Crash during load

Some people have had an issue, where they enter a cave or a building and they crash as the loadscreen times out.

I don't know why, but some players have had luck fixing this issue by Uninstalling and re-installing CEP 2.3.

Best,

Evenstar.

There are a few reasons why the client would time out during load and they stem from the size of areas, the tileset used, the number of placeables and and number of creatures wandering around. WoRms Tilesets are wonderfully detailed, so please continue to use them, however, you are making the areas too big and I don't think I am the only player who is frustrated by the load time for areas. Make them smaller (no bigger than 16x16) use fewer placeables and make them static (that takes less space) keep the number of wandering (i.e. NPCs walking from Wp to WP) to a minimum.

Right now my PC (Ariana Kavey) is stuck in Tarsis (Old Town). Every time I try to log in now the client crashes. I suspect I may be carrying one too many items, or I have walked onto an encounter trigger and the extra load is too much for either my machine of the server (not sure at this point). But I have given up for the night. Maybe a reset will clear this. One thing I noted about Tarsis Old Town was the large number of placeable buildings used. Try making the area smaller, and use more tileset buildings. It might prevent similar problems for other players.

BD *Puffs*

Most of us there have ran into this problem and it was fixed with what Evenstar wrote up there. I'm playing with a new gamers PC with enough power to make the modern games blush and I still had that problem before I re-installed CEP. Now I hardly even notice loading screens anywhere I go, no matter the size or placeables.

Edit: Of course less and smaller would be friendlier for everybody but it would also be a lot of work for the team of 2 that are already running on fumes.

WHO's runnin' on fumes?!

It's a hobby - and we treat it as such

But -YES - the issue is not build but something with CEP 2.3, that only a re-installation of CEP fixes.

I'm not sure WHAT, mind you - but a re-install has fixed it for 2 people, so far - so I have to go with that as the reality (also - the crashes always happen on a (CEP) Forest/rural/interior tileset.). It's a big CEP!

DM Evenstar wrote:

WHO's runnin' on fumes?!

It's a hobby - and we treat it as such

Joking, joking It's good that you don't wear yourself out

I hoped, that nobody would have any problems with this "getting caught"... Well, the loading-loop will be gone, when the server is reset (or you enter with a different toon), but still, it's no fun, that is true!

I was so glad to see you (BD) beeing able to load eg. Tarsis (New City), even if it took a longer while for you to load that area. So I hoped, you would not have any issues with WORM-areas (Tarsis NC is Worms).

IF reinstalling CEP (2.3) won't fix it, it may be a result of low system memory (I do have an elderly PC with RAM below 1 GIG and it won't load our worm-areas -> time out -> loop - EVEN if its a very small area like 6x6!).

And it's not Tarsis OC. Even if it's pretty heavy with placeables, it still loads quiet fast (eg. when entering from OWF or the outer citywall-areas).

It's definetly WORMS, which causes those long loadingtimes (even if it says "unloading area") and, I'm pretty sure, that its SEN's addon for worms, which pushes it to the limits...

We already try to stay low with NPCs (most are spawned, when the area is finished loading and PCs pass a trigger - if the area is empty, the are despawned), but still I will recheck those areas and try to do some improvements.

Sorry, but we encountered that (Worms-) issue in a far too late stage and if we decide to kick Worms, we would loose tons of work (and atmosphere). We cannot just kick SENs, cause we do get access violation on those areas.

I think, Worm without SENs works ok. So I will try to figure something out. But this will take some time. So for now, please have patience, if such an area is loading.

Thanks for reporting and your thoughts, BD!

Ok ok... if other cleared this problem by re-loading CEP 2.3 then I'll try it. I wonder if it's because I have 2.4 loaded right now? maybe some of the hak file use the same filename?

I had to shutdown and restart after entering Hillhome - Mines. Tried logging in again and I am afraid I'm stuck. The area will not load.

*update* I logged in from another computer and was able to walk out of the Mines. So the machine that I used was my old Macbook. Interesting since the haks I have loaded on it are CEP 2.4 and it is a much slower machine.

That's it! Your machine is far too modern and powerfull for this retrogame! It get's bored, cause there isn't really much work for it, so it starts to snore off. Thus you get the lags or even stuck!


Well, probably not...

Now seriously: That mine area is CEP Mines and Caverns - so nothing spectacular. I had no issues here so far. I will have to check next time the mod is hosted.

Strange this is!

Impossible to say anything without seeing dxdiag log of BD's PC... Just sounds so weird 'cause I haven't had any problem myself after reinstalling CEP 2.3

Hm, this also came to my mind. Maybe it's some kind of Win7/DX/Vidcarddriver-issue. I once found a post of Worms on social.bioware.com, where he reported of his new vidcard, which made NWN very laggy. It was resolved by reinstalling a driver/getting a different driver-version. Sadly, I couldn't relocate that post.
How about, if you try to switch off some grafik settings like shiny water, animated textures, visual effects, ... (just for testing).

Or play with your Macbook and see if all works there. That might give us a hint.

Just shooting into the dark!

The Video card is a possibility. I'll check into that.

Oh, two more things I found that cause lag are:

1. very high level areas; like when you raise the ground level beyond say 2 or 3 you start to create lag.

2. Some creatures have a highly detailed skin (some new goblins in CEP 2.3 for instance) and if you have too many of them spawn at once that causes lag.

- to fix the second issue all you need to do is choose different creatures in the encounter.

Hope that helps.