Spring RTS Engine

Just downloaded and installed Spring .74b3 and have been trying to play, but it freezes (stutters the last sound if there was a sound), locks for a few seconds, and then the computer restarts on its own.

I have been trying to play XTA8.1 small divide, KAI or AAI, doesn't matter, both crash. Nothing in the log is there from the crash. Crash occurs around tech 2, ~10minutes in.

Computer: Macbook pro, windows XP. ATI X1600

Any help would be appreciated. I'd like to actually be able to play the game. :/

that sounds pretty terrible.

Double-click Spring.exe (not whatever the default shortcut is, but the actual EXE). Select game-mode Commanders, then select a mod and map. Repeat the process of trying to play. The fact that you're playing with an AI makes me wonder very much if you're crashing due to something in the AI.

It makes me scared that spring actually has the hardcoded ability to force my computer to restart.

If your computer restarts, I'd guess it's a hardware issue. Check your Windows event log from around the time it happens.

I'll quote from another thread...

DJ wrote: I think the reason the PC actually rebooted is becuase its setup to do that in windows.

If you go My Computer -> Properties -> Advanced and goto the startup and recovery settings you'll probably find the Automatic Restart tick box ticked. This is really un helpful as it hides the BSOD and makes the pc just appear to reboot.

If you get probs like this again try unticking this box as it'll allow you to see if it's a driver causing the problem.

not sure the entire thread is applicable (i'm not gunna read the other one again ), but here it is: http://spring.clan-sy.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?t=9369

I've tried it again booting from Spring.exe and running Commanders script, still crashes.

I've unchecked the "auto restart" in the system properties.... it still reboots pc when it crashes.

infolog in spring folder contains no indications of anything wrong.

I assume wherever windows dumps its errors can be read in the Control Panels>Admin tools> Event Viewer? (or am i missing some syserror.log text file?). Nothing there denotes any errors, both under Applications, Securities, or Systems logs. I'm getting no Blue Screens (I guess the Macintel is totally allergic to them...) and I see nothing in the logs, so I'm having trouble finding out what the error is.

This does sound hardware related, possible a memory corruption (if noone else is having problems running virgin-installed code), but i have the latest drivers and no other games have crashing issues.

Does anyone else have problems with intel core 2 duo, macbook pros, or consistent crashes 10-15 minutes into games? I've not touched the settings.exe too much, but are there bad/good settings I should know about?

Thanks for everyone's input so far.

I've been experiencing same problem in numerous games (like jDoom). Seems like massive use of OpenGL somehow makes my videocard overheat and then immediately reboot a computer. I downloaded ATITool and lowered the frequency of my Radeon. Worked just fine, a bit slow but no reboots)))) hope this helps

@BurilloTA

I hestitate to blame my gcard because a lot more intense games (like supcom or CoH on full graphics) run just fine for hours at a time.* meanwhile, spring crashes consistently within the first 10 minutes of starting the compie, a laptop i admit but with a cooling pad, so I can't image it's overheating so quickly.

*Then again, i guess the other games use DirectX. I plead ignorance as to the computational load differences between the two, but I'll check out ATITool nonetheless.

Anyone else have problems fixed by underclocking the gcards?

I know that sounds kinda weird when games like FarCry or Half-Life 2, Earth 2160 or whatever can be played for hours without any overheat, but some not-resource-hungry games like Spring, jDoom and even old minigames can cause overheat (on MY system)... but let's face the fact - my computer was constantly rebooting, tried to change AI settings, graphics and everything else with no result. I tried to underclock - it worked. Yesterday i was smashing CORE for 2 hours)))))

was just googling ATI OpenGL and found that ATI drivers really do have problems with OpenGL...

check this out, there's something about overheating

link

Ling_Lover wrote:I'll quote from another thread...

DJ wrote: I think the reason the PC actually rebooted is becuase its setup to do that in windows.

If you go My Computer -> Properties -> Advanced and goto the startup and recovery settings you'll probably find the Automatic Restart tick box ticked. This is really un helpful as it hides the BSOD and makes the pc just appear to reboot.

If you get probs like this again try unticking this box as it'll allow you to see if it's a driver causing the problem.

not sure the entire thread is applicable (i'm not gunna read the other one again ), but here it is: http://spring.clan-sy.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?t=9369

And again, my solution allows you to actually copy paste the message rather than writing it down, allowing for easier googling.

Thanks for everyone's input. Despite unchecking "autorestart" it still refuses to listen to me, so i don't get a BSoD and my logs are empty, so i have no idea what's doing the crashing. :/ (i'll refuse a dig at windows, but its heavily implied...).

I downloaded ATItools and tried underclocking the gcard. It defintely increased the playtime before crashes, but it still crashes nonetheless. I guess I'll have to keep lowering the mhertz and see if i can find a happy point, so I guess that means "problem...solved?"

So if it is ATI running openGL that's causing crazy overheating/crashes, who is to blame? do i bug report apple for the drivers? Or is it ATI to contact? spring devs? (are there any good settings.exe stuff to know about that might help?). the idea that i can't run openGL games, or only if i masively underclock, on my windows partition sounds pretty lame to me. I have no problems running open gl OS X games on the same computer.

As an engineer, I'm having a hard time understanding how someone releases a product that noone apparently bothered to test on a common graphics API (as it appears reading the intertubes on this issue).

i'm not sure it's the answer, but nevertheless sometime ago my brother (he knows a bit more about these techical thingies) said that when the video is overheating in XP it just turns off, no blue screens, nothing. But in Vista, the OS is able to automatically underclock video. Just another point of view (there are some threads about Spring, Vista and poor performance... maybe this is the key?)

Still, that doesn't explain OpenGL issues... Kinda strange, especially whеn ATI (now AMD ) has it's own graphics card totally designed for OpenGL...
jDomm and Spring are OpenSource... maybe commercial developers know something that OpenSource ones don't?)))) Quake2 runs perfectly on OpenGL without any problems...

Well, I've done my best to underclock from (430/450 core/memory) to about 300/300 and it still crashes after ~ 30 minutes. Any lower and my computer crashes just when trying to set the gcard clock. Basically, spring is totally unplayable for me. Which sux because I enjoy it more than most RTSs I could throw money at. Here's hoping supcom's community makes it more enjoyable that what the demo showcased.....




<edit to fix numbers>

Good yeah , i have now the same error... spring crashes randomly ingame some restarts , some errors, :D without bots only , alone , with bots , just some time when i play...

my Gcard is ,Radeon 9800 Pro Ultimate 256mb ... But before the last release Spring works GREAT ! ... hmmm

LOrDo wrote:It makes me scared that spring actually has the hardcoded ability to force my computer to restart.

I used to have the same problem. Spring does not make your PC reboot. You have an option somewhere in Windows that forces your PC to reboot instead of displaying the BSOD. You can turn that option off, but you'll get the BSOD. It took me a while to figure out what's wrong with mine, but it was a rather simple fix. I don't know about you, but I have Windows XP 64 Bit Edition. Apparently, 64 Bit has two versions of Direct X, 32 and 64 bit. It uses either version respectively for whatever program it's running. All I had to do was re-install the latest 32 bit version of Direct X from Microsoft's website, and it all works great now. Did you try simply updating your graphics/sound drivers?

Spring doesn't use DirectX

Eh? Then how come it started working once I updated it?