflict and doesn't meet the minimum, is it Linux?, Is it something that can be adjusted? In what ways can we advise?

 

I just stopped going to those towns... the trick that worked for me sometimes was to ask a friend to create a party instance/party mode, reduce all possible lag in another scene previously by closing most of UI and putting lowest graphical options... then give priority to the process manually in windows, make sure your windows have a high timeout registy value for system and applications as well.

*takes a deep breath*

That should be fixed since a long time ago and not require advanced resource management... since everyone ignored me reporting it a few releases ago, I've begun to feel annoying, strangely.

Like I feel guilty because of a bug... we've had many threads about it but it somehow is half-ignored, the only direct response was get a better computer... I felt looked down at... I'm a peasant who needs to pedal to make his computer work it seems.

 

Ahhh sorry you felt that way. You should not need to experience that.

 

It's the same issue we keep on having for a few release that never ends up as a known issue because somehow when a dev says it can't be reproduced its the word of god.

Not sure if you can check the archives, but I personally bugged it many times, and participated in helping people overcome it, sometimes it works...at least a dozen people also reported it...

It's part of the reasons I was so irritated during release... my quests are bugged and my game is bugged and yet noone acknowledged it ! Everyone was having fun yay release.. and I was standing there with my jaw to the floor... but you know I'm not heavy so I said to myself "oh they must be too busy"... but yeah, people are having fun, I'm ... waiting.

And now I also get nerfed, as if I was over-progressing :/

Back in the days when FireLotus was in charge, it would have taken 2 hours TOPS to have an answer and get back to playing, in fact I always praised Portalarium REAL CUSTOMER CARE, because never once I got downtime.

I felt like I mattered, back then.

 

It's the same problem many of us are having since the patch... Loading into a town or scene, loading screen gets to "98% Equipping Avatars" and crashes.

Why is this not on the "known issue list" of the patch notes. I didn't see it there.

 

Well you still do matter. @Berek can we get some attention? I hear too many times that the bug reports get pushed aside with players hearing it cannot be reproduced and so then that means all is well and no way is that the case. One person was unable to make a recipe for the new Inn and getting an error not allowing them to make the Inn and still it was stated that it cannot be reproduced and this makes it ok that the recipe cannot ever be crafted, well no it does not. Bugs reported need to matter to the satisfaction of the person reporting them even if the answer is it is because of users system not meeting requirements, then they have a choice to not play or upgrade their system if they can do it sometime.

 

The last response we got was this:

[Responded] Loading stuck @99% 98% (Equipping Avatar) post /bug info
https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/f...ing-avatar-post-bug-info.122054/#post-1022554

 

I just want to be as loud as possible with this issue.

My buddy wont even play the game and I am frustrated but hanging in.

Far to many people are having this issue even before I started playing the game it appears.

This started for me with the new patch update.

 

Wow ok, but that is just for this release... it started waayyy back when they first introduced the new artifact VFX...

It's a simple loading sequence buffer overrun, I tried to explain it to them how I fixed it for myself though extreme windows tweaking, but then it got worse and came back ! Then managed to fix it again but they seem to make it worse and worse ! I think I know why too but at this point I'm pretty sure noone wants to hear the truth cause it won't be easy to fix.

Just like they did to me with shaders, then 3 years later oh magically we have to work on our shaders... everyone in the industry knows its the first thing you have to do when working with dreamworks class engines.

Ok I'm stopping right there because of the cascade of bad thoughts this causes me.

Peace out yall.

 

That's what I'm learning, Its an issue that has been around for some time.

If It continues I will just say goodbye to SOTA but I will hang in there for a time to see what happens, Thanks

 

Well it seems that the right people have complained... they sure are working hard on all kind of unity "bugs" which are not bugs but rather "stock versions" of backend handling.

I remember right after kickstarter, when they announced they would be using unity... I was raising my hand and saying I had literally ripped hair off my head in trying to make a simple prototype (far from professional product).

I was ignored... sure it all runs fine on a dreamworks machine, but when you scale, when you start to sprite and use specialized shaders to create cinematic effects, you need to do all that in a predetermined order.

I was told order didn't really matter because of agile developpement and that my feedback wasn't really needed because they would learn from their own errors.

So generally, in a year or two, someone who has the devs ear will point them to the same exact buffer underrun problem which is KNOWN if they ever bothered to read similar projects or github or mods. Then they will say of course !

But yeah, they are working hard, and its far from easy for an indie studio...

Ah yes not long ago I raised my hand and said I would slow down feature creep and focus on finishing the...

*gets about a hundred taps on his shoulder*

Oh, right... yeah I think I wasn't the first to say it, nor will be the last.

 

I get it trying to zone into certain towns... not sure what is causing it... but it seems Steam related.

 

Any help to further nail down which scenes and when/how you receive this bug would be helpful. We're still trying to figure out how we can resolve it, and our apologies for it being a long standing issue .

 

Other posts I think nailed it down very well however I will share some info.

It's random, yesterday My home town of Soltown was a no go, same as usual, Loading in to 98%, equipping avatar and sits.... the second I click the screen it goes white and not responding.

I just close out and try again, and again and a...

I crashed 5 times today trying to get into Soltown until it took.

 

I don't think it is Steam related, I froze loading Owl's Head the other day, and I do not use Steam.

I got froze at 98% no matter what, and I tried teleporting in, loading from the Overworld, restarting the game client and going direct...
And now, the next day, it loads fine. No issue at all...

 

It happened to me last night too. I don't have the issue tonight, though.

 

When this happens to me, I have to restart the computer completely. Re-starting steam doesn't work.

 

Can't be steam, I don't us steam to Play SOTA.

 

Ok now you're talking !

I did resolve it and its a combination of two factors :

The VFX and reflective lighting... which have preload buffers that unity has set to work on the same shaders (wild guess) than the lighting reflection on clothes and armor.

What happens is two-fold... the game tries to preload all those effects while its asking the GPU to also run buffers which are way too small and numerous (in order to gain speed another wild guess, we lack this information to make an educated guess).

And I would bet that on most systems who get the issue are lowish end or good builds that should work but with GPUs running at 99% most of the time, the root of all evil.

The problem is worsened by windows or OS which have application timeout settings, in the context of most desktop work its a nice feature because it "preloads" your desktop before you need to tab out of an application when multi-tasking. But when playing SOTA, and I have followed the threads and error codes to prove it : as soon as SOTA times out the conputer, sadly and idiotically asks the GPU to prerender the desktop... CHAOTIC HAVOK.

Some buffers have to be dumped, and reloaded, and when it realizes it cannot render the whole screen, our friend unity, by its stock settings, waits on the buffers, which are underrun, game stutters and/or in the case of loading many gigs of RAM (which also shares buffers BTW) then the whole OS stutters or freezes. Not only that, before that happened and often when playing in large cities, the GPU will have completely reset its buffers.

You absolutely have to program custom shaders for these loading transition tasks that hog alot of RAM, yes they will be a waste of dynamic GPU RAM and loading speed but it will resolve all stability issues. You can also apply the same concept to any superposed animations to prevent massive action VFX stutters, I call it the boomerang effect, and it also allows to use more CPU instead of bottlenecking the GPU. I can detail the design if asked nicely...

I know you will ask me why for example in owl's head main entrance (which is the most common location for the bug), well simply because for example at the 98% loading step where the CPU dumps all the info in the GPU RAM, it also is asking the GPU to calculate its own buffers because you are asking the game to load the whole range of dynamic lighting that will reflect upon my armor or even more complex surfaces like a cloak floating in the wind, while it preloads some VFX that is shared with artifacts and even some spells. Remove light sources at the entrance of owl's head if you want, and see immediately happy customers who can resume their adventures.

But thats only a band-aid.

That is your problem, they should be a dynamic cascade and not synchronous, and most importantly NOT pre-buffered in the loading screen.

I can improve that process as well, if you would only open your mind.

Different systems have different tolerance for application timeout and GPU buffer underrun, thats why the problem appears so different and hard to pinpoint.

Like the story of the xorinite and the oracle... *cough* the AI of the OS and the RAM of the QWRTZ are hurting each other.

We should care, we should ask questions and listen.