Crash to desktop with effects turned on

from Sins Forums

First off, I'm running Sins Entrenchment through Impulse, and am using Windows 7 64-bit with an Intel 2600K, a GTX 570, and a Sound Blaster X-Fi. Video and sound drivers are up to date (I checked, for realz).

The problem is the game will crash to desktop at random intervals throughout the game. I've noticed that if I turn off all the visual effects it crashes far less often or not at all. If I turn on something like Ship Mesh Highlight Filter it starts crashing again. I've also noticed it happens more often when zoomed in on big fleet battles, but sometimes it crashes when zoomed all the way out.

The game will sometimes produce a dump file, but they are all completely empty, 0 bytes. I do have a save game that is almost guaranteed to crash a few minutes after loading if all the visual effects are turned on, if that helps.

Any help is appreciated.

technical
2,022 views 4 replies
Reply #1 from Sins Forums Top

How much RAM do you have, and how large are these battles? Usually crashes at random that are helped by lower effects are due to the game running out of RAM (I.e. 2 GB). Would also explain the 0 byte dump file.

If this is the issue, it was fixed with the Diplomacy expansion, but if you don't want to get that (and you probably don't due to Rebellion coming out), the Sins Optimization project may help or eliminate the problem.

Reply #2 from Sins Forums Top

The battle that takes place in the save game I mentioned is around 100 ships, so not that large really. And I have 8 GB RAM, so I don't think that's the problem.

Thanks for replying!

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Reply #3 from Sins Forums Top

Quoting HanyouHottie, reply 2
And I have 8 GB RAM, so I don't think that's the problem.
End of HanyouHottie's quote

The game only uses 2 GB, its a 32-bit .exe limit.

Your hitting that limit with all the options turned on.

Reply #4 from Sins Forums Top

Yes that does seem to be the case Carbon. Thanks for mentioning the Optimization project GoaFan. I applied that and haven't had a crash even with all the effects turned on! Out of curiosity I fired up vmmap and took a look at Sin's memory usage during the battle. With the optimization mod there was about 270 MB left in the game's address space, and without the mod it got down to 50 MB and crashed shortly afterwards.

Thanks for the help guys, and here's looking forward to Rebellion and its further optimizations!