Terraria causing computer to freeze and lock up completely (macOS)

[Abot]

Hi guys,

I recently installed Terraria for the first time on mac and have put in about 15 hours so far. I had been periodically experiencing these crashes but in the past hour of play time it has dramatically increased in frequency- I can barely play 5 minutes without it crashing.

When I say crash- it is not simply that the game is quitting. The game window freezes, the audio starts skipping, and my screen, trackpad, and keyboard lock up completely. I have to force shut down my computer every time this happens and restart.

Is there anything I can do to troubleshoot this issue? I am running no mods, on a mid 2015 Macbook Pro on macOS Mojave that has no trouble running the game smoothly otherwise.

Thanks for your help.

[Saver Sigonith]

Ooh, ouch.
Ok, well, first thing to try is reinstalling the game I suppose.

Do you meet the recommended specs? For Mac, they're listed as
"OS: OSX 10.9.5 - 10.11.6
Processor: Dual Core 3.0 Ghz
Memory: 4GB
Hard Disk Space: 200MB
Video Card: 256mb Video Memory, capable of OpenGL 3.0+ support (2.1 with ARB extensions acceptable"
A common problem that causes periodic crashes is a lack of memory space. If this is the issue, you'd notice the crashes are more common when there're lots of enemies / projectiles / different kinds of items on the screen.
I am a bit concerned though, 'cause you say these crashes have increased in frequency over some time, which could point to a hardware issue rather than a problem with Terraria.

[Abot]

Yeah I just reinstalled and the game crashed again after about 10 minutes :/

My specs should be more than fine, I have 8GB of memory and the top of the line 3.1 Ghz i7 from the 2015 model year, 30GB free on the SSD.

Like I said, the game runs totally smooth all the time, and has yet to drop below 60 fps which is why this issue is so bizarre to me. I also haven't seen any crashes of this type in my google searching which is concerning.

[Saver Sigonith]

Hm. Make sure you computer isn't overheating, if nothing else. My laptop has a habit of running games perfectly yet burning itself to death - I wouldn't expect this is the issue but it's worth checking.

And this problem is ONLY affecting Terraria?

[Abot]

I made sure to give it some time to cool down to see if that was the issue but after 10 minutes when it crashed the temp was pretty normal.

Yeah I mean I've experienced this kind of crash before very rarely (not while playing a game) but Terraria is causing it to happen consistently for whatever reason.

[Saver Sigonith]

引用自 Abot：

Yeah I mean I've experienced this kind of crash before very rarely (not while playing a game) but Terraria is causing it to happen consistently for whatever reason.

Hmm... and other memory-heavy games and programs don't cause this?

[Abot]

Nope, I play a lot of modded Mount & Blade and have played Cities Skylines- Mount & Blade runs fine without crashes and Cities Skylines does not run fine (very memory intensive I guess so low FPS) but never has crashed like Terraria.

Considering Terraria is pretty easy to run I'm worried that there's some other kind of hardware/software incompatibility like you mentioned, even though I'm running standard Mac hardware and software. I just don't get why I seem to be the only one with this kind of issue :(

[Saver Sigonith]

Yeah. I'm afraid I'm a bit out of my depth here, sorry :(
Poking around google, the closest I found to your issue was this thread. They didn't find a great fix, though.
https://forums.terraria.org/index.php?threads/terraria-keeps-crashin-mac.55334/

[Abot]

Thanks for your help Saver, I'll post on there and see if anyone has any ideas.

[abc4123]

I am also having the same issue. Freezes up just a few minutes into the game. Previously worked fine, and haven't made any changes that would explain the difference.
Any help in resolving would be much appreciated.
Thanks!

[TinkerBot]

I've also been having the same problem. iMac, late 2015 model running Mojave, exceeds all the other specs by a goodly amount. Playing with the Activity Monitor open shows the game is chewing at least 96% CPU usage at all times, which is frankly bizarre given no other app is experiencing this.

I uninstalled and reinstalled Steam and Terraria to see if it would help - it didn't. Very sad-making. :-(

[abc4123]

TinkerBot. I found a post in terraria forums . org that said they turned lighting to retro and gamma all the way down and that fixed their problem. I switched the lighting to retro but didn't mess with gamma and it seems to have worked for me. Try it and see if it helps you!

[TinkerBot]

I've set lighting to retro but I can't find anything called gamma. Maybe I'm not looking in the right menu. Unless it's the same thing as paralax?

[abc4123]

Not sure, but I doubt gamma = paralax. Did retro lighting help?

[TinkerBot]

Not really unfortunately :( I'm going to have a poke around the Mac's screen settings but at this point I'm crossing my fingers that the newest release fixes things.

[abc4123]

More bad news I think... I've been seeing that the latest MacOS "Catalina" update is ending support for 32 bit games. Terraria is a 32 bit game, so I don't think it will work. If you've already upgraded and it works let me know, but if you haven't, you might want to hold off, or at least do some more research if it will work or not.