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Great game, but freezes/locks up on 4 different PCs

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Jun 6, 2012
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  • Naval War: Arctic Circle
I love this game, it reminds me so much of Strike Fleet back in the commodore days.

Unfortunately like others I've had problems with it freezing on nearly every single mission. I have 3 gaming PCs and an Asus i7 gaming laptop with all of them running windows7. I've been able to complete maybe one mission in 5 without having to cntrl alt delete out after lockup on all the systems I have, and also a neighbours crappy older PC. I've read that this bug isn't reproduce-able at the dev offices, which sounds strange as I have a variety of pc s with both the latest nvidia and ati cards, and i7 cpus, all with current drivers which I use to play aces high and some other high end simulations, and I have zero trouble with any of these half dozen games. I've tried every sound and video resolution, sound all off, playing in a window, like every combination of variations to try and make this work. It's so frustrating mainly because I see so much potential and the game is so good, that it sucks having the 4th mission in the soviet campaign lock 23 times in a row when I get so close to victory.

Here's to hoping it can be fixed.....great game, and a superb game once it works. I won't be a guy crying over 20 dollars, even broken I have received full value for that price, and having worked in the industry long ago, I know what the devs have done in creating what can possibly become a masterpiece of balance between Harpoon and Fleet Command, and I thank them for creating something that the masses will never appreciate like us sim geeks.

I won't bother posting logs etc, as like I said I have tried with similar results on all my different boxes, and I'm sure the dev team is getting sick of seeing them posted. The answer is out there, and I can't wait for the day we get to hear it.
 
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Herman Hum: crashing the engine - I mean the CPU load on NWAC process goes to 0%, but there is still graphics displayed and I still can move my mouse around etc. It doesn't close the application.
command line parameters - NWAC.exe is just renamed Unity 3D player. If you go to Unity 3D manual you will see following section:
"
Unity Standalone Player command line arguments

Standalone players built with Unity also understand some command line arguments:

-batchmode
Run the game in "headless" mode. The game will not display anything or accept user input. This is mostly useful for running servers for networked games.
-force-opengl (Windows only)
Make the game use OpenGL for rendering, even if Direct3D is available. Normally Direct3D is used but OpenGL is used if Direct3D 9.0c is not available.
-single-instance (Windows only)
Allow only one instance of the game to run at the time. If another instance is already running then launching it again with -single-instance will just focus the existing one.
-nolog (Windows only)
Do not produce output log. Normally output_log.txt is written in the *_Data folder next to the game executable, where Debug.Log output is printed.
-force-d3d9-ref (Windows only)
Make the game run using Direct3D's "Reference" software renderer. The DirectX SDK has to be installed for this to work. This is mostly useful for building automated test suites, where you want to ensure rendering is exactly the same no matter what graphics card is being used.
-adapter N (Windows only)
Allows the game to run full-screen on another display, where N denotes the display number.
-popupwindow (Windows only)
The window will be created as a a pop-up window (without a frame).

"
 
Thanks for the command line arguments. I tried one of them and got some positive results. I used:

"C:\Program Files\Steam\steamapps\common\naval war arctic circle\NWAC.exe" -nolog -force-opengl

I also set all my game processes single affinity, ran in Steam in offline-mode, and had my 3D turned off.

The very positive results were:

1) The 3D was a silly pink before, now it is a nice solid Black screen.
2) The game was a bit slow, but control was excellent. I maintained control nearly to the end. The game might have stuttered/slowed a bit, but ran smoothly enough.
3) I was able to cycle up and down through time compression (until the end).
4) Before this test, detecting subs was very, very easy. I think that an E-3 Sentry might have been detecting them! Now, the North by Northwest scenario actually did not reveal the submarines very early and I had to actually hunt them down.
5) At one point, a Russian fighter intercepted and killed my E-3. Game was on high speed time compression. The game seemed to stutter a bit as it went through the combat resolution, but control returned to me.

The problem arose when I made an attack on the enemy surface group.

1) High time compression
2) 55 ASMs

After this attack, I lost control of the time compression and, pretty much, the game. Sigh.

In the future, I think that I will try to resolve all attacks in 1:1 or 1:5 compression.

I also tried these settings with the Ragnarok scenario and experienced a complete CTD [crash-to-desktop]. So, it isn't a home run, but is a 2-base hit IMO.

For those with problems, you might start trying a few of these command line parameters and see if it can improve your game. In my case, the use of the -force-opengl parameter returned my performance *almost* to pre-1.0.7.2 levels.
 
Alas, the positive results lasted only for one test. In subsequent tests, control over time compression was lost early. It appears as though it happens when the enemy detects me. As long as I remain hidden, it appears to work. Sadly, no long lasting improvement with this command line parameter.
 
There is one more thing I noticed. When the game crashes and I killed the process in Task Manager, next time I launched the game I had multiple problems (aircraft failed to launch, aircrafts crashing on landing - from 96 planes 11 crashed on landing, unable to fire missiles on bearing but was able to fire them on target). To clean it up I have to launch the game once again and quit to desktop, like the game was leaving some garbage in memory.
 
Interesting theory. I think it has some credence and might explain some similarly odd behaviours I've seen. Last night, I had a helicopter crash on launch! First time I've ever seen that. When I see any oddness in the future, I'll remember to shut down to the desktop, 'cleanse' the buffer once, before starting up from scratch.
 
I think that I've managed to find a work-around solution for the time compression bug as well as many of the crash-related bugs. I have been able to play some of the biggest scenarios such as the Red Storm series from beginning to end as long as I observed certain practices and procedures. Even with hundreds of missiles and aircraft in the air, I was able to avoid the bugs and successfully finish those scenarios.

Anyone wanting to know how I did it can contact me via PM and we can arrange a time to get together so that I can show what I did.
 
In direct response to multiple requests from various Naval War: Arctic Circle players for assistance:
Gman45

Is there anyone who is playing this game who has it work seamlessly? Like no lock ups at all, the ability to use time compression at will and have it work properly without causing freezes etc?
Click to expand...
http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum...ferent-PCs&p=13958152&viewfull=1#post13958152

A new video for "NWAC Bug avoidance techniques" has been added the YouTube Harpoon for Dummies channel to help players navigate the complexities of the game and to deliver the best possible playing experience.

You can watch NWAC Bug avoidance techniques:

[video=youtube;mHvTmtzB_xg]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mHvTmtzB_xg[/video]
 
mitra76 said:
The only proper solution will be release a debug version of engine for trace the problem, if Turbo tape cannot replicate the error itself
Click to expand...

Fixed that for you. :)

If you have been following this forum, you will know that users must rely upon their own means for finding solutions as the developers care not a whit for actually fixing problems. Instead, bug reports are generally derided as only happening to a minority and are supposedly irreplicable (even when volunteers offer to demonstrate their occurrence.)
 
I saw it, but this is bad, because in this case is evident the problem is general and not related to specific computer configuration. I read TT people had in this moment a mourning in family, and this is sure more important than a game, I hope after this sad moment pass, they will not leave the process of correct and improve the game.
 
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