Crashes when firing weapon with high quality fonts off

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jrosstheman
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Crashes when firing weapon with high quality fonts off

Post by jrosstheman »

I can't fire a weapon when I have the setting <var name="high_quality_font" value="false"/> in my config file. The game just locks up and repeats the firing sound but no weapons firing graphics. I can fire weapons with it set to true but the framerate drops from 30+ to 2-3 so it is unplayable.
I am using the current SVN on Windows XP home with an Intel mobile 945 express video chipset. I have tried changing all other settings concerned with graphics to try to get my weapons to work, and I have tried changing all the settings of my vid card drivers but no luck.
I love this game and can play 0.4.3 on it perfectly but I would love to have the new features in 0.5 to play with.
BTW, it seems that the system crashes with various messages at random times, usually when jumping or launching even using the lower graphics settings but this doesn't seem to happen with extreme graphis set, just I can't fire a weapon!
I notice there are quite a few config settings listed in the wiki but if anyone can tell me which ones I could add to help this situation I would be very grateful!
Please don't tell me that my graphics chipset sucks cause I know that already! Hehe! But I'm stuck with this one on this HP Mini notebook comp. Would love to find a workaround so I can do something more than just trade.
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Re: Crashes when firing weapon with high quality fonts off

Post by klauss »

Checklist:
  • Make sure you have the latest drivers. Most of the issues are in fact driver bugs, you can work around them, but the best fix for a driver bug is to update your drivers (and hopefully correct the bug that way).
  • Put "graphics detail" to extreme (lower levels have reported bugs, not found, not diagnosed, but reported).
  • Disable shaders. Intel GPUs have issues with our shaders, crashing issues.
  • Do play with high quality fonts and line antialiasing/smoothing (smooth_lines variable in vegastrike.config). Some GPU drivers have issues with line antialiasing.
  • Disable texture compression (in vegastrike.config), intel GPUs, depending on your driver, don't implement texture compression and will attempt to decompress our compressed textures - if you're lucky. If you're not, they'll misbehave. So it's better to let VS decompress the textures (which happens when you disable texture compression in vegastrike.config)
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Re: Crashes when firing weapon with high quality fonts off

Post by jrosstheman »

Using the newest version of vid drivers which are two years old.
Had already read about the problem with shaders and tried setting both ways.
Tried your other suggestions with no luck.
Still the only way I can get a decent framerate is with the high quality text turned off, but then I can't fire any weapons. All other settings have no effect.

Oh well, I can still enjoy the trading aspect with the new version and use the 0.4.3 for combat missions! (Can do everything on my home comp, but would like for this to run on my notebook for when I'm away from home.)
I know... buy a new notebook comp! Hehe!
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Re: Crashes when firing weapon with high quality fonts off

Post by klauss »

Did you try disabling sound?

(perhaps it's not the graphics that are at fault)
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Re: Crashes when firing weapon with high quality fonts off

Post by jrosstheman »

I hadn't but I just tried... no luck.
Sound plays perfectly at all times except when it locks up. As I mentioned, if I play with the high quality text set to true then everything works perfectly, including the sound, but my framerate drops to two or three. Turning off only this one setting increases the framerate to 30 or more but it locks up when I fire a weapon. I have even tried using a lesser quality video and turn on this one setting and my framerate drops but it quits locking up. I am in the process of copying and modifying the config settings listed in the wiki to start trying all of them to see if any of them will give me the increased framerate and still let me fire a weapon without locking up.
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Re: Crashes when firing weapon with high quality fonts off

Post by klauss »

Are you playing in fullscreen?
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Re: Crashes when firing weapon with high quality fonts off

Post by jrosstheman »

Well I must have done something right but I don't know what! I was running in full screen when I took on a mission and discovered the locking problem. Had a hard time getting out of full screen. Several times I even had to reboot to get out. While I was trying to figure out the settings to make it work I switched to windowed mode. Just now I reset it to full screen and the highest graphics setting. Still had a framerate of two or three. I switched to the next lower graphics setting (which has the high quality text set to false) and it works!
Don't know what I did in the meantime to cause it to quit locking up in fullscreen mode since this is the mode I was in when I first noticed the problem!

Thanks for your help! (even though I don't know what really helped!)
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Re: Crashes when firing weapon with high quality fonts off

Post by klauss »

Some hardware performs a lot worse in windowed mode, so it must have been that.
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Re: Crashes when firing weapon with high quality fonts off

Post by jrosstheman »

Seems I spoke too soon! It worked the first time I tried full screen since I read your post but the second time it locked up again as soon as I fired a weapon. The third time it worked again. Weird.
I think I'll try the max graphics setting with the high quality text turned off in full screen to see if that helps. It might have something to do with the lower graphics settings. At least I got to shoot a bad guy first!
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Re: Crashes when firing weapon with high quality fonts off

Post by jrosstheman »

Hmm, No luck yet. Still experiencing random crashes but at least it's not every time I try to fire a weapon.
If I find a combination of settings that will help I'll post them for others having the same problem.
Have found that the settings I'm using now will let me fire most of the times without a crash, but have noticed that sometimes when I'm fired upon by another craft it will crash. I'm wondering if it might be something in the weapons fire routines that are causing it. I'd love to get the source and check into it but right now I'm stuck with this laptop. I don't have any way to compile code on this machine to see if anything I find would help.
(My main comp has been down for a while due to power supply problems which I can't afford to fix on my budget right now. Need a much larger pwr supply for it.. Burned out three OEM supplies within two months!)
If anyone else can help I'd love to hear from youj.
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Re: Crashes when firing weapon with high quality fonts off

Post by jrosstheman »

My problem is apparently solved!
I found a post on another forum for another graphically intense game and someone was having the same problem with this particular graphics card.
They said that using the older driver for this chipset instead of the latest one solved their problem so I tried it.
I've already flown three missions without a crash. It was crashing every time I would land at a base after blasting the mission target. So evidently the latest Intel drivers are buggy!

I haven't tried the high quality text yet to see if my framerate drops with this driver.

EDIT Still getting only three frames per second with the high quality fonts turned on. Oh well, at least I can play the game now at 40+ fps with the hq fonts turned off without it crashing every time I try to dock!
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Re: Crashes when firing weapon with high quality fonts off

Post by klauss »

Please add your chipset and instructions on the wiki, this will help a lot of people surely :D

Glad you could solve it.
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Re: Crashes when firing weapon with high quality fonts off

Post by jrosstheman »

Ok, got it listed in the wiki. Here are the details...

Symptoms:
Random crashes no matter what settings used,
Crashed (locked up) every time I fired a weapon except when "high quality fonts" was true (in config) but frame rate was only 2-3 fps.

VS Versions Affected:
0.5.0 stable (downloaded version)
0.5.0 SVN up till latest update as of 08/21/2010. Some files were updated on that date which caused a crash on starting. Will check again when a new exe is uploaded.

Chipset:
Intel Mobile 945 Express Chipset and probably others in the 9*5 family.

OS:
Windows XP Home, SP3

System:
HP "Mini", 1.6ghz Atom processor

Fix:
Revert to the previous video driver here "

http://downloadcenter.intel.com/SearchR ... set+Family

http://snipurl.com/10rty2"
(Sorry for the above URL, it takes you to a list of drivers. Yours should be on the third page. Look for the following info...)
This is version 14.32.3 updated on 01/08/2008.

Make sure all video settings are at the default.
Use Extreme Quality, No Shaders. Other settings don't seem to matter.
If you experience very low (2-3 FPS) framerates, edit VegaStrike.conf and look for the entry for "geforce 3" . Change the line which reads "high quality fonts Value=True" to say "false" instead.

I've made the above changes on my HP Mini and can run it in 800x600 full screen or windowed. You can also make a change in the config file to get the 1024x600 default full screen mode. Simply look for a section labeled "1024x640" in the list of video modes and change the 640 to 600.

Hope this info helps some of you run this fine game on many of the new "mini notebook" and other computers that use this particular chipset.
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Re: Crashes when firing weapon with high quality fonts off

Post by jrosstheman »

Update:

On my particular comp with the above graphics driver installed I have no problems with any of the shader settings. I might be missing something but I've not seen any noticable differences in the view no matter what settings I use so evidently the shader settings are automatically set by the driver.

The problem with the current SVN update is NOT The graphics driver.
On the date mentioned above I played the checked out game I had and it worked perfectly as I describe above. However that night I updated from SVN and it started crashing immediately. Unlike the prior crashes, every time it crashed it gave me the message that the program was asked to terminate unexpectedly.
Upon checking the error log I found a *lot* of files that it was looking for weren't being found. Evidently the new exe that was uploaded on that date had different paths for it's files. I located the ones it was asking for at the time and moved them to where it could find them and got it to give me the main menu. However when I tried to create a new game it started looking for a lot of new files that evidently haven't been uploaded to SVN yet.

Still playing the 0.5.0 released version with NO crashes now! Can't wait to use the new features in the SVN version again as soon as they add the necessary support files!
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Re: Crashes when firing weapon with high quality fonts off

Post by klauss »

Take a look at this thread

The current .exe in SVN isn't able to handle the newest graphics techniques, you have to check out a specific revision (prior to those techniques).
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Re: Crashes when firing weapon with high quality fonts off

Post by jrosstheman »

Thanks for the link Klause! I found I wasn't using TortoiseSVN properly! (That's what I get for just jumping in and not rtfm!)
As I mentioned earlier, as soon as I rolled back my graphics driver I was able to play the "then current" SVN for about two or three hours without a crash. I don't have an internet connection at home but I was at a friends house. I was getting ready to go home so I updated from the SVN before I left and noticed that the exe was updated along with adding quite a few graphics and other data files. This is when my "new" problem began! I had been updating from SVN whenever I could get a connection so the working copy I had was only a few days old. Whatever they did to the exe or some of the other files broke it! It started looking in a different place for quite a few files that were in the system but not where it was looking, and started looking for quite a few other files that weren't in the directory structure anywhere.
But thanks for the link you gave on how to use SVN to roll back properly allowed me to start using it again! I'll make enough room on my drive to export a working copy of my current setup to play with while I keep the main copy updated so that I can tell when they get it fixed!
I love this game and glad to see it finally becoming something worth playing! (I've had this game ever since there was a barely running exe and a small world but nothing else to do but fly around! No AI ships or anything.)
Thanks again for your patience with me and all of your help.
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