Crashing Fix.

[Matthew]

I use the elite texture pack on top of maximum settings. And sacred 2 has been crashing constantly for me. If I lower the settings and/or remove the elite texture pack or disable physx. My game never crashes. However I want everything or nothing. So after trying every fix I could find on google, I decided it was impossible.

As a last resort I decided to mess around with the options.txt file, and according to user advice raised all the preloading settings to twice or three times their original value. This made the game have a lower framerate (due to more data being in memory) and crash far more often.

So I got that logic, and reversed it. And set all the memory preloading settings to 0. And now I have yet to see a single crash, with maximum settings, the elite texture pack, physx, and FXAA. The game stutters a lot less, and I get slightly higher framerates.

To do this, go to C:\Users\username\AppData\Local\Ascaron Entertainment\Sacred 2 and open the options.txt file, then look for this text

}
end
if not manager then
manager = {
animMem = 33554432,
grannyMem = 67108864,
pmsMem = 8388608,
secMem = 33554432,
sptMem = 8388608,
texMem = 209715200,
}
end

and CHANGE it to

}
end
if not manager then
manager = {
animMem = 0,
grannyMem = 0,
pmsMem = 0,
secMem = 0,
sptMem = 0,
texMem = 0,
}
end

Then rightclick on the options.txt, properties, and tick Read Only. This will prevent steam from resetting anything. So make sure any graphics options you want, are set PRIOR to editing the options.txt

If for any reason you want to go back to the default settings, simply delete options.txt, and steam will generate a fresh one.

With this fix the memory useage on the process has now gone from 1400mb or above to 450mb or slightly above, the reason for this is because everything is being streamed 100% as you see it. Which means you might want to have fast ram, or a SSD powering this game onwards.

I believe the memory cannot leak this way as well, as everything is streamed out as the new data is streamed in.

Most of you are probably running this without the elite texture pack and reduced settings, so there is a good chance you either crash a lot less, or never. As you will never get into the dangerous level of ram useage that cause crashes.

I also recommend you don't enable the ingame AA for this tittle, and enable FXAA for nvidia via the control panel, or MLAA via AMD's control panel. Sacred 2 also does not use Anistropic Filtering, so I recommend you FORCE that on via your AMD or NVIDIA control panel as well. Otherwise the elite texture's won't look nearly as good.


Last note:

If you are having crashing problems even without physx and the elite textures, this fix will likely help you as well.

[Shinzon]

I can tell you, that i have put the optionscustom.txt in to the same directory as options.txt. But ouch i made a little mistake, thought reverse, so i disabled all options. Ireplaced the mss32.dll as well.
Maybe you are right and the problem was the old mss32.dll. I played yesterday 1:15h and quit by myself, because a friend wanted to play diablo. Memory was at this time at (i think, didn't remember anymore^^) 1,36gb maybe a little above 1,4gb. On sunday, with old mss32.dll sacred 2 crashed after one hour.
Event log tells only Application Hang all the time "Sacred2.exe program, version 2.65.2.0 can not be run on Windows and was closed. Check the problem history in the Action Center control panel to search for information about the problem."
I disabled yesterday at last test physx. Sacred 2 starts with us of 950mb instead of 1,1gb. I think i turn physx off, that are 550mb before crash 150mb more ;)

[Sneak0r]

Great! I was able to play more than 2,5hours without a crash. Even with PhysX on and AA 2x (turned Nvidia settings for Sacred 2 off again). Game does even not crash with 1,6GB mem usage oO

[Серёга Комбайнёр]

If there's somebody else alive in this discussion
I have done everything accurate with instructions, but the game still crushes and the amount of used memory is about 1100 mb. And the cause is not in the mss32.dll (I have 7.2e)
Does anyone have other ideas?

[Painless]

The Elite textures are not that different from the original textures.

It's as if all they did was change the resolution numbers of the same exact image.

[TiberiusII]

@Bullet Tooth
How can you be sure it is not the mss32.dll?
You need 7.2g instead of 7.2e!
So what I additionally did is deleting the files laptopgamingVista.dll und the XP one.
Also I use -skipopenal.
Since I did that I never had sacred2 stopped working again.
Yesterday I had the game freezing after approx 1hour.
But the ram usage was only 1.29Gb at this time.
I already saw higher numbers when the game was running.
But I observed that the game hits maximum allowed memory usage for sound memory and generic memory after half an hour.
Maybe one has to increase that a bit.
You can check the actual memory consumption by opening the ingame console und type mem mgr.
I actually play on win10 64bit.
With everything on high. Effekts middle und grass on max.
Physx and AA turned off. Weather on.
This give a pretty stable game.
Yesterday I encreased shadows to max as well as ground detail and I got a freeze after 1h.
With the above settings I already played 2h without crash.

[Kinsou]

Try this ^^ - http://steamcommunity.com/app/225640/discussions/0/2765630416821318551/ =)

[enchi]

my install of this with the community patch is alot more stable and doesnt crash, but if i ever open the developers console it starts stuttering til i exit the whole game and start it up again. is there a way to disable the console?

[Androdion]

You don't need to exit the game, just close the console on the same key and alt+tab to desktop and back. The game returns to its normal rhythm. ;)

[c4su4IIy wh1te]

Sneak0r の投稿を引用：

I've figured out something new. After reading over 6hours to find a good solution I tried something new. The good news is: I can play for 3 hours in a row with my shadow warrior with an army of minions on my ass without any crash!! *cheer*. The bad news is: I'm not 100% sure which of my 2 changes is the one, that fix the problem.

So here we go:
No1. my event log of windows told me the most time, that my mss32.dll in the sacred 2 folder cause a problem. With the last official patch of Sacred it has version 7.2e which should solve the memory leak.... I've downloaded a newer version (7.2g) of this file and replaced it (make a backup before).

No2. in %HOMEPATH%\AppData\Local\Ascaron Entertainment\Sacred 2 (the place where you can find the options.txt) I've created an "optionscustom.txt" which following text in it:

-- video
-- video.fullscreen = 1 -- Vollbild
video.fullscreen = 0 -- Fenstermodus

-- textures
-- manager.texMem = 201326592 -- 192MB
-- manager.texMem = 209715200 -- 200MB
manager.texMem = 268435456 -- 256MB
-- manager.texMem = 402653184 -- 384MB

-- granny 3d system
-- manager.grannyMem = 67108864 -- 64MB

-- animations
-- manager.animMem = 33554432 -- 32MB

-- trees
-- manager.sptMem = 8388608 -- 8MB

-- sectors
-- manager.secMem = 33554432 -- 32MB

-- genericmgr 16MB
-- shadermgr 4MB

-- meshes
-- manager.pmsMem = 8388608 -- 8MB

-- soundbuffer 0MB-255MB
-- sound.memorybudget = 80 -- 80MB
-- sound.memorybudget = 96 -- 96MB
-- sound.memorybudget = 128 -- 128MB
-- sound.memorybudget = 192 -- 192MB

I'll do some test with this config later on with PhysicX on and maybe AA 2x and switch to
"manager.texMem = 402653184 -- 384MB" in the "optionscustom.txt" if i get some troubles.

So far I can say it was my longest journey ever without any crashes since I've got that game :)

Sorry for necro, but someone might stumble upon this in the future.

Yo this is the ♥♥♥♥. Done both of these including a lot of other jacked ♥♥♥♥ like running DXVK async branch v 1.10.3 because later version crash on windows. Basically DXVK makes Borderless Gaming less visually annoying. (There's weird scaling issues on just DX9, basically looks like screen tearing but actually every ~37pixels 1 line of horizontal pixels gets doubled when using borderless). Anyway, haven't crashed for quite a while now. Thank you so much!

Summary of what I did:

1. Community patch
2. Elite Textures Trimmed
3. Replace mss32.dll with v7.2g (google, \steamapps\common\Sacred 2 Gold\system\)
4. Add the customconfig
5. got DXVK async (github, use x32 d3d9.dll; \steamapps\common\Sacred 2 Gold\system\)
6. Set game to windowed and use Borderless Gaming
7. Also disable hardware cursor to fix cursor disaligment caused by Borderless scaling
8. Enjoy the game

For imo the best experience, also google camera angle config(just merge it in optionscustom) and get no fog mod.

Edit: Well, just got a crash randomly talking to a town NPC, it seems to be much more stable tho.