Why can't games just work Playstation style out of the box instead of all this hassle

[illu]

Hi

Fed up of every computer I have had, every one has had different problems with DAOC.

Is it just shoddy programming? Is the game just very intensive on resources?

My first PC used to crash on porting, I eventually found that the RAM which was fine in every other game, had errors on it, changed the RAM, then also used ToA as this seemed the most stable.

Another PC DAOC crashes every 2hrs05mins -> 2hrs10mins. Every time. No reason at all.

Now this PC just crashes out of DAOC to desktop if I am lucky or it reboots the computer. It's a new PC with a 6800gt and new RAM, so I am in the process of testing the RAM yet again, and I will probably change the 400w Power Supply to a 500w one soon.

Just wish this damn game would WORK FIRST TIME!

Oli - Illu

 

[Kaun_IA]

it think there can be some driver problems too!!

but thats all i can say, becouse ur comp is totaly new

 

[Honza]

I am playing DAoC for two years now... During all that time I got 1 (by words ONE) game crash. Show me any other THAT stable game ;p

Considering your problems... maybe change your PC manufacturer next time?

About playstation style... don't forget all those gimpy playstations are exactly the same... but PCs... how many different processors, memories, chipsets, graphic cards you can find... make some combinatory calculations and you climb in thousands possible configurations that can run DAoC. Not mentioning the trouble still can be somewhere between monitor and chair ;-)

And your LDs at about 2hrs +- a bit... Check your router/firewall you don't DOS (denial of service) unserialised UDP packets... If it is turned on, it's the reason.

I'd also suggest you check your CPU with CPU-Z utility (if it is really that you wanted, not some pirated OCed crap) and run stress benchmarks with it for 12hours at least (cpu stability test and others).

 

[DocWolfe]

you need to do research into the components you buy for your computer before you make it, ram/motherboard is usually the biggest culprit.

But it could be other things like the heatsink on you're cpu isn't seated properly, one of your PCI cards isn't pushed in fully, not enough fans in your case, your psu is undervolting your system, you've fried one of the components while installing it, software, drivers the list goes on.

 

[Honza]

imo take Corsairs+Asus and feck the check... nevertheless it's best RAM/mobo you can get and working ubah ubah - no matter what model it is.

 

[Fana]

and I will probably change the 400w Power Supply to a 500w one soon.

Thats most likely your problem there - PSU isnt strong enough to handle a modern CPU+GFX (and other stuff im guessing you have like dvd burner, multiple hd's, fans etc). You really need a 500w today to play games. Had the same problem with a 400w one - pc would reboot randomly or fail to boot etc, changed to 500w and no problems anymore.
Random crashes and reboots are most likely due to faulty/weak psu or bad ram anyway.

 

[Honza]

Good brand 400W >>>>> common 500W PSU
alas for power consumption, check http://graphics.tomshardware.com/graphic/20050622/nvidia_7800_gtx-10.html power consumption benchmarks of modern computers.

By their benchmark, your 400W source can handle what you need no problem (unless it's bad brand/noname crap)

Also I'd recommend you opening up your PC and check MOBO, if some of capacitors are not bloated... if they are, it is very probably you are getting bad power to certain components (the capacitor is damaged and doesn't do it's job)

 

[Deleted member 4013]

Thats most likely your problem there - PSU isnt strong enough to handle a modern CPU+GFX (and other stuff im guessing you have like dvd burner, multiple hd's, fans etc). You really need a 500w today to play games. Had the same problem with a 400w one - pc would reboot randomly or fail to boot etc, changed to 500w and no problems anymore.
Random crashes and reboots are most likely due to faulty/weak psu or bad ram anyway.

Its not the wats what the PSU provides - its the % with different voltages from it to the motherboard vary. If you buy a quality PSU, these % are very marginal - on the other hand, if you buy a cheap one the % of variance can be significant at worst -> can make your computer reboot, if some part of the motherboard doesn't get enough voltage.

I have always tried to buy quality PSUs which are also very quiet.

 

[Alan]

I am playing DAoC for two years now... During all that time I got 1 (by words ONE) game crash. Show me any other THAT stable game ;p

Considering your problems... maybe change your PC manufacturer next time?

About playstation style... don't forget all those gimpy playstations are exactly the same... but PCs... how many different processors, memories, chipsets, graphic cards you can find... make some combinatory calculations and you climb in thousands possible configurations that can run DAoC. Not mentioning the trouble still can be somewhere between monitor and chair ;-)

And your LDs at about 2hrs +- a bit... Check your router/firewall you don't DOS (denial of service) unserialised UDP packets... If it is turned on, it's the reason.

I'd also suggest you check your CPU with CPU-Z utility (if it is really that you wanted, not some pirated OCed crap) and run stress benchmarks with it for 12hours at least (cpu stability test and others).

Same here, in all my playing of DAOC, ive only ever had one instance where the PC rebooted and that was on my old kit. Havent had any problems since then.

If every PC was made with the same hardware, same drivers and had an operating system that you cant configure (just like the consoles) then you would find all PC games to be stable.

 

[Boni]

Is it just shoddy programming?

As a games programmer myself, I know the majority of games out there work on a PC thats setup properly. If they didnt then those companise would be flooded with returns, which would dent their valuable profits and that company would quickly get a bad reputation for buggy code.

When you write a game for the playstation, and test it, you have a pretty good idea it will work on every playstation in the world, as they all contain the same hardware and software.

When you write a game for the PC, you have to rely on your customer having a computer made of 10+ different bits of hardware and software all setup and working correctly. Unfortunalty this is well beyond the capabilites of most home users who arent PC experts.

How many times have you checked your bios version? Hard drives, PSU, OS, Viruses, add-aware, trojans, defective memory sticks, faulty cables, broken AGP slots, old drivers, badly installed drivers, wrong drivers, I could type this list for pages....

In short the reason PC games (and indeed PCs) dont work well for some people is that they have bad software or hardware and theres not a thing us games programmers can do, time for you to learn more about your PC or settle for a console.

 

[Honza]

^^
Long story short: PC is much more powerful toy than any console can be, but requires users to be able at least basicaly control it's power.

Another comparison... Give your grandma the newest Ferrari so she has car for shopping ;p

 

[Job]

you think daoc is bad?
i remember the days of doom,quake, unreal, tthey were freakin awful, first they would scroll past every goddam line of code as they loaded and just randomnly fail , lock whole pc, or just blank screen, you'd have to type all kinds of crap in dos to get them to even think about loading, cos i remember those days i'm always amazed, when daoc just loads and runs without kicking out endless hexadecimal error codes

 

[Ballard]

yah i used to love playing with emm386 to make sure i had the right amount of extended or expanded memory avaliable depending on what type the game/program required.
Kids have it easy these days.

 

[Herjulf]

The reason games dont work out of the box 100% for pc´s are that every PC more or less is different.
And games cant 100% adapt to every combination of PC and their firm/software/drivers combinations.

Also that alot of people are friggin stupid/lazy and wont update their drivers/firmwares etc. people running their mainboard with out of the box chipset drivers, and running network cards with the out of the box drivers.
or <insert hardware unit here> drivers from the disk/cd that came with the card etc.

Those are the most common reasons.

 

[Takhasis]

yah i used to love playing with emm386 to make sure i had the right amount of extended or expanded memory avaliable depending on what type the game/program required.
Kids have it easy these days.

ah, the good old days of multi-boot option config.sys files....

waits for all the kids to say "wtf is that about??"

:worthy:

 

[Honza]

I remember I had 607kB free low mem even with CD drivers on

 

[Ingafgrinn Macabre]

Ahhh, the days where computers didn't have harddrives yet, and you had to boot the OS from two 5 1/4 inch 360kb'ish floppy disks

 

[Job]

Ha I crashed a 286 PC with 6 months work on it by playing and beating Lounge suit Larry, the virus at the end corrupted the hard drive.

 

[LawBringer]

Your missing the whole point, the joy of owning a PC is all that can and will go wrong with it. If you want an out of the Box Console experience then phone Dell (Not in the shops evidently) but you will end up with a mundane middle of the road machine capable but not exciting. Having built my last 3 I relish sorting out the problems and getting it just right - can be frustrating but when it works - it's all your own work

 

[Ctuchik]

Thats most likely your problem there - PSU isnt strong enough to handle a modern CPU+GFX (and other stuff im guessing you have like dvd burner, multiple hd's, fans etc). You really need a 500w today to play games. Had the same problem with a 400w one - pc would reboot randomly or fail to boot etc, changed to 500w and no problems anymore.
Random crashes and reboots are most likely due to faulty/weak psu or bad ram anyway.

im using a 300W and i have no problem at all playing games....

 

[Darzil]

For power supplies, my guide tends to be the weight. Heavier ones tend to be better.

For bugginess I find Camelot doesn't come close to games like Knights of the Old Republic (and II), which despite being 'Windows XP' compatible, crash out if any background task tries to put a popup up, and various other causes besides.

Camelot was rather unstable at one point, but since I splashed out on matched memory, it's purred along for years.

Darzil

 

[illu]

Wow! All these replies :> I'd forgotten about this thread, was really annoyed when I posted as I was hoping my new computer would work without any problems and all I had for the first month was problems.

I'll add that I have been working in I.T. for 7 years and have built my last 4 computers, so I "hope" I know what I'm doing :>

But basically this new computer had a RAM stick that had errors on it, and the power supply was not strong enough and gave random reboots / glitches. I checked everything, re-installed everything, re-did drivers, reformatted and am almost there now.

Now the only problem I have is every 90-120 minutes, while I am gamecamming my playing on DAOC, the computer crashes to desktop in an instant, no warning at all. I have 1 file that is missing (can't remember the name of it (I'm at work)) which I will get a guildee to send to me. I have installed the Catacombs client through the CD's and have also downloaded it, and I still get the same crash to desktop error.

One day I will find out what it is, but it is bloody annoying not being to play for more than 2 hours before a CTD.

Anyway, I will continue to look through these boards to try and find a solution, thanks for the replies so far :>

Oli - Illu

 

[illu]

Right - I'm going to try and find the solution to this somewhere in internet land! These are the errors I get in the game logs when the game crashes every 90-120mins:-

Debug.log
Error Loading Effect Template #106 (Effects/rnbwtriswirl_hit.nif)!
NDLLoadEffectTemplate() Error: [Cannot open file.]

*** Could not find zonejump.csv from [frontiers/zones/zone163/csv163.mpk]
*** Could not find zonejump.csv from [frontiers/zones/zone164/csv164.mpk]
*** Could not find zonejump.csv from [frontiers/zones/zone167/csv167.mpk]
*** Could not find zonejump.csv from [frontiers/zones/zone171/csv171.mpk]
*** Could not find zonejump.csv from [frontiers/zones/zone178/csv178.mpk]

Error Loading Animation Template #2357 (anims/giant_idle3.kfa*)!

Critical.log
Error Loading Effect Template #106 (Effects/rnbwtriswirl_hit.nif)!
NDLLoadEffectTemplate() Error: [Cannot open file.]
Error Loading Animation Template #2357 (anims/giant_idle3.kfa*)!

UI.log
Attempting to create window from template 'chat'...
ERROR: unable to find texture ''!
ERROR: unable to find texture ''!
ERROR: unable to find texture ''!
ERROR: unable to find texture ''!
ERROR: unable to find texture ''!
Attempting to create window from template 'options_window'...
ERROR: unable to find texture ''!
ERROR: unable to find texture ''!
ERROR: unable to find texture ''!
ERROR: unable to find texture ''!
ERROR: unable to find texture ''!
ERROR: unable to find texture ''!
ERROR: unable to find texture ''!
ERROR: unable to find texture ''!
Attempting to create window from template 'looking_for_group'...
ERROR: unable to find texture ''!
ERROR: unable to find texture ''!
Attempting to create window from template 'candidate_window'...
ERROR: unable to find window template 'candidate_window'! Returning a default window.
Attempting to create window from template 'keep_upgrade'...
ERROR: unable to find texture ''!
Attempting to create window from template 'keep_status'...
Attempting to create window from template 'map_window'...
ERROR: unable to find texture ''!
ERROR: unable to find texture ''!
Attempting to create window from template 'map_key'...
ERROR: unable to find window template 'map_key'! Returning a default window.
Adding edit box template 'generic_editbox'
WARNING: TextArea template includes unknown child 'comment'!
Adding text area template 'generic_textarea'
WARNING: TextArea template includes unknown child 'comment'!
Adding text area template 'location_textarea'
WARNING: TextArea template includes unknown child 'comment'!
Attempting to create window from template 'fig_version_config'...
ERROR: unable to find button template 'window_close'!
ERROR: unable to find button template 'window_move'!
Attempting to create window from template 'ok'...
ERROR: unable to find vertical scroll bar template ''!
ERROR: unable to find vertical scroll bar template ''!

Errorlog.txt
game caused an Access Violation in module GameCamDLL.DLL at 001b:5204b1bd.
Exception handler called in rndr.
Cver Catacombs fts1146
Error occurred at 9/8/2005 01:36:52.
G:\Catacombs\game.dll, run by Administrator.
1 processor(s), type 586.
2048 MBytes physical memory.
Write to location 52068a70 caused an access violation.

Oli - Illu

 

[illu]

Ok - I managed to find a post that said this:-
"
Jeriraa
Regular Freddie Join Date: 17th Feb 2004


Might be a corrupted texture or some other resource. Do a /fullcheck on the game when launching.

Incase you dont know how to:

Rightclick the game shortcut, select properties and in the target line enter " /fullcheck" (without the "'s) behind camelot.exe

Start the game and the patcher will check every resourse file. Make sure to remove the /fullcheck again after that.

I once had a similar problem. When zoning from Nisses Lair into the Abandoned Mines the loading bar went to 100%, then I got a black screen and the game stopped responding. /fullcheck solved it for me."

I have done a fullcheck on both my catacombs installations and it updated about 4 files in each of them ^^. I am still missing this file from the critical.log though Effects/rnbwtriswirl_hit.nif. Strange.
The mission continues to check for how people have got on, or what they have done for the other error messages, and the insta-crashing to desktop after 90-120 mins play using gamecam.

Oli - Illu

 

[illu]

Same here, in all my playing of DAOC, ive only ever had one instance where the PC rebooted and that was on my old kit. Havent had any problems since then.

If every PC was made with the same hardware, same drivers and had an operating system that you cant configure (just like the consoles) then you would find all PC games to be stable.

Tears - what is your system spec for future reference? :>

 

[illu]

I am playing DAoC for two years now... During all that time I got 1 (by words ONE) game crash. Show me any other THAT stable game ;p

Considering your problems... maybe change your PC manufacturer next time?

About playstation style... don't forget all those gimpy playstations are exactly the same... but PCs... how many different processors, memories, chipsets, graphic cards you can find... make some combinatory calculations and you climb in thousands possible configurations that can run DAoC. Not mentioning the trouble still can be somewhere between monitor and chair ;-)

And your LDs at about 2hrs +- a bit... Check your router/firewall you don't DOS (denial of service) unserialised UDP packets... If it is turned on, it's the reason.

I'd also suggest you check your CPU with CPU-Z utility (if it is really that you wanted, not some pirated OCed crap) and run stress benchmarks with it for 12hours at least (cpu stability test and others).

Honza what is your system spec too?

 

[Hawkwind]

About playstation style... don't forget all those gimpy playstations are exactly the same... but PCs...

Nail on the head mate. PC's are popular because the specifications are not rigid and not from one manufacturer. They are cheap because so many manufactureres compete on similar products. If PC's were all IBM then yes there would be less driver issues ect. But, would you have the Athlon processors now or have so many variants of graphics cards to choose from? Also, the prices would be through the roof.

Take the PSP system, yes it will probably never have a game crash but would seriously pay £350 + for a 3Gb stick so you can watch a movie on it. Compare those prices with standard compact flash/USB sticks.

 

[Malcolm]

ah, the good old days of multi-boot option config.sys files....

waits for all the kids to say "wtf is that about??"

:worthy:

Indeed - had about 8+ different options on mine (Pentium 75, 8MB EDO RAM, 690MB HD, ATI Mach 64, Soundblaster 16) based on configurations generated by memmaker and qemm - better than having to shove in 8 different floppies.

 

[Hawkwind]

Indeed - had about 8+ different options on mine (Pentium 75, 8MB EDO RAM, 690MB HD, ATI Mach 64, Soundblaster 16) based on configurations generated by memmaker and qemm - better than having to shove in 8 different floppies.

That is a blast from the past. Quarterdeck (? sp) Memory Manager and multiple configs. 'Xtree' anyone - would love a newer version of that great util that works with XP. Used it to make nice menus for my multiple configs.

 

[Ballard]

...

Your problem is not with DAOC, its with gamecam. Are you recording to the same harddrive as you are playing from?