(Fixed?) Game Freezes, Display Driver Crashes

[DarkHoodness]

Firstly, this isn't a complaint - I love this game and have played through earlier versions of it many times, and it's been awesome to watch the game evolve. :) I just have found a weird issue which the devs may want to be aware of.

I'm getting an inconsistent crash on stable build 40062 - It also used to happen in the experimental builds I was trying just before the Bones update a couple of weeks ago, but didn't happen before that.

I managed to get about 5-6 hours into my current playthrough, a new game from scratch on stable (not all played at once) before these crashes started happening - I can reload from my last (frequent) save but then they happen again several minutes afterwards.

Sometimes the framerate is low (15 fps) on load, and the crash doesn't happen anymore, but the game isn't playable in this state. Subnautica's GPU usage doesn't go above 30-50% when this happens.

Subnautica doesn't leave a log file as it normally does when it CTDs. In my case, the screen flickers black, recovers, and the game is frozen with a blank white screen. Windows complains that Subnautica has stopped responding, but I have to kill the .exe process in Task Manager.

I tried the savegame "fix" which people keep linking to with the video from IGP explaining it, involving deleting batch terrain data .optoctrees, .txt and .bin files in my savegame folder. It doesn't work for me.

I've tried updating my graphics drivers to no effect.

This same bug eventually happened late into my last experimental playthrough as well.

New games I start are stable.

No other game I own makes the graphics card stop responding. Subnautica was also fine until about 2 weeks ago.



My specs:

OS: Windows 7 Pro, 64 bit
CPU: AMD Phenom II X6, 3.2GHz
RAM: 8 GB RAM DDR 5 (I think?)
Graphics card: Radeon HD 6870, 1 GB VRAM (Ancient! But enough for Subnatica. I regret not investing in the 2 GB one, though.)

[Phaota]

Sounds like a Radeon issue. They've been having problems with that GPU and the game for awhile now. Still trying to come up with a solution.

[DarkHoodness]

Thanks for the reply. Blah. As many times as I've played Subnautica, I never seem to get bored of replaying it. Guess I'm screwed for now then, though. :(

I wonder what they changed to make this start happening.

[Aracanthus]

Roll back a driver version and see if that works.

The reason it's not leaving a log file is because the GPU software is crashing, not Subnautica. If you want to find the cause of the error, use Windows Event Viewer.

[DarkHoodness]

Originally posted by YugenChaos:

Roll back a driver version and see if that works.

The reason it's not leaving a log file is because the GPU software is crashing, not Subnautica. If you want to find the cause of the error, use Windows Event Viewer.

It happened before and after I updated my drivers - Previous drivers were about half a year out of date.

[DarkHoodness]

Oh yeah here's the error logs from the event viewer, I've no idea if this'll help. Possibly not. :\

Originally posted by Event Viewer:

Faulting application name: Subnautica.exe, version: 5.4.2.57392, time stamp: 0x580872b1
Faulting module name: Subnautica.exe, version: 5.4.2.57392, time stamp: 0x580872b1
Exception code: 0xc0000005
Fault offset: 0x0000000000f9ec40
Faulting process id: 0x1268
Faulting application start time: 0x01d2385b87156c4e
Faulting application path: D:\Steam\steamapps\common\Subnautica\Subnautica.exe
Faulting module path: D:\Steam\steamapps\common\Subnautica\Subnautica.exe
Report Id: 112bf1db-a451-11e6-81b1-6c626d7fca94

---

The program Subnautica.exe version 5.4.2.57392 stopped interacting with Windows and was closed. To see if more information about the problem is available, check the problem history in the Action Center control panel.
Process ID: 4f4
Start Time: 01d2385b626af17b
Termination Time: 176
Application Path: D:\Steam\steamapps\common\Subnautica\Subnautica.exe
Report Id: bc665c41-a44e-11e6-81b1-6c626d7fca94

---

Display driver amdkmdap stopped responding and has successfully recovered.

[Desim]

Hi DarkHoodness,

Have you checked the game cache integrity (again and again and again) like they recommend in the troubleshooting guide ?

[Aracanthus]

I hate that error code. 0xc0000005. It's a generic "This program did something it shouldn't" code.

Suggest reinstalling the VCREDIST libraries and also possibly performing a hard drive or ram test. Technically that error is a memory addressing error so it could be RAM related....

[DarkHoodness]

Originally posted by Desim:

Hi DarkHoodness,

Have you checked the game cache integrity (again and again and again) like they recommend in the troubleshooting guide ?

Naturally - With no errors reported. It's one of the first things you do when getting trouble with a Steam game. :) But thanks.

Originally posted by YugenChaos:

I hate that error code. 0xc0000005. It's a generic "This program did something it shouldn't" code.

Suggest reinstalling the VCREDIST libraries and also possibly performing a hard drive or ram test. Technically that error is a memory addressing error so it could be RAM related....

Thanks - Yeah I may consider reinstalling the VCREDIST libraries if other programs start doing this crap, although it's a pain in the backside so I'll leave it for now.

Subnautica is the only application I have which does this so far though, and ran almost perfectly until about a couple of weeks ago. It only does this with a loaded savegame, but not when starting a new game and playing for a bit.

I'm pretty sure my computer is fine, I monitor my HDs SMART data frequently using third party software. I've recently done some RAM tests after a problem I had last week which turned out to be a lose RAM stick, but that's fixed now.

[Desim]

Be sure to tell us your results ! :-)

Also, maybe I am far from helping but maybe the reported symptoms have to be expanded to include your findings about this issue:
http://steamcommunity.com/app/264710/discussions/3/282992646965701794/are

[DarkHoodness]

This has been fixed now I think? It was something to do with the PRAWN suit, apparently.

I realised that Subnautica became unstable during both my current game and previous game only after I had built the PRAWN in both games, so I did some experiments - Including quickly recreating my base and vehicles in a new Creative game after the last experimental update today. FPS was smooth and there was no crash.

So I reloaded my old Survival game and got the same low FPS issues I was having before, but the game remained stable enough for me to destroy my PRAWN by piloting it off the edge of the world to crush depth, then warping the player character back to my base.

The framerate recovered after the PRAWN's destruction, so I tried spawning in a replacement PRAWN and continued my game for half an hour - The framerate stayed high and I had no graphics driver crash problems.

How weird.

[Desim]

Originally posted by DarkHoodness:

This has been fixed now I think? It was something to do with the PRAWN suit, apparently.

I realised that Subnautica became unstable during both my current game and previous game only after I had built the PRAWN in both games, so I did some experiments - Including quickly recreating my base and vehicles in a new Creative game after the last experimental update today. FPS was smooth and there was no crash.

So I reloaded my old Survival game and got the same low FPS issues I was having before, but the game remained stable enough for me to destroy my PRAWN by piloting it off the edge of the world to crush depth, then warping the player character back to my base.

The framerate recovered after the PRAWN's destruction, so I tried spawning in a replacement PRAWN and continued my game for half an hour - The framerate stayed high and I had no graphics driver crash problems.

How weird.

That's weird indeed. I'll try that too.

[Desim]

So In my case it was very laggy with the seamoth instead.
Guess I'm more lucky since it's costing less to rebuild :D
But so I destroyed it and made a new one and AFAICS it's running fine now with either vehicle docked or out.
Will continue playing for a while to see if it's not coming back.