Crashing? How to find out why.

[mackster]

So a crash can be the game or, it could be something in your config/settings/lack of right hardware. Who knows, until you do.

You can raise a ticket for a crash, give a spec, yet the devs will still not know if you have another program causing an issue with the particular game. Sometimes a crash error can let you 'fix it yourself'. This is what happened to me, not sure if I fixed it but the crashes seem to have gone for now, they were fine at first, but all of a sudden I would get some crashes with no reason and I hadn't updated anything (nor had the game).

First, where are the crash logs - C:/Users/[your PC name]/AppData/Local/Temp/Colossal Order/Cities Skylines II/Crashes

In there are folders with a date for each crash event. Its the crash.dmp file you need.

In W11 (I assume 10 as well) you can open the dump files by typing 'WinDBG' in the search field. Open as administrator.
Click file menu and find the open crash dump file option.
Once the dump is loaded, on the screen you will see 'analyze -v' near the bottom of the text in the window. Click that and wait a while for the program to run.

For me, the offending issue that caused the crash was:
SYMBOL_NAME: UnityPlayer+a2cbb2

MODULE_NAME: UnityPlayer

IMAGE_NAME: UnityPlayer.dll

FAILURE_BUCKET_ID: INVALID_POINTER_WRITE_c0000005_UnityPlayer.dll!Unknown

Now, after a lot of google work, unityplayer.dll can cause a lot of issuesd on 'some' games. Some programs interfere with it anmd also, setting the RAM to uttilise XMP can also be an issue. I didn't have any of that. I tried to verify the Steam files and everything came back good, but crashes persisted. So I found the unityplayer.dll file in my CS2 folder in Steam, deleted and re-verified. It found it missing and re-added the file. I went in game for quite a few hours and no crash.

Has it fixed it? Time will tell. At least I know now what the issue was and its pretty well known. It could be a game thing too and I was just lucky I didnt crash. But at least it felt good to do a little digging myself and find the cause

[Camisinho]

hello everything is fine? where did you find the unitplayer.dll file to delete it from your CS2 folder?
I found the folder where the crashes are located but I don't know where to see what specific error it was, can you tell me?

Thanks

[Stealthy]

Thanks for this, I deleted unityplayer.dll and verified files. At least today, no crashes.

But for some reason it re acquired 11 files! And last time i did check local files was yesterday. Maybe the patch didn't install correctly...

[Camisinho]

Originally posted by Stealthy:

Thanks for this, I deleted unityplayer.dll and verified files. At least today, no crashes.

But for some reason it re acquired 11 files! And last time i did check local files was yesterday. Maybe the patch didn't install correctly...

how did you do it ? can you tell me?

[SirSaab]

I can confirm that deleting the unityplayer.DLL file and verifying fixes the crashes introduced after the latest patch. I did it last night, have not had a single crash since (and had previously had none before the latest patch introduced the unity issue).

[Stealthy]

Originally posted by Camisinho:

Originally posted by Stealthy:

Thanks for this, I deleted unityplayer.dll and verified files. At least today, no crashes.

But for some reason it re acquired 11 files! And last time i did check local files was yesterday. Maybe the patch didn't install correctly...

how did you do it ? can you tell me?

Just like the OP says. Go to game folder, delete unityplayer.dll and then verify game files. Right click on top of the game name in your library list, select properties. From there take local files tab, and there is a button "view local files" that takes you directly to game folder. Delete said file, and then at same tab, you got "verify local game files" press that and wait. It will reacquire said file and then you can play normally.

[Camisinho]

Originally posted by Stealthy:

Originally posted by Camisinho:

how did you do it ? can you tell me?

Just like the OP says. Go to game folder, delete unityplayer.dll and then verify game files. Right click on top of the game name in your library list, select properties. From there take local files tab, and there is a button "view local files" that takes you directly to game folder. Delete said file, and then at same tab, you got "verify local game files" press that and wait. It will reacquire said file and then you can play normally.

Thanks for the explanation, but I did it yesterday, I managed it alone and it really worked, but I had to exit the game and as soon as I opened it again the same problem remained, that is, I believe that in addition to maintaining the auto save unlimited times for 1 or 2 minutes You will have to delete the file every time you want to start the game and do the verification, this whole process until someone fixes this. This is ♥♥♥♥!

[Stealthy]

Why do you need unlimited autosaves? I use 3, and got no crashing issues.

[hezziegreen17]

I dont see a crash folder all I see is some cache and a folder with some autsaves and thats it

[boshk11]

there is no crash logs or folder there.

[DrDynoMorose]

For anyone else trying to find this,

Here is where my logfiles live on Win 11

... \AppData\LocalLow\Colossal Order\Cities Skylines II

[Rune]

My game NEVER crashed until the economy update. So it feels pretty weird to blame other software or hardware.

[Hekteur]

a game crashing can be caused by literally everything, from the software itself, to outdated or missing drivers, and then any part of your hardware and even unstable current on your power line. It is essential to always gather as much information as possible when investigating such issue.

[Tsubame ⭐]

When the game is pretty much only thing in the Steam library crashing, and no matter on what device it is played on, it is invariably the game rather than whatever computer is being used.

[SiLkY_sOfT_]

I dont have the crash dumps. I deleted that dll and did repair but I still crash without notice.

[sternenstaub70]

Originally posted by Tsubame ⭐:

When the game is pretty much only thing in the Steam library crashing, and no matter on what device it is played on, it is invariably the game rather than whatever computer is being used.

Well, this game is one of the very few items in the steam library which can really push CPU and GPU at the same time to their limits.
But that's more or less intended since it's a simulation which - to run as fast as possible - uses all ressources it can get.
If the hardware is set up correctly, the only "problem" that might occur should be loud fans.

To double check if it's really not the hardware use some stress-test tools, let them run for a while or use other simulation or calculation tools which heavily uses CPU and GPU (for example BOINC in full performance mode).

However, to be fair, the game itself has some bugs as well, but if the crashs occur game wise, it's usually some mods which don't work properly or some messed up drivers or installations.
Sometimes it can also be some background processes which interfere.

If multiple players have a similar or even almost identical hardware, but only some of them have regular unidentifyable crashs then it's pretty obvious that the problem is not the game itself, but either something with the hardware (like PSU), with the BIOS/CPU/GPU settings, with the drivers, or the general windows installation.

It could be the general i13/i14 problem which some players still have not fixed by doing a bios update.
It could be high temperatures because some players wanted to save some money and bought a mini desktop with terrible airflow.
Or others put so many SSDs into the desktop case that the outer fans cannot keep up with the extra heat those additional components create.
Even not properly inserted connectors can cause crashes.


That's the disadvantage of PC versions of games: There are endless of possibilities of what might have gone wrong when setting up the PC.
Consoles on the other hand are all identical (software and hardware), here it's way easier to track down problems.