Giant scale AI games crash regularly

from Sins Forums

I'm not complaining, since I know for a fact I'm currently playing the beta of SoaSE, but I would like to point out a quick and easy testing mechanism:

 

1. Start a giant game with 9 AI players.  

2. Scuttle yourself.  

3. Continue playing.

4. Speed up the game to x8 mode.

5. Wait for the crash.  (No, I'm not being smart.  This is a stress testing option...)

 

System specs:

i7 cpu (Only get's up to about 55c during the tests)

8 gig ram

1 gig HD

nVidia GeForce GTX 560 Ti video card (game barely uses it...)

 

As you can see, I have a game development PC, and have no issues running the game at full graphics and Ai players.  After a half hour of play at x8 speed, the game tends to crash to desktop with no real error information.  

 

If you can tell me where the logs are stored for crashes, I'll be glad to send in the files to help track down these bugs.  Fact is, they should be some of the easiest to deal with, since they are ones that happen without human interaction.  Probably memory leaks and the like.

 

Good game, though.  Really good game.

technical
2,884 views 5 replies
Reply #1 from Sins Forums Top

I have thie exact same problem.  I tend to play on single system Huge maps and i can play for about 30-60 minutes before the game ends and i am looking at my desktop with no explanation and no report to think of.  I tried what you said and it only crashed faster :).  Anyways i also do some programming but i tried in game experiences that would make it crash and when a ship is in the middle of a jump and dies on my screen it happens.  Sometimes it crashes and this didnt occur which make me believe if it happens in game then it crashes.  Also during a large battle with at least 40 or 50 ships a side and full stations on the planet as well if new ships jump in or jump out it crashes sometimes.  i think it might be like you said, some memory leak or ai problem where two contradicting actions like jump and die occur at once on a single ship and the game flops. Anyways i put my system specs below but i cant find the crash files so if anyone can help id be more tahn happy to submit.  Great game though cant wait to get in a full game with my dual starbases :) try to break that rebel scum.

I7 with an EVGA X58 SLI3 motherboard

12gigs of Ram

1 terabyte of memory

Geforce 570

Reply #2 from Sins Forums Top

4. Speed up the game to x8 mode.
End of quote

 

Running the game @ this speed for a long time will always crash the game, been like this since forever.

 

Due the sheer ammount of things to keep track of late game, I suppect that running it @ 8x speed simple clogs the game up and it crashes.

 

Since this game only runs on 1 core, its only a matter of time before you overwhelm it. 

The Political Machine 2024
Reply #3 from Sins Forums Top

true but i only did that because he said it crashed and i assumed it was simply recreating the problem earlier.  Anyways i tried a few things and i think it might be a sound file that isnt working correctly. everytime it crashes i makes some wierd noise then crashes. happened 3 times in the last 2 hours and everytime it makes that same strange noise.

Reply #4 from Sins Forums Top

the noise is probably just left over data in the sound buffer, perfectly normal..... and to be expected if the sound system has been designed in a certain way

the game engine is probably tripping over, meaning more and likely some piece of data has wondered outside the range of what the game is aware off, nearly all data must be accounted for at all times.... if data gets lost, but then suddenly comes  back on the playing field so to speak.... game crash for sure, or at the very least game stability will definitely be compromised, speeding the game up increases the chance of crashing because a piece of code has been executed that has generated/lost some data...... in simple terms it's like how vehicles are more likely to crash the faster there going.

 

Clean, efficient coding solves a lot of these types of issues, but also error handling within a programs code needs to get implemented too (code that is designed to keep track of data, and to clean up residue left over data within data structures)

game is still in development, code is constantly changing, so this will be low priority for the time being i would of thought.

but time is getting on though for the most part.... biggest problem for this game is it's so easy to push it beyond the resources that the game engine can tap into.....

x64 bit resolves the memory issue..... (which is definitely needed)

only a multi-threaded engine can give this game the RAW power it needs just like it's predecessor needed too, but unfortunately ironclad developers don't know how to do that yet (it still take a rare breed of programmer to pull of multi-threading game engines..... very difficult to the point where most developers although reluctant to admit it just DON'T KNOW HOW TO DO IT)
if they did then i'm sure we would of have it for rebellion..... they know just like we do that Rebellion needs access to more CPU power... but for whatever reason they just can't do that (i still think it's because they don't know how too, and not because there choosing not too)

 

 

Reply #5 from Sins Forums Top

To be honest I would try saving the game at some point and closing the program. Reboot your machine and come back. Back in the Entrenchment days when a friend and I used to play large games we found doing that would clear the lag that built up over the course of a long game. Every couple of hours or so we would just save, reboot, and come back and we were having less dumps and cleaner game play. We would still get slow down during large fleet battles but that is expected.