Crashes in Denerim

[martiran]

Probably it should be a known issue:
Have constant bugs in Denerim:
- issues with textures especially clothes textures
- games can crush if going out of Denerim on the map or if you go in and out of the building
- game crashes when loading previous save in Denerim.

It is Win 10 and all tech requirement way beyond the minimum.

Any solutions?

[New Moon On Monday]

Go to graphics settings, turn down texture quality and possibly detail quality. Keep it turned down in Denerim, you can turn it back up outside Denerim. This will also allow you to load a game saved in Denerim.

There are still occasional missing textures when I do this, but it prevents crashing.

[briarroot]

Originally posted by martiran:

Probably it should be a known issue:
Have constant bugs in Denerim:
- issues with textures especially clothes textures
- games can crush if going out of Denerim on the map or if you go in and out of the building
- game crashes when loading previous save in Denerim.

It is Win 10 and all tech requirement way beyond the minimum.

Any solutions?

Yours is a common problem and you'll find numerous threads dealing with the subject throughout this forum. Try some or all of these...

1) If you haven't already done so, get the "LAA Patch" which is a replacement exe file for the file DAOrigins.exe, It will allow the game to use more than 2GB of system RAM. Search for a link in this forum.

2) As the previous poster suggested, try turning your graphics settings down to minimum.
(Video on the Options menu) My system is 3 years old, Win10, I-5 9600K, GFX1070 at 1080p and I'm able to run with maxed graphics settings, but you may need to lower yours.

3) Get the "Quinn's Fixpack" mod from Nexusmods.com. Although this mod is intended to resolve game-play issues rather than program issues, I find that it also enables the game to run more smoothly.

4) Shut the game down every hour or two and restart. For some reason this cuts down on crashes.

5) Although I don't understand the reasons, it's been noted by others that the number of saved games has a destabilizing effect on the game while running, so delete some of your previous saves and see if that helps.

[New Moon On Monday]

Neverwinter Nights (the previous BioWare game) had similar issues, which seemed to be caused by textures getting stuck in the texture cache and not cycled out. It could cause crashes in big areas that loaded a lot of textures, or by playing too long and going through too many areas without quitting and restarting. Certain special effects seemed to exacerbate the problem. A sign that a crash was imminent was when textures stopped loading and more and more things were solid black (though by that point it was too late to prevent a crash; an attempt to save would cause a crash and fail).

The Denerim bug in DA:O seems to have most of the same characteristics. Denerim is probably the biggest and most populated area in the game, loading up the most textures. You can see a crash coming when you see textures stop loading (though fortunately you can successfully save at that point). Outside of Denerim, while I don't usually get crashes, playing too long and going through too many areas without quitting and restarting causes the game to stutter. Some special effects- in particular lightning effects like Tempest- seem to contribute to stutter quickly.

It fits too that turning down the texture quality fixes the bug as to Denerim crashes (smaller textures do not overload the texture cache as quickly). So that's my guess as to the source of the Denerim crash.

[ADEC Inc]

The LAA / 4GB patch solves these issues without needing to lower settings, as long as you don't exacerbate them again by installing lots of higher res textures.

[martiran]

Originally posted by briarroot:

Yours is a common problem and you'll find numerous threads dealing with the subject throughout this forum. Try some or all of these...

1) If you haven't already done so, get the "LAA Patch" which is a replacement exe file for the file DAOrigins.exe, It will allow the game to use more than 2GB of system RAM. Search for a link in this forum.

2) As the previous poster suggested, try turning your graphics settings down to minimum.
(Video on the Options menu) My system is 3 years old, Win10, I-5 9600K, GFX1070 at 1080p and I'm able to run with maxed graphics settings, but you may need to lower yours.

3) Get the "Quinn's Fixpack" mod from Nexusmods.com. Although this mod is intended to resolve game-play issues rather than program issues, I find that it also enables the game to run more smoothly.

4) Shut the game down every hour or two and restart. For some reason this cuts down on crashes.

5) Although I don't understand the reasons, it's been noted by others that the number of saved games has a destabilizing effect on the game while running, so delete some of your previous saves and see if that helps.

Thank you for such detailed reply.

Regarding the point 2) is it really system characteristics dependent? I have i7-10700 and and RTX 3070 and it is still crashing like crazy even with LAA Patch, unless I lower the texture resolutions.

[frogthroat]

Originally posted by martiran:

I have i7-10700

With hyperthreading on?

I solved my crashing like this:
https://steamcommunity.com/app/47810/discussions/0/3057367211657353217/

[briarroot]

Originally posted by martiran:

[

Regarding the point 2) is it really system characteristics dependent? I have i7-10700 and and RTX 3070 and it is still crashing like crazy even with LAA Patch, unless I lower the texture resolutions.

I don't know why but from anecdotal evidence presented in this forum, the more modern your hardware the more difficult it is to keep this game running.

I'm able to run the game with maxed graphics options and even with 6 mods installed the game is very stable. The only time I sense trouble brewing is after a major battle that had lots of spell-effects shooting all over the place. At that point, opening and closing Inventory screens begins to take several seconds and tells me to shut the game down and restart. (Point 4)

But the game looks pretty good for its age even at minimum graphics settings so stability should be your primary concern.

[martiran]

Originally posted by briarroot:

I don't know why but from anecdotal evidence presented in this forum, the more modern your hardware the more difficult it is to keep this game running.

I'm able to run the game with maxed graphics options and even with 6 mods installed the game is very stable. The only time I sense trouble brewing is after a major battle that had lots of spell-effects shooting all over the place. At that point, opening and closing Inventory screens begins to take several seconds and tells me to shut the game down and restart. (Point 4)

But the game looks pretty good for its age even at minimum graphics settings so stability should be your primary concern.

I guess this is something with compatibility, especially with threading (as mentioned above) - PCs didn't improve much regarding brute force for a while now, and they are more about splitting calculations. And if the game is so old that it doesn't support it - well oops.

[frogthroat]

Originally posted by martiran:

especially with threading

If your issue is the same as what I had, you should be able to crank all settings to max and use a myriad of mods. For me, I managed to narrow the crashing down just to the hyperthreading. That's the only thing I had to change in the end.

Just remember: even CPU numbers are the first, actual core. The odd CPU numbers are their hyperthreading counterparts. Avoid the odd numbers. (But if CPU0 is selected, your resulting BIN -> DEC value will be odd, so don't get confused of that. It's just maths.)

[Elite]

Hey all. Solution to set texture details and common graphic settings to medium works for me. Outside Denerim, I play the game on ultrasettings without problem.

[grauer_k]

You need only set the textures to medium quality. This was the solution for me. No more crashes in Denerim after that. All other settings could stay at high.

[Patrick]

For anyone else who stumbles across this. I was getting crashes loading Denerim - Market District during The Final Onslaught quest towards the end of the game.

Disabling G-Sync fixed the issue for me.

The crashes had the error code "0xc0000005".

I'm running the LAA 4GB DAOrigins.exe

Turning down graphics, textures and resolution didn't seem to help. Setting CPU affinity to core 0 and 2 did seem to help a bit, it loaded into the market at least before it crashed.

Disabling mods and turning off tactics didn't seem to help either, which were suggestions I saw on other posts. I also tried increasing my virtual memory, but that also didn't seem to help.

[Peculiar_Shenanigans]

Also worth noting with Denerim is to never save in the market place but go inside a building first. This was a known issue and never got fixed. It will not always crash but better be safe than sorry :)