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Crashing to desktop during away team combat.

SystemSystem Member, NoReporting Posts: 178,019 Arc User
I've been having this problem since I first started playing, but I figured I'd wait for a patch or two before making a thread here in case it was something that was going to be fixed. I can't seem to make it through an away team mission without crashing to desktop *at least* once (an average of three to five times per mission). The crash only occurs in away team missions and during combat. This makes it extremely difficult to make it through storyline missions that require me to escort someone or something like that. There have been many times where a character that I must interact with becomes impossible to interact with because the game crashes out during combat directly before I'm supposed to interact with said character.
I have filled out an automatic crash report every time this has happened, but I haven't heard anything back about this and it still happens, even though I've sent 30-50 (conservative estimate) crash reports and have had times when I've had seven crash reports uploading at once due to repeated crashes in the span of five minutes.
I'd love to get this figured out, because it's incredibly aggravating to have to log back into the game an average of three-to-five times per ground mission if there's combat involved. And that's not including having to restart missions where NPCs become "un-interactable" due to a poorly-timed crash.

System specs:
Windows Vista Ultimate x64
Intel Core2Quad Q9550
ATI Radeon HD 5850 (10.3 Catalyst drivers)
DirextX 11

Edit:
Still waiting for a response.

Also:
DXDiag

http://pastebin.com/WuJX3h6p
Post edited by Unknown User on

Comments

  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited March 2010
    I just built a new computer with a 5850 video card and I'm getting the same thing. Away missions keep crashing on me while in combat. The framerate seems to get kind of jerky and once that happens it's a matter of seconds before it crashes.

    My old system with a GTX 260 didn't do this.

    Current system:
    Win 7 Premium 64-bit
    i5 750
    Radeon 5850 (Catalyst 10.2 will try updating and see if any different)
    Nothing overclocked or overheated as far as I can tell.

    edit: Catalyst 10.3 does the same thing.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited March 2010
    Hey guys I have a Radeon 5870 and experienced the exact same problems. This has been in numerous threads and there is a very easy fix. All you have to do is disable dynamic lighting in the video options.

    Honestly this has been a problem with Radeon cards in this game for a long time. It's pretty sad that a card we pay 300 plus bucks on we can't use all the features it has. But this is Cryptic so just go ahead and get used to it.

    Other then that it's a pretty fun game whenever it decides it's going to work.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited March 2010
    Fellfromgrace I love you. That did the trick it seems.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited March 2010
    Ok, this "interview" is from about a month ago, hope Mr Apolis is ok with me posting this if not just remove or PM me - I have no way of getting back in touch with Cryptic directly since I am not part of games industry press etc, I was just lucky and spotted him on the official chat room :)

    Session Start: Sat Mar 06 00:30:08 2010
    Session Ident: Cryptic_Mapolis
    01[00:30] <deathkittin> thought this may interest you
    01[00:30] <deathkittin> 01[23:46] <Swiftie_afk> ground graphics really need a lot of work compared to space
    01[00:30] <deathkittin> 01[23:46] <Swiftie_afk> so much low-res stuff on characters and indoors
    01[00:30] <deathkittin> 01[23:47] <Swiftie_afk> hope it happens but not got my hopes up, I think they toned it down deliberately for the console release there was talk of doing
    01[00:30] <deathkittin> 01[23:48] <Swiftie_afk> if you have it on max tho, there should be maximum quality versions
    01[00:30] <deathkittin> [23:48] <|-archangel-|> lights/shading look terrible since last patch
    01[00:30] <deathkittin> 01[23:49] <Swiftie_afk> space and planet landscapes are beautiful but characters and indoors ground maps, bleh
    01[00:30] <deathkittin> 23:50] <|-archangel-|> yeah space systems look great
    01[00:30] <deathkittin> [23:50] <|-archangel-|> the new lens flare though....
    01[00:30] <deathkittin> 01[23:51] <Swiftie_afk> think the problem is a lot of the ground textures are made too small then resized up
    01[00:30] <deathkittin> [23:51] <Blademage> hmm evasive + full power to engines > full impulse...
    01[00:30] <deathkittin> 01[23:52] <Swiftie_afk> character ones especially, with indoors environments stuff like windows being "flat" fake pictures just kills atmosphere, even DOOM had moving landscapes when you looked out windows
    01[00:30] <deathkittin> [23:53] <|-archangel-|> yeah i was so disappointed when i was on the ghost ship mission and the windows were just opaque black flats
    01[00:31] <deathkittin> 01[23:56] <Swiftie_afk> and the problem with it being a multiplayer game and all is that no one will ever make a HD texture mod like for other games cos it's just not possible, either devs do it or we're stuck with it forever :/
    [00:34] <Cryptic_Mapolis> interesting, I haven't heard of anyone claiming the textures are too low rez. Maybe his system specs are too low, because that would definitely cause the textures to downscale
    [00:35] <Cryptic_Mapolis> but yeah, interiors are a bit lackluster compared to space. We're aware of that, and I believe they will improve over time
    01[00:35] <deathkittin> oh that's great
    01[00:35] <deathkittin> I played city of heroes and it looks far too similar considering its about 10 years later
    01[00:36] <deathkittin> got a 5870 graphics card mass effect and fallout 3 look amazing
    01[00:36] <deathkittin> and the space parts in this :)
    01[00:37] <deathkittin> any idea what's with the tribbles on the tribble planet?
    01[00:37] <deathkittin> they look completely different from the ones you hold, they don't have the fluffy texture
    01[00:37] <deathkittin> it's like they put in the player held ones later after or something
    01[00:37] <deathkittin> I have everything on max
    [00:38] <Cryptic_Mapolis> the graphics on the ground were challenging mostly because they require more resources from the CPU and GPU, so we had to make them scaleable so low end machines could still run the game. That alone meant we had to cut back on the detail
    01[00:38] <deathkittin> the tribbles on tribble planet look kinda like plants
    [00:38] <Cryptic_Mapolis> if everyone had a GeForce 8800, it would look a lot better :)
    [00:38] <Cryptic_Mapolis> but a good portion of our users play the game with machines that are slower than our minimum specs
    01[00:38] <deathkittin> why use a geforce when 5870 beats it in every way? :)
    01[00:38] <deathkittin> but hmm isn't that what graphic settings are for?
    01[00:39] <deathkittin> I mean you have it open already to scale it down
    01[00:39] <deathkittin> in the video options
    [00:40] <Cryptic_Mapolis> we have to make our environments work within a certain range of GPUs, which means we can't do certain things simply because older cards wouln't support it
    [00:41] <Cryptic_Mapolis> the more things you have to make game art work for, the less you can do with it
    [00:41] <Cryptic_Mapolis> you sacrifice visual quality for compatibility
    [00:41] <Cryptic_Mapolis> as far as those tribbles, I dunno, I personally haven't seen that map :(
    01[00:42] <deathkittin> aw it's lovely apart from that
    01[00:42] <deathkittin> tribbles everywhere
    01[00:42] <deathkittin> ticket 717116
    01[00:42] <deathkittin> "On this map you get to see tribbles outside of a player held object for the first time, but they look wrong - the ones in this map 'Minas Korva Outpost' ('The Tribble with Klingons' episode) don't look fluffy at all unlike the player object held ones... they look kind of plant-like instead like the artist didn't know they were drawing something alive and someone animated to make them act like tribbles afterwards
    01[00:42] <deathkittin> - they really should be fluffy! At the very least on high/maximum graphics settings like I do (if that's why they were made like this for consoles or something) "
    [00:43] <Cryptic_Mapolis> I dont know why they're not fluffy, it shouldn't be that way
    01[00:43] <deathkittin> mm, its really raelly noticable when you see your own one compared to them
    [00:43] <Cryptic_Mapolis> but I remember overhearing something about having to scale the tribbles up so they can have large piles of them without going over our polygon budgets :)
    01[00:43] <deathkittin> you can actually pick up the tribbles in the mission too from the clumps inside the mission
    01[00:44] <deathkittin> and when you hold them they look completely different from how they did before
    01[00:44] <deathkittin> inside the lab part of it
    01[00:44] <deathkittin> ah you mean scale down :(
    [00:44] <Cryptic_Mapolis> hmm. that sounds crappy. I'll look into it
    01[00:44] <deathkittin> cool!
    01[00:44] <deathkittin> I understand totally that you have to make it be able to work with a range of GPUs, but shouldn't the high res textures be saved for when you put it to maximum?
    01[00:46] <deathkittin> not sure if you've played fallout 3 there's loads of demand for high res textures
    01[00:46] <deathkittin> e.g. http://www.fallout3nexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=1662
    01[00:47] <deathkittin> if you click the file one it says 24,645 downloads just on that one, there's tonnes of stuff like that on that site
    [00:49] <Cryptic_Mapolis> our system allows us to improve textures if we see the need
    01[00:49] <deathkittin> ooh, that's awesome
    [00:49] <Cryptic_Mapolis> if we get a lot of reports from users who feel the textures in a particular environment are too low rez, we can definitely rectify that
    [00:50] <Cryptic_Mapolis> but going forward we have to do it piecemeal, because everything we add to the game will have to be downloaded by players :)
    01[00:50] <deathkittin> cos I mean sure there's lots of people with PCs that barely run it but also a lot of people who buy cards just to run the games, and they are the ones that take cool fan screenshots that make great publicity, and videos etc :)
    [00:50] <Cryptic_Mapolis> and it turns out people don't like downloading 8GB patches...
    01[00:50] <deathkittin> *nodnod*

    CONTINUED INTO NEXT POST, REACHED THE TEXT CHARACTER LIMIT:
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited March 2010
    continued from last post because reached the text character limit:
    01[01:03] <deathkittin> it would be really nice if having dynamic lighting on didn't crash ATI cards at random times, I had to turn it off- but when it's on too it doesn't seem to do anything
    01[01:04] <deathkittin> think that might be a known issue as other people told me to turn that setting off when I complained about crashes just after beta
    01[01:06] <deathkittin> just still not seen any confirmation or addressing of it
    01[01:07] <deathkittin> I bought my card because it's the current top-performing one, I don't care about brands, I know you have that "nvidia the way it's meant to be played" thing on the game but it's really not on to support one manufacturer over another
    01[01:07] <deathkittin> same kind of practices that got microsoft into trouble
    01[01:08] <deathkittin> it's definitely well up to spec for dynamic lighting or anything that can be thrown at it really apart from when it seems like it hasn't been tested on ATI cards at all... http://img696.imageshack.us/img696/9176/screenshot139r.jpg :/
    [01:14] <Cryptic_Mapolis> we're always working out compatibility bugs, so if people are reporting it we're looking into it.
    01[01:14] <deathkittin> cool ok! :)
    01[01:15] <deathkittin> I originally submitted it as tech support request but was basically told GMs dont provide help of that kind and turned to a bug report
    01[01:15] <deathkittin> but yeah apparently it's been going on since beta is what I was told
    [01:15] <Cryptic_Mapolis> sometimes it's quite difficult to track down the exact cause of a crash though, especially with ATI cards. If it were an Nvidia card, we could actually contact Nvidia to help us debug the problem, but ATI doesn't offer very robust developer support, so fixing ATI related bugs turns out to be much harder :P
    [01:15] <Cryptic_Mapolis> but that doesn't mean ATI cards are less of a priority for us at all
    01[01:16] <deathkittin> oh cool ok
    [01:16] <Cryptic_Mapolis> the bugs are just tougher to track down, hehe
    01[01:16] <deathkittin> yeah, gits! lol
    01[01:20] <deathkittin> my ticket was 2nd februrary #584871 , it was a GM one but it said "We have refiled your ticket as a bug report on your behalf. While we understand you would like us to be able to resolve your issue quickly, some issues require further development from departments outside our control and cannot be resolved by a GM. Please rest assured that our developers work to resolve all bugs as quickly as possible" - after a <<-cut>}
    01[01:20] <deathkittin> {<cut->> month wasn't so reassuring :)
    [01:22] <Cryptic_Mapolis> ugh, that's lame, sorry
    [01:23] <Cryptic_Mapolis> let me go ask the programmer who deals with ATI bugs, maybe he has some insight on the crash
    01[01:23] <deathkittin> sok I'll manage, just wonder what the game looks like with dynamic lighting
    01[01:23] <deathkittin> oh cool!
    [01:25] <Cryptic_Mapolis> if you're playing without dynamic lighting, I'm sad for you :)
    01[01:25] <deathkittin> This is from Fallout 3 again: http://img94.imageshack.us/img94/8683/screenshot210t.jpg and http://img704.imageshack.us/img704/748/screenshot212x.jpg - If STO had better indoor graphics (the outside planet ones look lovely mostly) I think the borg missions could have that kind of "epic" atmosphere, it'd be something not a lot of multiplayer online games had apart from perhaps Left 4 Dead, it's already a bit like that <<-cut>}
    01[01:25] <deathkittin> {<cut->> compared to say games like warcraft but if you went further I think people'd love it and the critics would be a lot happier too
    [01:25] <Cryptic_Mapolis> dynamic lighting is tied to a lot of our high end art features
    01[01:26] <deathkittin> Oh interesting
    01[01:26] <deathkittin> Yeah when it's on for me nothing visibly changes between switching and applying/pressing ok except I get random crashes
    01[01:26] <deathkittin> ATI Radeon 5870
    01[01:27] <deathkittin> it's actually the highest performing card available in benchmarks, I shopped around carefully before I bought it :/

    If you like me have an expensive ATI card and are annoyed that we have second-class graphics to those that buy from a particular company (if you look on the main www.startrekonline.com site you will notice big "nvidia the way it's meant to be played" branding on EVERY PAGE at the bottom), try taking a look at www.startrekonline.com/videos (THE TWO LATEST VIDEOS UPLOADED ON THAT PAGE) to see what you are missing and prepare to get even more angry/disappointed...
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited March 2010
    p.s. regarding nvidias brand new card it's actually worse than the 5870 I have, ATI actually make the best graphics cards at the moment according to all the reviews I did my homework properly and it's still better even now this new card has been released :)

    ...so, it's very disappointing how Cryptic don't think it's important for on the release of a new game to have support for ATI cards for features they themselves say are pretty much vital like dynamic lighting...

    On a technology forum this is pretty much what people seem to be saying everywhere atm when I researched (to check whether it was time to buy a new card or not hehe :))
    http://forums.hexus.net/hexus-net/183495-nvidias-geforce-gtx-480-finally-unleashed-reviewed-rated-8.html#post1899293
    I was half expecting a 5970 killer ... I think it's a no brainer when it comes to 5870 vs 480GTX ...
    as to 5870 vs GTX480 - as you say, complete no-brainer. Even if someone gave me a GTX480, I'd probably sell it and buy myself a 5870 instead :D
    When a 480 with '250W' designation pulls more power at both idle and load than a 5970 with a '295W' designation it tells you something is up.
    One concern I have about the noise/heat issue with the 480 is that it's hard to imagine scope for aftermarket air coolers to outperform the stock cooler given its size. I guess it's watercooling or bust if you want it to use it at a sensible volume.

    I feel slightly vindicated in jumping ship to ATI now - I feared I may have leaped to early (based on Charlie's articles, which have been wrong in the past).

    also see: semiaccurate.com/2010/03/23/nvidia-bends-definition-honesty-gtx480-benches
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited March 2010
    I have submitted bug reports about this aswell as sending off the crash dumps and as yet, from the plethora of threads I have seen in these very forums, there has not been one single answer to this from Cryptic. Not even one acknowledging a problem.

    You cn play with limited Dynamic Lighting if you turn the settings down to 2 dynamic lights. SInce I did that I have not had a single crash. It is very annoying though if you have a graphics card, bought for a couple of hundred punds, that you have to rurn settings off on, especially for a problem that has been here since beta.

    A note to say we know and we are fixing it would be great Cryptic.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited March 2010
    Thanks for all the information, folks. I've tried a plethora of different routes to get a response on this, but it's been over a month and I still haven't heard back. Though now that I know that Cryptic's aware of the issue and I know why it hasn't been dealt with as of yet, I can understand the delay.
    Though, as for playing without dynamic lighting, yeah. That's not going to happen. I'll deal with the crashes. I updated my graphics card to the 5850 so I could eek out a bit more performance in Maya and Mudbox over my old GTX 280 and was hoping there wouldn't be any compatibility issues with other software, but I suppose it's to be expected. Hopefully ATI will patch their drivers, as I'm sort of inclined to believe the problem would be more easily rectified on their end as opposed to Cryptic's end. I suppose we'll see what happens.
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