Old Issue of Game Freezing at the Load Screen

[SynackAtck]

Long story short I'm attempting to come back to NS2 but can't get the game to actually run. I sort of remember the same issue happening years ago (~2010/2011). But don't recall what fixed the issue.
I've checked the UWE & steam forums. I've tried everything on both sets. Does anyone have a definitive way to fix the issue?

What happens?
1. I attempt to run NS2 either from the shortcut from the desktop OR from steam.
2. The game goes to load.
3. I get the screen with the Marine fighting the Onos.
4. The blue circle icon stating "Loading" spins. Then it stops spinning. If I check task manager the game states "Not Responding".
Note: I've left the game for more than 15/30min and come back and nothing ever loads. The only fix is to end the task for the game.
Note 2: I have gotten the "Intro" video to play a few times. The latter times were only because I edited the Options file and changed IntroPlayed from True to False. But the game still never gets to the actual browser list. I was able to play this before this all happened.

What have I done to troubleshoot?
1. I've Verified the Game files. Restarted the game and the same happens.
2. I've uninstalled the game via Steam, deleted the appdata folder & any subsequent folders left over after the uninstall. Reinstalled and tried to start again. The same issue occurs.
3. I've attempted to delete the SteamID folder for NS2.
4. I've attempted to delete the %Appdata% NS2 folder and the same issue occurs. Although as stated above the intro video does like to play here and there. But the same deal happens. The loading emblem freezes.

Yes, the game has played fine in the past (albeit with reduced graphics).

System Setup:
Athlon X3
4gigs of Ram (Yes, its min, but it has played in the past as seen with my profile with 100+ hours)
AMD 5770 HD
WD Black SATA HD (Where steam resides, although windows is installed on a crud IDE drive).
Note: I do have steam installed on C:\ (IDE drive) and the games from a previous steam install on the WD SATA. This setup is slightly different as I had another SATA windows had been installed on previously. But still the steam files are residing on the same drive.

I've uninstalled Steam several times just to verify the installation.
All the other games play fine; although I did have to reinstall several due to the weird setup. But after re-install all of them play fine. NS2 is the only one causing issues.

Appreciate any help offered.

Also...the log files are not helpful. Almost nothing in them to indicate an issue.

[werteran]

Exactly the same problem for me

[Wooza]

Hey.
You can verify that you have emptied your ns2 workshop folder in %appdata%?

Did you subscribe to some mods on the ns2 workshop? I do highly recommend to unsubscribe to all mods on workshop because the game during start or somewhere tries to get the info about your subscribed mods (even if they are deactivated) and if you have subscribed to a lot of mods, it can freeze (happened to me). You can find out about your mod subscription by doing following steps (it's actually quite hidden):

1.) Visit the NS2 workshop (in steam click on ns2, then check on the right side somewhere for the "Workshop".
2.) Once you found the Workshop, you will most likely land in the navigation menu "Browse". Change it to "Home". The navigation menu can be found at the top, a little bit underneath of where the navigation menu of Steam is.
3.) On the right side you see your profile where it says "Your workshop files". Click underneath on "Your files". A new menu pops up: select "Subscribed items". Delete all mods you subscribed. If there is any Crosshair mods you can keep them enabled.
4.) Try to start NS2 again.

[Wooza]

Wow, I didn't even properly read your text: Respect on still using an IDE drive today. I doubt many will remember what that was.

Also 4GB of RAM is reeeeallly a bottleneck and you have to understand that whenever stuff is added into the game, such as skins etc. it may increase the RAM consumption. NS2 does state that it will run with 4GB of RAM but it's very veeeeery doubtable that you will have a good times with it. NS2 has been updated some longer time ago to run on x86-64 architecture which means it is no longer limited to only 4GB and can use much more. THere is also some memory leaks which may play a role with such little RAM.
In short what I tried saying: You may have been able to run the game just fine, but new updates may increase RAM consumption by adding new features, new visuals, or introducing memory leaks.

[SynackAtck]

Originally posted by Wooza:

Wow, I didn't even properly read your text: Respect on still using an IDE drive today. I doubt many will remember what that was.

Also 4GB of RAM is reeeeallly a bottleneck and you have to understand that whenever stuff is added into the game, such as skins etc. it may increase the RAM consumption. NS2 does state that it will run with 4GB of RAM but it's very veeeeery doubtable that you will have a good times with it. NS2 has been updated some longer time ago to run on x86-64 architecture which means it is no longer limited to only 4GB and can use much more. THere is also some memory leaks which may play a role with such little RAM.
In short what I tried saying: You may have been able to run the game just fine, but new updates may increase RAM consumption by adding new features, new visuals, or introducing memory leaks.

I appreciate the reply to my OP. After reading about some of the updates I started to wonder about the memory requirements. I wonder if it wouldn't be a better idea to change it to 8gig instead of 4gig as the min requirement now. Although if it can technically run at 4gig I can see why they have not changed it.

As for the %AppData% folder yeah I've done that. I've also removed the mods that were subscribed. I had forgotten about those after years of not playing it. Some of the servers I used to play in required the mods.

At this point I plan to remove the entire steam folder, re-install each required item for NS2 first, then install NS2. I'll repost once this is done. Probably late Sunday. If it doesn't work after that I may wait until I've upgraded my box. I plan to add another 4gigs to make it 8 so I can play some old games and a few new-ish ones. At least until I can afford a whole new rig.

The IDE is getting swapped out for the orig SATA I had. I just didn't want to swap it back in yet. As that drive is a Raptor it might play a huge role in allowing the game to actually load faster. But it may be the updated resources in the game that is just taxing it beyond. My laptop (Also 4gigs) did play the game, but it was completely unplayable (due to onboard graphics). My GPU is a 5770 HD (AMD). It did play the game quiet nice back in 2014/2015 timeframe. But that was 5 years ago and a ton of changes have occurred in NS2.

I'm hoping I can get it to run again before the "upgrades". Adding some ram and updating a graphics card will just shove the bottleneck to the Processor (an Athlon II x3).

Again, thanks for the replies. I'll update Sunday night.

[Piškot]

Same problem here :(

[Hawk]

I have the same problem, and I am not subscribed to any workshop mods. However when I play the game the server loads mods from that server. My solution is to just let the game sit there and wait. After 3-5 minutes or so the game will finally load.

[Wooza]

Hmm that is strange. Did you guys changed in the options: "Resource Loading" to low?

I also recommend to join the official ns2 discord as here on the steam forums not many are active : https://discord.gg/UyzfF4H

[Wooza]

Another tip is to run the RepairGame.exe that should be located in the installation folder of NS2

[SynackAtck]

Originally posted by Hawk:

I have the same problem, and I am not subscribed to any workshop mods. However when I play the game the server loads mods from that server. My solution is to just let the game sit there and wait. After 3-5 minutes or so the game will finally load.

I've tried to let it sit (up to 30min), unfortunately my issue seems deeper. At least from the things I've tried.
I used to be able to do that on this exact box. Start the game, wait a few minutes and it would pop up. But that hasn't happened.

Originally posted by Wooza:

Hmm that is strange. Did you guys changed in the options: "Resource Loading" to low?

I also recommend to join the official ns2 discord as here on the steam forums not many are active : https://discord.gg/UyzfF4H

That same comment is in the official NS2 forums and I've seen the Discord. The discord is nice, but most of the posts are old-ish and there doesn't seem to be an actual dedicated Support section. There also was not activity on there, at least at the time I checked it. But it may have been due to the time of day I went. Thanks for the info though!

Originally posted by Wooza:

Another tip is to run the RepairGame.exe that should be located in the installation folder of NS2

That was done as stated in the OP.


I've done these at this point:
1. Completely uninstalled NS2.
2. Uninstalled Steam. And renamed an old Steam folder (I had a split install previously on 2 different drives)
3. Deleted the folder from AppData
4. Restarted computer.
5. Reinstalled Steam onto the 2nd drive.
6. Reinstalled NS2 to the same steam install from step 5. (basically completely ignorning the fact that the old folder even exists)
7. Re-Ran NS2. The blue "Loading" icon runs for a few minutes then freezes. I've timed it up to 11min with no changes. I end up having to force kill the task in Task Manager.
8. I've verified the installed files.
9. I've run the TechSupport utility and reviewed the information in each file that it creates. Nothing really stands out.

Notes: While trying each binary within the folders I did try "Tracy" which fails to run. I get an error regarding the VS Redstrib, which doesn't make sense since I have 2007 installed (x64 and x86). I've also repaired the installation of that as well.

Seems like this may just be unplayable for now. Like I said I know this game worked because I have over 122 hours played on this same exact box.

[Deadjack]

Same problem here.

[SynackAtck]

Originally posted by Deadjack:

Same problem here.

Deadjack, how much RAM do you have?
I'm attempting to run it with 4gigs. While this worked back 5-6 years ago, I've been told that the game had massive updates, it may not now. I'm looking to upgrade my box's memory (just for the short term so I can run other games as well; on tight budget).

[SynackAtck]

Originally posted by Wooza:

Hmm that is strange. Did you guys changed in the options: "Resource Loading" to low?

I also recommend to join the official ns2 discord as here on the steam forums not many are active : https://discord.gg/UyzfF4H

Here are the options found in the AppData forlder (none have been changed since I did the re-install). I noticed that since the Intro hasn't played that option has yet to be added to the file. But to troubleshoot I did swap that between true / false several times with varying degrees of success. The success only that the intro played and then still stuck at the loading screen. One time I did get a partial load of the menu screen, but it froze and never finished coming up.

<options>
<system>
<runs>5</runs>
<introViewed>true</introViewed>
<build>333</build>
<upload-dumps>true</upload-dumps>
</system>
<graphics>
<display>
<x-resolution>1280</x-resolution>
<shadows>true</shadows>
<y-resolution>800</y-resolution>
<display-buffering>0</display-buffering>
<anisotropic-filtering>true</anisotropic-filtering>
<bloom_new>false</bloom_new>
<quality>1</quality>
<window-mode>windowed</window-mode>
<anti-aliasing-type>fxaa</anti-aliasing-type>
<atmospherics>true</atmospherics>
</display>
<texture-streaming>true</texture-streaming>
<atmospheric-quality>low</atmospheric-quality>
</graphics>
</options>

What are the actual options I can place inside the AAtype tags? I did try none at least once; that didn't work either. I've turned atmospherics to false. And I previously tried texture-streaming at false as well. And Anisotropic filtering to false.

Image of the frozen screen.
https://imgur.com/5B2AJAU

[Wooza]

Can you try sending the log file for more insights?
The log file is located at: %appdata% \Natural Selection 2.

The file is overwritten when you restart the game. Take the log file after you freezed.

[SynackAtck]

Originally posted by Wooza:

Can you try sending the log file for more insights?
The log file is located at: %appdata% \Natural Selection 2.

The file is overwritten when you restart the game. Take the log file after you freezed.

I can check for the log file. I've already done both the dxdiag and the actual dump from the NS2 utility. I didn't see anything that stood out, but the NS2 guys might know better.

It bugs me because I had this problem previously. I think it had something to do with the order I installed stuff or video drivers. I can't recall. Even then it was still hit or miss if the game actually ran the first time I clicked on the shortcut (or via steam). It was random on when it would freeze and run. But right now it just flat out doesn't run.

I've included what I believe to be the most important parts of the log dump. If you think I need to add something more please let me know.

From Listing.txt


/Builder.com 19456
/Builder.exe 4187064 d29dd35
/CinematicEditor.exe 5657528 7b2f0d6
/CompileModel.exe 266168 917dee7
/d3dcompiler_47.dll 4173928 36d3fed
/dbghelp.dll 1532048 c877c28
/Decoda.chm 48394
/Decoda.exe 2774528 ab5bf8c
/Editor.exe 7083448 2e8957e
/fmodex64.dll 1503232 587d220
/fmod_event64.dll 493056 39d5803
/fmod_event_net64.dll 988160 3d57c52
/LaunchPad.exe 4580280 22d3a3f
/libcollada14dom21.dll 4197376 ba86bf5
/libcurl.dll 249344 02806dd
/libfbxsdk.dll 8048936 c5110f7
/lua51.dll 536064 4517716
/NS2.exe 1661880 b0d2c64
/Overview.exe 78776 1fd93a9
/ParticleTrimmer.exe 56248 10ae2bf
/PhysX3Common_x64.dll 952832 cb5f3a8
/PhysX3Cooking_x64.dll 206336 1f97fe8
/PhysX3Gpu_x64.dll 2606984 c1ee388
/PhysX3_x64.dll 1643520 4370a90
/RepairGame.exe 19968 1622090
/SDL2.dll 1334272 176e1f1
/Server.exe 964536 ddca2d4
/SoundInfo.exe 44032 3635ce0
/SparkCrashHandler.exe 97208 da7d852
/Spark_Cinematic.dll 252928 d286ae1
/Spark_Core.dll 4240384 3008fd0
/Spark_Network.dll 358400 6ccc6f8
/Spark_Physics.dll 278528 13b93c6
/Spark_Render.dll 921088 152cb00
/Spark_Sound.dll 108032 3a19c16
/steam_api64.dll 289568 bbc90be
/steam_api64_legacy.dll 237136 fb254fe
/steam_appid.txt 4
/tbb.dll 265016 69a671a
/TechSupport.exe 3607480 55ee12e
/Viewer.exe 5199288 65ea91d


From Log.txt

Date: 06/29/20
Time: 00:53:56:
--------------------------------------------------------------
[ 0.000] Unbound/Unknown : Filesystem initialized, cache enabled
Build 333.2457
Windows 7 64-bit (build 7601)
Steam initialized branch 'public'
[INVENTORY] Granting Promo Items
Num displays: 1
Direct3D 11 initialized [feature level 11.0] (AMD Radeon HD 5700 Series)
Sound Device: Headset
Record Device: Headset
Loading config://ConsoleBindings.json
[ 18.123] Worker 05 : Error: Unable to open '*.material' (usage 0x1)
[ 18.863] Worker 04 : Error: No shader specified for material '*.material'
Main Menu Initialized at Version: 333
Steam Id: 4219129
Loading config://FavoriteServers.json
Loading config://RankedServers.json
Loading config://HistoryServers.json
Loading config://BlockedServers.json


From log-CrashHandler.txt

Date: 06/29/20
Time: 00:53:56:
--------------------------------------------------------------
CrashGenerationServer started successfully
Client connected: 264, \Device\HarddiskVolume1\Steam\steamapps\common\Natural Selection 2\x64\NS2.exe

[Meteru]

Better ask here, https://discord.gg/487vFu
seems someone else having same problem, there u can find official support