Vatticson

Join Date 11/2011

Lots of "freezing" moments (not just the UI)

Hello there!

I saw there's one common problem that other GC3 players/testers are experiencing: Yeah, I'm talking about the UI freezing.

The UI works for me, but the issue, in my case, is that while I play, my game freezes a lot, and I mean in a sense that it's loading a lot of times (for example, if i just zoom out, it takes 4 seconds to move again, or if I enter the ship designer, I have to wait like 8 seconds in order to interact normally).

I'm no technical expert in PC hardware but my PC middle-tier (every modern game works perfectly if I set medium graphics on average). Because I don't know if the problem is that i'm not meeting the hardware requirements for this game, i'm posting here my dxdiag so you can help me n' stuff :

https://www.dropbox.com/s/b1sclirs62fyj1b/MyDxDiag.txt?dl=0

Pretty game btw.

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Lavo_2

Join Date 05/2010

+112

For me when I get the freeze, the game doesn't unfreeze; I have shut it down via task manager and restart it.

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DARCA1213

Join Date 01/2014

+106

I get a freeze so often it effect my daily lif...

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I also get lots of stuttering where the game seems to be reading from HDD. I "only" have 4gb of RAM, so this may be cache thrashing.

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I've had freezing. At first I thought it was simply due to consuming all RAM but it can freeze no matter how much RAM it's using.

I haven't played very far because of the freezing, though.

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I've had the freezing problem, but it has gotten better, especially since the last beta release. I used to get freezes that reappeared each time I reloaded the same save (last one before the freeze). That doesn't happen anymore.

Right now I am running with my antivirus and anti malware real time protection off, auto saves off, but I can't really say they are involved. I have reloaded the game according to the procedure in the support forums. Particularly, for some reason, deleting prefs.ini and restarting seemed to help. But as I say it is fairly infrequent now. As long as I save every half dozen turns it's not much of a bother.

To me it doesn't seem related to the size of the map. I get about the same result with small, med, large, and huge maps. (I do have 8 GB memory).

I am hopeful that the next release will fix this completely.

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I may bbe remembering wrong, but this seems to happen after every major overhaul. I didn't see this thread, so I posted one of my own. I don't know that the game freeaes so much as hangs and then drags along, I have 12 g Ram and i7 q, everything is up to date.

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Quoting Folgra1,

reply 6

That's curious... I've just bought the game recently, so Beta 3 is my "first major overhaul".

The game stil freezes like before after this last patch. Even when I colonize a planet the game takes a lot of time to load

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Vatticson (and BlackFlag66): I looked at your DxDiag output. While the RAM requirements specified for the game is 4G, I have seen the OS allocate upwards of 6G (for the OS, the game, and all other apps running) in the Beta 2 build, and upwards to 5G for this build. The game is still in beta and has not yet been optimized, so they may yet be able to get the game to run with only 4G RAM by the time it ships. Until then, you may see reduced performance due to page thrashing unless you add some RAM. I would recommend boosting your RAM to 6G (8G may be better). Don't forget, GC3 is coded in 64 bit addressing mode, which allows it to use much more virtual memory than a 32 bit version would.

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I have never been able to play ANY of the Beta releases past about turn 100. Today only about 15 or 20 turns. When my game crashes, I have to kill it and start over only for it to freeze again. Support told me to update my video driver, which I did, but it didn't resolve the issue. Very frustrating!!!!! This needs to be fixed. I paid $99 for the Founder's edition and can't play the game. At this rate, I won't be able to play when it is "finished".

Damon

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Damonlundy, please run DxDiag and upload it to a facility similar to "Dropbox" and share its link here.

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Lucky Jack,

The problem is NOT the amount of memory. I'm running 16 GB of memory and my game crashes EVERY single time and with EACH version of the Beta. I've never been able to play past about turn 100. Today only to about turn 15 or 20!

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Lucky Jack,

Here is my DxDiag results.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/c5le7dkvs28smat/DxDiag.txt?dl=0

Thanks for looking!

Damon

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Damonlundy: Here are a few things to try:

1) If you are playing the game in full screen mode at your max resolution, try reducing your resolution a bit (I play in windowed mode at 1600*900). There have been a few reports on this forum about troubles at some of the higher resolutions.

2) Delete the prefs.ini file in your "...\documents\my games\galciv3" folder. (You will have to re-establish your preferences.)

3) Through Steam, delete your local content for the game, then re-install it. There have been instances where upgrades have not installed as expected, which can be corrected this way.

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Great suggestions Lucky Jack! I tried option 2 and 3, but this didn't resolve the issue. I made it to turn 3 and zoomed out just a bit and the game froze up.

I tried setting the "launch options" of the game to run in windowed mode, but couldn't get it to work. What command are you using to make this work? I tried "-windowed" and "-sw", but neither worked.

Thanks for your help!

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DARCA1213

Join Date 01/2014

+106

Try moving the camera out to the fow and zoom out slowly to were nebula and planets look like icons, the freezing stops when I do that...as long as I don't zoom in.

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Quoting Lucky Jack,

reply 13

Damonlundy: Here are a few things to try:

1) If you are playing the game in full screen mode at your max resolution, try reducing your resolution a bit (I play in windowed mode at 1600*900). There have been a few reports on this forum about troubles at some of the higher resolutions.

2) Delete the prefs.ini file in your "...\documents\my games\galciv3" folder. (You will have to re-establish your preferences.)

3) Through Steam, delete your local content for the game, then re-install it. There have been instances where upgrades have not installed as expected, which can be corrected this way.

I tried the 1) one and it solved the problem, mostly. After 20 turns everything went as bad as before , but thanks for the suggestion though.

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Vatticson: What I saw in the DxDiag file you posted was that you only have 4GB RAM. Please review what I said in reply #8 of this thread. Have you tried increasing the RAM you have?

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Lavo_2

Join Date 05/2010

+112

Beta 3 made freezing even worse for me personally, to the point of getting freezes during turn 0 (starting turn). With the most up to date GPU drivers, 3GB of GPU RAM, 16 GB of regular RAM, and around 60 GB of virtual memory, I know it isn't my system. Plus, reinstalling the game, deleting my prefs.ini, and running in window have all done jack.

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The freezing can be annoying, yet I can't bring myself to complain or even think twice about it.

1) It's still beta and still being worked on (close to a release date is when to worry)

2) I'm friggin' AMAZED I'm even able to play this game on my laptop, at all.

3) Seriously, after reading all the requirements early on and what the game would/should entail, I supported the game but expected to only play after buying a new computer which I never have the money for.

4) I'm able to PLAAAAAAAAAY! Isn't that awesome?!?

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Quoting Lucky Jack,

reply 17

Vatticson: What I saw in the DxDiag file you posted was that you only have 4GB RAM. Please review what I said in reply #8 of this thread. Have you tried increasing the RAM you have?

Nope i didn't, but I'm planning to double the memory soon

Quoting chuck1es,

reply 19

The freezing can be annoying, yet I can't bring myself to complain or even think twice about it.

1) It's still beta and still being worked on (close to a release date is when to worry)

2) I'm friggin' AMAZED I'm even able to play this game on my laptop, at all.

3) Seriously, after reading all the requirements early on and what the game would/should entail, I supported the game but expected to only play after buying a new computer which I never have the money for.

4) I'm able to PLAAAAAAAAAY! Isn't that awesome?!?

I had the same feeling as you, but when the game is "not freezing", the game goes smoothly for me. Sounds great that this game can be played not only on high-end PCs. I'm a bit curious, though, with the huuuuuge galaxies with 100 AIs, maybe this would need a powerhouse? I don't know.

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In Beta 3 I now have about 14 hrs and I have had 4 (apparently) random freeze-ups. I am playing at 1920x1080 full screen, 8 gb memory. Looking at the problems mentioned above I guess I should be rather pleased. Of course other games that I have played, which are well past release and have had lots of patches, I can play for days without a hitch, like Civ5, Civ4, Total War games, Skyrim, etc. (And I could easily play a long game of GC2 without issues.) So I am trying to keep the perspective that GC3 is far from the finish line.

I think I will try windowed mode just to see, although I have to play a long time to tell, LoL. Good luck to you guys I have to think things will get a lot better at some point.

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Very Interesting!

I switched to windowed mode (1600x900) and instead of getting a freeze about every 3-4 hours I was getting one every 5 minutes or so.

Obviously with PCc "one's mileage may vary".

I switched back to full screen 1920x1080 and every settled down and I could play for at least 2 hours without issues.

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Bamdorf: I have not seen anything yet about your PC's configuration. Please run DxDiag, post the output to a "dropbox" like facility, and share the file's link here.

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OH My Dog! The freezing is unbelievable, I have 6 gb of RAM memory and the physical memory will slam into the ceiling at 96% - shut down with Task Manager - restart - random freeze between three and thirty turns. Game has been re-installed, drivers are up to date, I hope they get this thing to run smoother soon.

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Linik to my DxDisag:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B-0-yoy4m4h7SkFoMnk2UDlPQlU/view?usp=sharing

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