Hey.
Played AoEO from Alpha until shutdown. Then later intermediately tested the fan projects trying to revive the game. In 2018 started playing Celeste but somewhere along the line I started getting CTDs. Didn't find a solution and picked up other games.
Now I'm on a different system and trying to get back in the game but somehow I'm still getting the same CTDs.
Symptoms:
- First place I get CTDs is while switching regions. I can switch around but after playing for a random amount of time and then switching map right at the end of loading, the client CTDs. The sound keeps working on the loading screen until the crash so I can hear that I "arrive" in the region but right at the end I get the CTD. I can hear that bell chime just before the CTD.
- Second place and much more annoying CTDs are during missions. I can play for 15-60 minutes but somewhere the client will just disappear. It's not a consistent action in the game that it happens on. The only consistency in the inconsistency is that the more units, the faster the CTD will come. For example I can play multiple quests with low unit count in the mission before it crashes but if I play a 4vs4 skirmish, it'll crash around 15 min playtime when a few 100 units are on the map.
- Third problem doesn't give CTDs but maybe it might be related and could help in the diagnose. In the game after a short while art assets randomly stop loading or displaying correctly.
It happens with loading screens where the loading screen will be completely white but text and progress bars are still there. It's also not all loading screens at once. Some will become white while other loading screens just keep displaying. And the next time I get the same loading screen, it might be there or one that was showing previously is now white.
And I get the same in UI dialogues where the background of the dialogue is completely white but everything else like text or buttons keep showing. And just like with the loading screens; when it happens to some, some others don't have it.
I added a screenshot of a failing UI dialogue and also loading screen in the link I provided below.
Things I tried:
- Updating drivers etc
- Enable/disable SLI
- Full screen/Windowed mode
- Tried both the install I have from Steam and a standalone install
- Tried game scans
- Tried deleting everything and reinstalling
- Tried the extra installs mentioned on the install page
I made a collection of things that can maybe help a diagnostics. They're all at https://www.dropbox.com/sh/hoqomlzckctec0n/AACbVYbVSVT1HVNZa99YcChHa?dl=0
Logs from the client folder. Logs from Windows event viewer. Dxdiag and aida64 report for software and hardware config and also a 40 minute pingplotter while playing the game and having a CTD at the end. And some screenshots of the assets problem.
I can't manage to create a dump. When I try to enable diagnostics mode, the first time on fresh install the game adds the procdump executables but whatever I try, no dumps get created in the documents folder on crash. If the diagnostics mode is native to the client I understand why the exception wouldn't be caught because it's a hard exit with fault 0 but if the launcher is meant to monitor, something is going wrong there.
Maybe an interesting thing I can add is when I get a CTD while playing missions, the faulting application is spartan.exe and the faulting module is spartan.exe. When I get a CTD on the loading screen when switching regions, the faulting application is still spartan.exe but then the faulting module is d3dx9_40.dll.
Other than that I don't manage to find much in there that I can do anything with.
The problem stumps me.
Assets not loading could suggest game files are wrong. But they don't always fail and I've done so many game scan and complete reinstalls already.
The CTDs happening at a random time but the more memory used, the faster they happen indicate memory bugs. But then every player should be getting those. And if they were oom exceptions, .NET would catch them instead of giving a CTD.
It doesn't appear to be network because ping and packet loss is stable.
The problems are also isolated to Celeste. Games with bugs I'll encounter bugs but I mean that in general, among hundreds of other games, I don't have any that show similar problems. If other games or software did, it would make it more likely that hardware or drivers would be the main candidates as the cause. Other games from 30 years ago to today work fine so it's not a general system problem. And no other Microsoft games from the era or that used to have GFWL have problems so it's not that there are certain API calls or libs they used that are failing.
And the problem has carried over from my old 3930K based system with Win7 to my 3950X based system with a fresh Win10.
Hope someone has an idea what is happening.
Been programming .NET for over 15 years so if needed you can talk me through more advanced debugging if it would help. Or if there are other simple things to try that I've undoubtly overlooked.
Played AoEO from Alpha until shutdown. Then later intermediately tested the fan projects trying to revive the game. In 2018 started playing Celeste but somewhere along the line I started getting CTDs. Didn't find a solution and picked up other games.
Now I'm on a different system and trying to get back in the game but somehow I'm still getting the same CTDs.
Symptoms:
- First place I get CTDs is while switching regions. I can switch around but after playing for a random amount of time and then switching map right at the end of loading, the client CTDs. The sound keeps working on the loading screen until the crash so I can hear that I "arrive" in the region but right at the end I get the CTD. I can hear that bell chime just before the CTD.
- Second place and much more annoying CTDs are during missions. I can play for 15-60 minutes but somewhere the client will just disappear. It's not a consistent action in the game that it happens on. The only consistency in the inconsistency is that the more units, the faster the CTD will come. For example I can play multiple quests with low unit count in the mission before it crashes but if I play a 4vs4 skirmish, it'll crash around 15 min playtime when a few 100 units are on the map.
- Third problem doesn't give CTDs but maybe it might be related and could help in the diagnose. In the game after a short while art assets randomly stop loading or displaying correctly.
It happens with loading screens where the loading screen will be completely white but text and progress bars are still there. It's also not all loading screens at once. Some will become white while other loading screens just keep displaying. And the next time I get the same loading screen, it might be there or one that was showing previously is now white.
And I get the same in UI dialogues where the background of the dialogue is completely white but everything else like text or buttons keep showing. And just like with the loading screens; when it happens to some, some others don't have it.
I added a screenshot of a failing UI dialogue and also loading screen in the link I provided below.
Things I tried:
- Updating drivers etc
- Enable/disable SLI
- Full screen/Windowed mode
- Tried both the install I have from Steam and a standalone install
- Tried game scans
- Tried deleting everything and reinstalling
- Tried the extra installs mentioned on the install page
I made a collection of things that can maybe help a diagnostics. They're all at https://www.dropbox.com/sh/hoqomlzckctec0n/AACbVYbVSVT1HVNZa99YcChHa?dl=0
Logs from the client folder. Logs from Windows event viewer. Dxdiag and aida64 report for software and hardware config and also a 40 minute pingplotter while playing the game and having a CTD at the end. And some screenshots of the assets problem.
I can't manage to create a dump. When I try to enable diagnostics mode, the first time on fresh install the game adds the procdump executables but whatever I try, no dumps get created in the documents folder on crash. If the diagnostics mode is native to the client I understand why the exception wouldn't be caught because it's a hard exit with fault 0 but if the launcher is meant to monitor, something is going wrong there.
Maybe an interesting thing I can add is when I get a CTD while playing missions, the faulting application is spartan.exe and the faulting module is spartan.exe. When I get a CTD on the loading screen when switching regions, the faulting application is still spartan.exe but then the faulting module is d3dx9_40.dll.
Other than that I don't manage to find much in there that I can do anything with.
The problem stumps me.
Assets not loading could suggest game files are wrong. But they don't always fail and I've done so many game scan and complete reinstalls already.
The CTDs happening at a random time but the more memory used, the faster they happen indicate memory bugs. But then every player should be getting those. And if they were oom exceptions, .NET would catch them instead of giving a CTD.
It doesn't appear to be network because ping and packet loss is stable.
The problems are also isolated to Celeste. Games with bugs I'll encounter bugs but I mean that in general, among hundreds of other games, I don't have any that show similar problems. If other games or software did, it would make it more likely that hardware or drivers would be the main candidates as the cause. Other games from 30 years ago to today work fine so it's not a general system problem. And no other Microsoft games from the era or that used to have GFWL have problems so it's not that there are certain API calls or libs they used that are failing.
And the problem has carried over from my old 3930K based system with Win7 to my 3950X based system with a fresh Win10.
Hope someone has an idea what is happening.
Been programming .NET for over 15 years so if needed you can talk me through more advanced debugging if it would help. Or if there are other simple things to try that I've undoubtly overlooked.
