PoE 1: Crashing at start of game

[IlyaP]

Good afternoon, 

 

Am experiencing a curious oddity of a crash. I've played through PoE before on my Toshiba laptop and had no real issues. 

 

However, I recently upgraded to a new (non-laptop) computer, and decided "you know, I think I want to replay PoE and import my character into PoE 2, now that it's out". I've a relatively new system, which includes a GeForce GTX 1060, a Realtek soundtrack, an obnoxious amount of RAM, and no idea why the game locks up. Naturally, I've updated my Nvidia and Real Tek drivers, and despite that the crashes still occur. 

 

Upon attempting to load the game, it gets as far as the initial encampment scene, and after wandering for a few minutes around the encampment, the game suddenly locks up. It doesn't BSOD me, it just...locks up. The audio continues to work - Justin Bell's double-fine tunes continue playing in the background despite everything freezing up like some kind of freaky flash mob. 

 

As per Obsidian protocol, I've attached my DXDiag text and the Output log. I've attempted to attach my most recent savegame, but am not being permitted to attach it to this message for reasons unclear to me.  

 

It would be lovely if someone could attend to this post and perhaps offer an email to which I could send the savegame, should they need it, as well as some advice around how to go about eliminating this issue. 

Thank you kindly in advance for your time and effort!  

 

Best,

 

Ilya

 

 

DxDiag.txt

output_log.txt

[IlyaP]

As a follow-up: I've done extensive testing and research on the topic, and it seems that disabling my internet connection (I use a wifi signal to connect to our local router) seems to solve the problem. 

 

It's unclear to me, however, if this is an Obsidian-related, Steam-related, or ethernet card-related issue. 

 

Are there any developers or moderators who can provide some guidance or clarity around this peculiar issue? 

 

Kind regards, 

 

Ilya

[Cdiaz]

Greetings IlyaP,

 

Thank you for contacting us on the forums and sorry for the late reply! We did recall an issue from before when this was reported if users had a VirtualBox or any VMWare installed it would create an issue with the setup. Do you have any similar setup that might pose as the source of this issue?

 

Best,

 

-Caleb

[IlyaP]

Thank you for responding Caleb! 

 

Unfortunately, I have neither VMWare nor VirtualBox set up. 

 

I ran a few more tests to help you narrow down the list of possible causes, and made the following observations: 

 

1. If I shut down Steam and attempt to run PoE1, the game will CTD almost immediately after loading the very first screen (the armoured cursor against the flowing stone backdrop). 

 

2. Attempting to run the game as Administrator (with Steam turned on or off) results in a CTD as well. 

 

3. If I go offline (our house has a central router to which I connect via a wifi signal), or go into airplane mode, the game works without any problems whatsoever. 

 

4. The contents of the output_log suggest that among other things, certain files are not loading due to being in unexpected places. 

 

   i. C:/Program Files (x86)/Steam/steamapps/common/Pillars of Eternity/PillarsOfEternity_Data\data/audio/mus\mus_final\mus_scr_glb_silence.ogg does not exist. The music will not play! 

 

   ii. This file is actually located in the mus_scr folder, not the mus_final folder. (Is it a fair assumption to make that this is due to a patch or official DLC having changed the structure of music files a bit from the original, standalone version? 

 

5. Regular references are made to the non-existent folder and directory C:/buildslave/unity/. I've seen a variety of posts about this, but nothing consistent enough to provide me with useful information, unfortunately. 

 

6. The drivers for my network card, graphics card, sound card, et al are the most recent versions (I manually went into Device Manager and checked every single feature that could be updated to ensure that there were no out of date drivers). 

 

7. Finally - I'm left wondering if Pillars of Eternity isn't trying to do a network check whilst playing (a little bit like Blizzard with the requirement of being online even for single player games), which might be causing the game to lock up due to an excess number of inconsistent file locations, missing links, and missing web content (be it within Steam or within the game client itself). 

 

Hopefully the above assists you in your bug hunt and makes your job and day at least a little bit easier! I hope! 

 

Kind regards, 

 

Ilya

[IlyaP]

Evening Caleb, 

 

Much to my delight, I've managed to get the game working while online.

 

Here's what I did: 

 

In Malwarebytes and Avast, I added a special exclusion rule around the Pillars of Eternity executable. Further, within the game's main screen, I disabled - in Game Options - Telemetry and News. 

 

All of those four changes seem to have solved the issue that I reported. 

 

That said, I have noticed slightly elongated loading times as a by-product - not terribly awful ones, mostly four or five seconds longer. Which is a bit unexpected. 

 

I've attached the most recent output log file for your convenience. Hopefully the data in this file will be of some useful assistance and future value! 

 

Kind regards, 

 

Ilya

 

 

output_log.txt