freezes on save » Forum Post by general Patton

I'm having a similar but more pervasive problem in GC3 (no Crusade expansion). I just started playing a few days ago and saving/loading is causing the game to become unplayable for me. After playing for several hours into my 2nd game (1st one was aborted as a learning experience) the save or load process bogs down to 10-15 minutes or longer. Watching in Task Manager I see CPU shoot up near 40% with 15-20 GB (!!!) memory usage. I've killed the process in TM a couple of times when it got to > 20 minutes.

At around 13 hours game time I tried to load both a player saved game and the most recent auto save and the game now just crashes. I can't get back to the game I was on the verge of winning.

My system specs, while not exactly new or state of the art gaming, are well above the recommended minimum for GC3:

CPU: Intel Core i7-3770

GPU: XFX AMD HD 7870 2GB

RAM: 24 GB DDR3

OS: Win 10

Successfully updated karma reason!

sdrohan

Join Date 10/2012

+715

Is your virtual memory set to default (Windows Managed):

Successfully updated karma reason!

Just checked virtual memory setting and it's got the checkbox selected for automatically manage page file size for a all drives.

I upgraded to Crusade a day after my Dec 6 post. Played it for a few days and then around turn # 250, it started noticeably bogging down on save/auto-save, taking 15-20 minutes and also bringing my PC to its knees overall. Now I'm once again encountering the problem where, after a PC reboot, GC3 crashes when trying to load either the most recent auto-save or the previous auto-save. (Reboot was after a Windows update plus another app requiring a reboot - I gracefully shut down, so it wasn't a force exit type situation with GC3.)

Very frustrating.

Successfully updated karma reason!

Very frustrating yes... I have basically the same issue. As soon as you get far in your game everything slows down and eventually I cannot make any savegames nor load any. This memory-leak has been present since they created the game so why don't the developers put an effort into fixing it ?

I have an Intel I7 @ 3,6 Ghz, plenty of diskspace and 32GB of memory in my rig so that should easily match any requirements.

My drivers are updated on a regular basis and I have not touched the virtual memory settings.

This issue has been present now for at least TWO years !

Successfully updated karma reason!

admiralWillyWilber

Join Date 05/2009

+99

You should probably up your virtual memory. Are your power options at high performance you have to change that to high performance. Also make your ui is on small.

Successfully updated karma reason!

Thanks for your tips but unfortunately it makes absolutely no difference.

Tried to set my vitual memory (pagefile) fixed to 48GB, ui was set to small in graphics in the game and windows power saving options to performance.

Next to that I tried to change the game (Gal Civ III - Mercenaries) version to opt_in_update (2.7), validated files and I tried lowering display resolution but the result is the same. The game makes a CTD after the loading screen has been on a couple of minutes and I don't even get the crash report window anymore...

Successfully updated karma reason!

Something else to try that can sometimes cause file related issues. Run defrag on your HDD. If a file is heavily fragmented it could be causing issues when reading or writing. An incomplete/corrupt save would cause the load crash. Haven't had this issue myself, though I do notice an occasional slowdown when I have the map zoomed out.

Successfully updated karma reason!

shaw

Join Date 07/2015

+96

Can you send me one of the save games that is taking a long time to load? Please provide a link to filesharing service (e.g. dropbox) if the file is too large.

pshaw@stardock.com

Successfully updated karma reason!

Hello,

Here's a link to my dropbox : https://www.dropbox.com/sh/kqvus33dj1mdp5c/AADsQq_GARZhK1kIio-KXhCma?dl=0

There is several saves (both working and non-working) along with my system settings and several screenshots of the system resource usage.

From what I can see it seems somehow when the savegames got corrupted the filesize shrinked considerably afterwards but I was still able to continue playing but the saves never worked when trying to load them once they first got corrupted.

During the game it would usually take about two minutes to save and while loading about twice as much.

I hope this info helps and thanks for looking into this... Much appreciated

Successfully updated karma reason!

shaw

Join Date 07/2015

+96

Quoting CoffeemanDK,

reply 9

Hello,

Here's a link to my dropbox : https://www.dropbox.com/sh/kqvus33dj1mdp5c/AADsQq_GARZhK1kIio-KXhCma?dl=0

There is several saves (both working and non-working) along with my system settings and several screenshots of the system resource usage.

From what I can see it seems somehow when the savegames got corrupted the filesize shrinked considerably afterwards but I was still able to continue playing but the saves never worked when trying to load them once they first got corrupted.

During the game it would usually take about two minutes to save and while loading about twice as much.

I hope this info helps and thanks for looking into this... Much appreciated

can you include your debug.err file? It would be in a folder similar to this:

C:\Users\pshaw\Documents\My Games\GalCiv3

Successfully updated karma reason!

The file has been uploaded to the root folder in the dropbox just a few minutes after the game crashed again "Out Of Memory" while saving the game... Screenshot added of error message also... But I guess out of memory is out of memory.

Successfully updated karma reason!

shaw

Join Date 07/2015

+96

Hello,

I'm looking deeper into your problem. One thing I noticed in your debug.err is lots of messages like this:

Debug Message: CreateLimitedMipMapsTextureFromFile: c:\program files (x86)\steam\steamapps\common\Galactic Civilizations III\Gfx\Models\Ships\Textures\OverlayTexture_01.dds

Do you have any mods installed? Can you post your prefs.ini as well

It also seems that you loaded several saves before crashing. Is this correct? Do you ever crash or get a corrupted save game after just loading a single save game?

Successfully updated karma reason!

Hello,

I don't have any mods installed, never had. prefs.ini and RebuildData.ini ihas been uploaded to the dropbox showing which game build and DLC's is installed.

I did successfully load several savegames after another to get closer to resume the game at a point where the savegames started to get corrupted and to figure which savegames are corrupted.

Besides the corruption of the savegames I find the game engine remarkable sturdy. I can TAB in and out of the game and even put my PC in hibernation and the game will not crash but will let me resume as if it was just on pause

There does not seem to be any connection to the corrupted saves whether I resumed a game after my PC was in hibernation or if I would have started with a fresh game trying to load or create a savegame.

Successfully updated karma reason!

shaw

Join Date 07/2015

+96

Thanks for the additional information. I'm not sure yet why your saves are getting corrupted but we'll keep looking.

Successfully updated karma reason!

Hello,

Some additional info about the crashes. Today the savegames started getting corrupted when the game autosave kicked in.

After that all the saves were corrupted but nothing happened in the game itself at once but only hrs. later when the game got extremely lagging before I gave up when the memory seemed to have gotten exhausted.

I have uploaded the latest savegames (Gal Civ III - Saves II) also if you want to have a peek at them along with some screenshots left in the same folder of the memory buildup during loading and saving. The debug.err file does not seem to have changed (date stamp is the same) so no errors were recorded.

Thanks again for looking into this, much appreciated

Also... Seasons greetings for you folks at Stardock for creating an awesome game.

I will be off on vacation until the 4th of January so no rush in getting into the bottom of this... It's time to go out in the real world and meet some people

Successfully updated karma reason!

Hello,

I think I have a similar or even the same problem.

I did several tests and now I'm very sure that it is caused during loading and not saving.

Almost every time I try to load a safe during a game, the safe-file grows after saving again (minimum 4MB more).

After doing this a few times, the loading-time becomes longer and longer, the game even freezes or crashes (problems like they're described in the posts before).

If you create a new game during an ongoing game, the new safe instant get's big (about 10MB).

If I restart (really, restart it, just changing into main menu is'nt enough) the game on the other hand, and load and safe then, the file just grows about 1-3KB (tested it around 500 times...).

So I would guess the memory of the safes is'nt fully or correctly cleaned if you load a safe.

Successfully updated karma reason!

I have the EXACT same problem as well. I am currently on Save 212 right now. I refuse to play a new game as I have a 25 & a 19 planet 1 parsec away from my home world. I am hoping 2.8 fixes the memory issues.

-I had to disable auto-save. Saved games that were saved on the same "Saved game file" over and over again like auto-save had it the worst. I am BARELY able to play right now as when I create a new Saved game, 50% of the time the game freezes up and never saves the game.

Successfully updated karma reason!

This problem fixed now running on 3.6 GHZ Desktop with 16GB Ram . Almost 0 lag. Laptops too slow for this game.

Successfully updated karma reason!

shaw

Join Date 07/2015

+96

Quoting Boz46,

reply 17

I have the EXACT same problem as well. I am currently on Save 212 right now. I refuse to play a new game as I have a 25 & a 19 planet 1 parsec away from my home world. I am hoping 2.8 fixes the memory issues.

-I had to disable auto-save. Saved games that were saved on the same "Saved game file" over and over again like auto-save had it the worst. I am BARELY able to play right now as when I create a new Saved game, 50% of the time the game freezes up and never saves the game.

can you send me your last good save game? pshaw@stardock.com

Also -- when do you hit save when it locks up? Is it the beginning, middle, or end of your turn?

Successfully updated karma reason!

Also have this problem, also running on a laptop (2.4 GHZ Intel i7, 12 gigs of ram, 2047mb Nvidia Geforce GT 740M).

I've had the game since launch and I've never had performance problems until now. I've got every expansion including Crusade and Mercs and I've played with Crusade before without these problems.

Game seems to take a long time to start up. I've been playing on a huge map and saving takes a long time after I've been playing a long time loading is taking longer and longer. Loads from the main menu are tolerable but loads from within the game freeze the game most of the time.

I'll confess to save scumming a bit; but I've done that in the past and it hasn't been an issue. I did download some more ship designs from the workshop recently and maybe that's causing the game to load more data and it just pushed it over the edge.

Successfully updated karma reason!

Quoting Boz46,

reply 17

-I had to disable auto-save. Saved games that were saved on the same "Saved game file" over and over again like auto-save had it the worst. I am BARELY able to play right now as when I create a new Saved game, 50% of the time the game freezes up and never saves the game.

Oh, now that's interesting. I've been manually saving over my old files. I'll try creating a new one and see if that helps.

Successfully updated karma reason!

Saving new files seems to be working better now that I'm deleting old files and saving new ones. Loading from the main menu still works; but loading while playing still seems to hang it up. Saving over the old game (and I save a lot) may be having a cumulative effect on the size of the save file so I think the damage may have already been done.

After I finish my current game, I'm going to delete old saves and make new saves from the start rather than saving over old files and see if the problem persists.

Successfully updated karma reason!

Also the guy at the store pushed the laptop on me and it was not all that great. I hate pushy people and bullies. It was a Mexican and he pushed a 8GB laptop on me

Successfully updated karma reason!

As in my previous thread 'Long loading and saving times' , I have had similar issues.

But you have had more luck in getting a response from a developer, from pshaw.

I don't think it's to do with machine specs, as mine meets the requirements.

I have also disabled auto-save and are playing a huge map instead of gigantic, in the hope the issue does not resurface.

Worried that after playing many turns, the issue will come back!

The problem needs fixing.

Successfully updated karma reason!

As my previous thread 'Long loading and saving times' , I have had similar issues.

But you have had more luck in getting a response from a developer, from pshaw.

I don't think its to do with your machine specs, as mine meets the requirements.

Now playing on huge map instead of gigantic, and have disabled auto-save, in the hope the issue does not resurface.

But worried that after playing many turns, the issue will come back!

The problem needs fixing.

Many thanks.

Successfully updated karma reason!