Victoria III - Transitioning to and from paper map sometimes crashes or freezes the game. (Steam Deck)

[ghost_of_donut]

Short summary of your issue
Transitioning to and from paper map sometimes crashes or freezes the game. (Steam Deck)

Game Version
1.3.6

What OS are you playing on?
Linux (other non supported distro)

Do you have mods enabled?
No

Have you tried verifying your game files?
No

How much "pain" is this causing you?
9

Please explain the issue you experienced in the most condensed way possible
Using the non-paper map (i.e. the realistic-looking map) occasionally causes a problem: there will be EXTREME lag, both of the video and audio (sounds like music plays for a fraction of a second at a time), followed by the game either crashing or staying indefinitely in this state, causing the Steam Deck to run at full tilt until power is forced off (it's impossible to recover otherwise as the entire system is effectively frozen; the tiniest mouse movements are possible but it's impossible to coordinate or click on anything).

Please explain how to reproduce the issue
On Steam Deck, in either gaming mode or desktop mode, use the realistic map while playing. The issue seems to happen much more often when transitioning to and from paper map mode, so try zooming in and out repeatedly. I THINK it happens more often with graphics settings turned higher, so try turning them all the way up (though the issue happens on very conservative settings anyway).

Is there anything else you think could help us identify/replicate the issue?
This issue has plagued me since V3's initial release (often frustrates me enough to stop playing for long periods, hoping a patch will fix it; also affects how I play, desperately trying to avoid zooming the map).
As far as I can recall (from all the times this has happened), unpausing the game is not necessary for the issue to occur, though will probably make it more likely especially at high speeds.
Attached save game is not specific to the issue, but it last happened to me around March 3 (I think?) in game, after that save.
The "crashes" folder was empty of any crash reports.

I have attached a save game
Yes

Upload Attachment
File(s) attached

 

[PDX_Sosanna]

Hello! Sadly we do not officially support Steam Deck and it's OS at this time. Lack of logs in the folder suggests that the game is terminated by the OS, not the game itself, as such there is nothing we can do on QA department side (since we do not support the OS) :/

 

[ghost_of_donut]

Thanks for the reply. Please consider supporting Steam Deck; it's a popular platform where everyone has a nearly identical hardware configuration.

By the way, I don't know that this bug doesn't happen on other platforms; it's just that I only have Steam Deck to play on.

 

[PDX_Sosanna]

By the way, I don't know that this bug doesn't happen on other platforms; it's just that I only have Steam Deck to play on.

It doesn't occur on supported platforms that can run the game, no. Transitioning between paper map and 3D map increases the demand on the GPU and if the hardware or drivers can't handle the increased load, then the system will terminate the game.
Since you don't have any different PC devices to play Victoria 3 on, I'll move the thread to Technical Support in case they can come up with anything to help you!
Best regards.

 

[AndrewT]

Do you have access to any other machine, perhaps from a friend or relative, to confirm it doesn't happen there?

Assuming not this will have to be due to the video system, the AMD RDNA 2 which only has 1 gb of Vram. You can try unloading every other app you can before starting the game, and running the game at the lowest video settings you can stand.

Good luck!

 

[ghost_of_donut]

Sorry, not able to install V3 on anyone else's device. Though, I looked up about the VRAM and Steam Deck actually dynamically allocates more VRAM as necessary (it has shared memory). So it can go to 8 GB of VRAM, well above V3's minimum requirement of 2 GB.
Closing all other apps is something I do anyway when I game, and I've tried changing all graphics settings to bare minimum (though I can't remember if I had any crashes with those settings...even the paper map was ugly AF so I changed shader quality back to medium ). Anyway, I was introduced to a mod that removes the 3D map entirely, so with any luck that'll allow me to play now. Thanks for trying.

 

[AndrewT]

So it can go to 8 GB of VRAM, well above V3's minimum requirement of 2 GB.

It can, but does it? Is there a way of checking Vram usage?