Install Steam
login
|
language
简体中文 (Simplified Chinese)
繁體中文 (Traditional Chinese)
日本語 (Japanese)
한국어 (Korean)
ไทย (Thai)
Български (Bulgarian)
Čeština (Czech)
Dansk (Danish)
Deutsch (German)
Español - España (Spanish - Spain)
Español - Latinoamérica (Spanish - Latin America)
Ελληνικά (Greek)
Français (French)
Italiano (Italian)
Bahasa Indonesia (Indonesian)
Magyar (Hungarian)
Nederlands (Dutch)
Norsk (Norwegian)
Polski (Polish)
Português (Portuguese - Portugal)
Português - Brasil (Portuguese - Brazil)
Română (Romanian)
Русский (Russian)
Suomi (Finnish)
Svenska (Swedish)
Türkçe (Turkish)
Tiếng Việt (Vietnamese)
Українська (Ukrainian)
Report a translation problem
Discussions Rules and Guidelines
2 
Report this post
Putting on my "I've worked in IT for a couple of decades" hat; that sounds like power supply age issues that I've encountered a few times before before, with similar file system corrupting effect.
As PSU's age their peak power draw drops, so spiky loads like games can trigger it, and it doesn't really need to be the most graphically intensive ones. This game's a bit odd in that unlike modern games it's massively single threaded so it loads one core, and also puts a decent load on the gpu too, so it's possible that this odd edge case can sometimes trigger your PSU to shutdown in overload; which is near guaranteed to have Really Bad Results(tm) like what you've experienced.
So if you're running a 10 year old system (my current gaming machine is 7 years old and is in need of replacement), if you're having weird issues like this, it might be worth grabbing a cheap PSU and doing a quick replacement.
I may not have the "best" or most expensive computer available today, but let's say I have an "average" one. I play most old and new games without any problems, even with maximum settings. In addition, every 2-3 years I replace most of the computer components with new ones (including the power supply). The last time I upgraded my computer was last year.
The last time I played this game was in February this year, and that's when the problem described earlier occurred. I decided to write only now, because another DLC has been released. I would like to play, but I'm afraid it will be like before.
You wrote that this game is a bit weird in contrast to modern games, and that's enough for me. I won't go into details, but you can see that the "design" of the game can lead to this or a similar failure. I will also add that while playing this game I built everything on a grand scale, I simply built a lot. Maybe the game can't handle such situations and that's why there are such problems.
Your issue sounds more like a bad block on your memory device. That is the only thing I know of that will need you to restore Windows if it craps out. A failing block in memory, specially one where critical OS files reside do exactly what you describe.
If you are an experienced user, I would grab a free low level integrity tool to check your drive integrity, If not take it to a PC shop and let them check your storage.
This page has several free version.
https://www.lifewire.com/free-hard-drive-testing-programs-2626183
I'm just trying to find an answer, because it turns out it's not my computer's fault, it's clearly the game's fault.
If it happened to me twice, it will probably happen to other players too, or it happened but they don't write about it because they assumed it wasn't because of the game.
I have played and still play games that really tax the processor and graphics card, but I do not have and have never had the problems I described, only with this game.
I just would like to solve this problem.
You asked for suggestions on things to check, but it sounds like you know what you are doing so why ask others who may have pertinent info on possible causes?
Besides you are the first one I ever heard of saying this so the other players having this issue is ruled out.
https://www.howtogeek.com/173463/bad-sectors-explained-why-hard-drives-get-bad-sectors-and-what-you-can-do-about-it/
That said, sometimes bad sectors go undetected. At that moment, you may observe other symptoms that hint toward single or multiple bad sectors on one of your hard drives. These may be any one, or multiple from the following list:
The system occasionally hangs or freezes.
The hard drive makes strange noises more than usual.
You are unable to format the hard drive or a partition.
The computer is experiencing a Blue Screen of Death (BSoD).
Files and folders have been corrupted and become inaccessible.
The system no longer boots
Any hard drive-related task hangs or gets stuck mid-process, like formatting or reading from it.
I asked for suggestions because, firstly, I thought that someone had a similar problem and would also describe it, and secondly, that I would learn something more about the subject than what I already know.
I looked for information on the Internet, I looked for information from people who knew more about the topic than me, I talked to them face to face in real life. I can write one thing, because opinions were divided, but in 50% it was suggested to me that it was clearly the game's fault, not mine, not my improper use, not my equipment, but the game's.
As I wrote earlier, I am using these drives so far (HDD/SSD 1TB each), don't have and haven't had any problems with them. I often deleted something, often overwrote something on these disks, I don't have any of the problems you described and I never had, except for those two times while playing only this game. When the problem first occurred, I had the computer checked, it turned out that all the computer components were working, the only thing was that the computer would not start. The suggestion was to reinstall Windows, which I did.
I used the same hard drive, same components and had no problems.
Over time, I replaced my computer components with newer ones over the course of 3-5 years.
I'm back in the game, you could say "on newer hardware" (in February this year), I played this game for about a month and the problem repeated itself.
I don't know how to describe what happened. While playing the game the screen suddenly went black, even though the computer was still on, after a while the game came back, but it looked like I was playing on several screens at the same time, or several of the same games. The game seemed to triple, there were 3 screens from the game but shifted one to the right, one to the left (I don't know if that's understandable).
Eventually the game and computer froze. Because of what was happening I simply unplugged the computer. I had the computer checked again (I didn't turn it on after this incident), and fortunately everything turned out to be fine. The computer is still working today.
Regarding bad blocks on hard drives. I understand this because I've dealt with it, I had to replace the hard drive with a new one. It's just that the last time I had such a problem was on Pentium 4, when was that, 20 years ago ?
BTW I'm sorry if something is incomprehensible, I don't know English well enough to write in it, I use a translator.
New drivers can be glitched on day one release. Sometimes new problems are introduced and sometimes old problems are solved.
The way to ensure proper drivers are working correctly is to use an app called DDU - Device Driver uninstaller by Wagnard soft.
https://www.wagnardsoft.com/display-driver-uninstaller-ddu-
1 - Go to websire to download the app.
2 - Go to your video card driver page on internet and get 3 drivers
....1 - Get the newest driver
....2 - Get one that is 2 or 3 versions older
....3 - Get one that is 4 or 5 versions older
....4 - save these to a place you know how to get to later
3 - Install DDU
4 - Run the DDU and uninstall everything vid driver related
5 - Restart PC
6 - Restart PC - let is find your missing driver and install the latest
7 - test the game
8 - If still has an issue - uninstall as above
9 restart - and then direct then install to the 2 or 3 versions older driver
10 - restart and test game.
11 - if still an issue repeat above with the driver that is 4 or 5 versions older
This is called rolling back a driver
If all of this fails, then we can explore a different option - there is more to try but this usually fixes most cases like you describe.
The black screen issue is called a TDR - (timeout, detection, recovery) attempted by Windows to fix your driver issue - means a call by Windows to your driver card took to long to respond for Windows. Windows tries to correct the problem.
I didn't write in details because I thought it wasn't important. After the second "incident" I gave the computer to "experts" to check, I don't know what aspects they checked it from, but probably from all.
I play and have played various games, some with low hardware requirements and some with high hardware requirements. On low settings and on high.
I have spent several hundred hours in some games, several hundred (in No Man's Sky -1500+). I have never had any problems in any game or with any other game, only in this one :)
I see only one solution, not to play this game.
Thanks again for your help.
P.S.
"Everything that happens once may never happen again, but everything that happens twice will surely happen a third time."
Paulo Coelho
I won't check it a third time :)
Regards @Mikeydsc
BTW I've spent 928 hours on Craft The World :)
I said that to say, this is *not* a resource heavy game, I run it just fine and think you won't see anything worse with the DLC. It could have been failing hardware, OR it could have been an incompatible Mod loaded - if you load any or do as I do and directly edit the xml files to add drops to creatures... did you do a full uninstall and reset registry settings? Or it could be a specific driver/graphic card issue, and I feel your pain! I have a few (cough 1.8k) hours on the Sims 3, and it runs horribly on my pc, but it is a lot of game pathing issues etc and the amount of objects it is tracking on a particular save. If there was a resource you couldn't get to, or multiple, or dwarfs that can't find their way, it can cause those same type of locking/lag issue of any PC I've seen, so it could be pathing issues.
My son hosed my pc once on Mirrors Edge...not fun haha, but I was playing Dungeon Keeper 2 when it actually happened - an older game from GOG with stupid low specs, so while this game may have been the smoking gun, something else may have been root cause and you'll be fine with the new DLC.
What's your write caching policy on your system drive?
Maintain your software and keep it up to date, I have for over 1700 hours and no problems.
I played on many devices/laptops with wide amount of GPUs/CPUs/amount of RAMs.
Defenitely check your hardware, put on the desk what error code BSOD tells you. In most common cases of games is about GPU driver, which means some sort of local problem because all other problems shared across wide amount of GPU users can be fixed with fresh driver update.