Unable to enter one world, game crashes every time, but not for dev's servers

[Whiterabbit-uk]

Since the 28th November, three of the four guys who rent a server via G-Portal have not been able to get to one of the worlds they created.

We have spent hundreds of hours combined, creating 'virtually' permanent bases & way stations (all in Stone), loading up warehouses with resources and have created large main camps with all the crafting tables, gardens, fully stocked as well as running water and electricity on tap etc.


I'd last landed and played in the world (called Brave New World earlier in the day for several hours. I closed the game down, leaving the world so as to refresh the cave nodes (as I was actively building up stashes of ingots and ore resources). Then a few hours later I went back, got as far as the drop ship leaving the mother ship, then the game crashed.


I rebooted, and instead of coming down in a drop ship as usual, I was unceremoniously plonked into the middle of the central arctic region, (instead of the usual place we land), miles from any exit from the arctic region to one of our main bases, with no armour, survival suit, weapons, food or other resources. Within seconds I got a warning that bad weather was imminent, and realised, there was no way I was going to be able to leg it out without dying, so I walked up to the nearest wolf and let it savage me. I re spawned at my last selected re spawn point (I'd stupidly forgotten to re do my last spawn point), which happened to be in the same region, but near to one of the exits to the forest region where my main base was located.

We'd previously build a way station over one of the exotics we'd been mining the previous day, and had left resources; enough to make a weapon and arrows. So, I set off to the get to my nearest base; however, part way through the trek, I suddenly appeared in a drop ship, then the game crashed again.

After that, every attempt at getting back onto the planet has failed, with crashes occurring as soon as I enter the drop ship. I've verified my files, even re installed the game, and updated my graphic drivers to the latest version, but to no avail. I contacted the other guys in our group and all the UK based ones had the same issue as me. Our American player however was still able to get onto the world.

The issue persisted yesterday (29th November), so I tried accessing a mission and one of my prospects via the developers servers and was able to enter both with no issues. I then went back to G-Portal and selected a world we had previously abandoned but not yet deleted and was able to join that as well. So, I tried the Brave New world again, but the issue continues to persist.

I've noted occasionally that it tells you how many building pieces and other resources are on the planet, I'm wondering whether there is a limit to the number of things you can build on the world; however, that doesn't explain why one of the group can still access the world.

Any ideas as to how to fix the issue. I know it's just a game, but the hours we have put in since renting the server are significant, I'd hate to have to abandon it at this stage. I've left most of the equipment I've purchased from the mother ship, including a variety of back packs, armour, survival suits, various tools, cave scanners, flow meters etc. Just to re buy those will leave me with no in game money and to be honest, there's no way i could re buy everything I'd lose until I've spent a lot m,ore time mining exotics and re doing missions.

By the way, I did read a similar post the other day and one of the suggestions, apart from the things I've already tried, was to increase the page file on the disk the game is located on, so I increased mine to what was recommended.

[Whiterabbit-uk]

Just got an update from my American friend. He is now unable to access the world as well.

I'd asked him to send up all of my equipment, which he was on his way to do, when the game crashed out and he's not been able to access the world himself now.

[Rekal]

That seems like a connection issue possibly exacerbated by slow prospect loading? The whole appearing in the wrong place, and then getting warped into a drop ship are kind of a give-away. Do you have any way to measure your servers performance numbers? IE Is the server struggling with the prospect when you launch it before trying to join?

Obviously make a backup before you start experimenting. If you're not sure of the server commands here's the Dev's dedicated server site:

https://github.com/RocketWerkz/IcarusDedicatedServer/wiki/Server-Config-&-Launch-Parameters

You can try to set the return to lobby settings to off and load a prospect without immediately joining it for 5 to 10 minutes. That should give any server slow loading time issues a chance to work themselves out and leave the server ready to try and make a proper connection.

For other players with similar issues, it turned out to be one of their base pieces had corrupted somehow throwing things into a PhysX loop that crashed them. Why it only happens when they connect to a server I don't know. Are you and your friend using Nvidia cards? Do you have an integrated card on your processor you could try experimenting with? Nvidia drivers seem to be having an issue in recent months, you could try rolling back those drivers about 6 months.

To recover your gear you can try bringing the prospect file off the server and onto your local machine. That may allow you to get into the game without crashing which would let you recover your gear and if you're ambitious start examining your buildings and deployables to see if anything is acting odd. I have no idea what to look for honestly. One guy picked up and put back a couple pieces that were intersecting with the map floor/wall and it seemed to fix it for him but I don't recall how he could tell.

You could also just edit your profile.json to give yourself the cash to buy another copy of your missing gear.

If you really enjoy the game I'd suggest switching over to mission mode for a time. As you've noted the game still works, it's just something on your Open World prospect that is causing the issues. So switching it up for awhile wouldn't hurt. You can also just start an Open World on a different map - IE Olympus, Styx, or Prometheus - and play their for a while.

[Whiterabbit-uk]

Thank you for your reply Rekal, apart from the US player occasionally getting some serious frame rate drops (he's using an old gaming laptop with limited vRAM, and a low broadband connection) everything has been hunky dory on loading.

The three UK based players all have NVidia cards, so I'll try the roll back to see if that fixes it.

If all the suggestions you made come to nought, then we will just have to suck it up and start afresh.

Apart from a few other games that I've, over the years, been obsessed with (Elder Scrolls and Fallout). Icarus has been one of those games I absolutely enjoy playing, be it just exploring, farming for resources, completing missions, hunting, building etc, so will just start a new world and take it from there.

I won't leave any purchased gear on the world from now on, just in case it happens again. :)

p.s. thanks for the link to the Icarus dedicated server wiki, will explore that option as well.