Update Lionheart Windows 7 64 bit crashes

[Susana]

As some players have noticed, Windows 7 64 bit in combination with some graphics cards, as well as a third, so far unknown complication that causes the game to crash. We can't be sure exactly which graphics cards, as the problem does not occur in all cases. We have not been able to reproduce the issue despite having the same configurations available as some of those who get the crash. The developers are doing what they can to fix this but we don’t anticipate it being an easy fix (an external QA company is also involved) nor do we have a time estimate on it. Therefore we would like to work with you to see if we can offer a solution.

Current customers: If you are unable to play the game due to this issue and want to return it, we will do our best to facilitate that. Please contact support@paradoxplaza.com and mark the subject REFUND. We will need a full report of the problem, a copy of your DXDIAG file, proof of purchase and specification of where it was purchased. We will handle these on a case to case basis, please allow a little time for handling.

Future customers: If you have Windows 7 64 bit, we strongly recommend downloading the demo and running it on your machine first http://www.lionheartthegame.com/demo. If your computer handles the demo without issues, the full game should run as well.

Kind regards
Susana Meza

 

[Peter Ebbesen]

From a crash-perspective, Susana, just how should this be understood? This may not properly be a question for you to address, but Neocore or the technical personnel involved in the bughunt, but your post puzzles me.

The crash reports in this forum have regarded crashes during gameplay that occur in identical fashions for users of windows 7 32bit, windows 7 64bit, and windows vista. While most of the reports have concerned windows 7 64bit, the existence of identical crash reports for other platforms imply that one of two things is the case:

1. Either there is one major problem and it isn't an issue with windows 7 64bit.
2. Or there are two distinct major problems that make the game crash in exactly the same way at exactly the same time under exactly the same game-conditions, one of which depends on windows 7 64bit.

Additionally, Neocore's previous game, King Arthur, experienced what a player of both games would observe as remarkably similar in-battle crashes - the main difference is that Lionheart also has an extremely reproducible crash at the end of one particular battle for several people (over multiple operating systems). King Arthur was released at a time where most customers were using Windows vista - and Lionheart reuses King Arthur's game engine with modifications.

I obviously don't have access to all the data that lie behind the decisions that lead to your post, Susana, nor should I, but let us just say that it puzzles me to see Neocore's crashes in their tactical combat engine for Lionheart reclassified as wholly or mainly a windows 7 issue.

 

[unmerged(218547)]

played the demo

Hi,
I played the demo but only did the tutorial but game hasn't crashed yet.
I have:
windows 7 64 bit
E8400 O.C 3.4 Ghz
ATI 4870 1 GB catalyst 10.10
Graphic settings Maxed out
P5Q P45 deluxe
4 GB DDR2
CPU overclocked

I'm waiting for the boxed version to arrive in Canada, $10 shipping is too much to order from Paradox store :wacko:

 

[Kallocain]

The crash reports in this forum have regarded crashes during gameplay that occur in identical fashions for users of windows 7 32bit, windows 7 64bit, and windows vista. While most of the reports have concerned windows 7 64bit, the existence of identical crash reports for other platforms imply that one of two things is the case:

1. Either there is one major problem and it isn't an issue with windows 7 64bit.
2. Or there are two distinct major problems that make the game crash in exactly the same way at exactly the same time under exactly the same game-conditions, one of which depends on windows 7 64bit.

I do not know the inner workings of Neocore, but as far as I have understood, they have started to search for a solution, and this is as far as they have gotten in trying to understand the crash. Users on other OS have reported a similar crash too, and that might be because of this third unknown factor. The vast majority of the crashes have been on win7 64 bit though. Still, if the crash is solved there, it should be solved for the others who get that crash as well. The advice about testing the demo first applies to everyone of course.

 

[JG53_Jaguar]

As someone who was developer for 15+ years (c/c++) I would have to say the fact that it crashes in pretty exactly same part of the mission 1 as crusader regardless of Os being as Win 7 32bit or 64bit should pretty much indicate that there seems to be a memory leak or something wrong with the engine and not video card issue. The game always crashes at exactly the same spot, no matter how many times I tried. If it was video card issue I would have seen different things happen to me, like texture corruption etc. I don't have any problems with video, the problem is the game engine. Known fact, memory management in Windows 7 is much much better than XP, stuff you can get away with in XP won't work in Windows 7 (thank god).

As a developer I have a suggestion: release a beta patch that is compiled in debug mode - your developer should know what it means...I bet Lionheart was written in C++. Let the developers add a bit more debug info into the test executable and give it to us for testing. I can reproduce my crash 100% of times. So next time the game crashes I will be able to provide more info. I don't want to return the game as I like the game, I don't mind helping out to resolve the issue. I really want to see this issue resolved but please let's stop blaming it on video card drivers...

When I played the game with the original release the game always crashed when the 3rd part of the mission (attack on the city) started. with the Patch released I can get further into the game but still the game crashes will completing the objective of capturing the city.

If I can play Starcraft 2 the whole game (all the missions) without a single crash (which is pretty graphically demanding game) I shouldn't have any graphics problems with Lionheart...because I don't believe that Lionheart has as advanced 3D graphics engine as Startcraft2. Mass Effect 2 is no problem so is Dragon Age...all graphics demanding games.

Thanks

 

[Susana]

As someone who was developer for 15+ years (c/c++) I would have to say the fact that it crashes in pretty exactly same part of the mission 1 as crusader regardless of Os being as Win 7 32bit or 64bit should pretty much indicate that there seems to be a memory leak or something wrong with the engine and not video card issue. The game always crashes at exactly the same spot, no matter how many times I tried. If it was video card issue I would have seen different things happen to me, like texture corruption etc. I don't have any problems with video, the problem is the game engine. Known fact, memory management in Windows 7 is much much better than XP, stuff you can get away with in XP won't work in Windows 7 (thank god).

As a developer I have a suggestion: release a beta patch that is compiled in debug mode - your developer should know what it means...I bet Lionheart was written in C++. Let the developers add a bit more debug info into the test executable and give it to us for testing. I can reproduce my crash 100% of times. So next time the game crashes I will be able to provide more info. I don't want to return the game as I like the game, I don't mind helping out to resolve the issue. I really want to see this issue resolved but please let's stop blaming it on video card drivers...

When I played the game with the original release the game always crashed when the 3rd part of the mission (attack on the city) started. with the Patch released I can get further into the game but still the game crashes will completing the objective of capturing the city.

If I can play Starcraft 2 the whole game (all the missions) without a single crash (which is pretty graphically demanding game) I shouldn't have any graphics problems with Lionheart...because I don't believe that Lionheart has as advanced 3D graphics engine as Startcraft2. Mass Effect 2 is no problem so is Dragon Age...all graphics demanding games.

Thanks

Thanks for your post, I'll check with the devs straight away.

Kind regards
Susana

 

[ch0pper]

As someone who was developer for 15+ years (c/c++) I would have to say the fact that it crashes in pretty exactly same part of the mission 1 as crusader regardless of Os being as Win 7 32bit or 64bit should pretty much indicate that there seems to be a memory leak or something wrong with the engine and not video card issue. The game always crashes at exactly the same spot, no matter how many times I tried. If it was video card issue I would have seen different things happen to me, like texture corruption etc. I don't have any problems with video, the problem is the game engine. Known fact, memory management in Windows 7 is much much better than XP, stuff you can get away with in XP won't work in Windows 7 (thank god).

As a developer I have a suggestion: release a beta patch that is compiled in debug mode - your developer should know what it means...I bet Lionheart was written in C++. Let the developers add a bit more debug info into the test executable and give it to us for testing. I can reproduce my crash 100% of times. So next time the game crashes I will be able to provide more info. I don't want to return the game as I like the game, I don't mind helping out to resolve the issue. I really want to see this issue resolved but please let's stop blaming it on video card drivers...

When I played the game with the original release the game always crashed when the 3rd part of the mission (attack on the city) started. with the Patch released I can get further into the game but still the game crashes will completing the objective of capturing the city.

If I can play Starcraft 2 the whole game (all the missions) without a single crash (which is pretty graphically demanding game) I shouldn't have any graphics problems with Lionheart...because I don't believe that Lionheart has as advanced 3D graphics engine as Startcraft2. Mass Effect 2 is no problem so is Dragon Age...all graphics demanding games.

Thanks

Do you crash at the victory screen (when returning to the strategic map)?
I get confused now about crash reports. I thought everyone crashes when they click "ok" on the victory screen with rewards which is supposed to return the player to the strategic overview map.
I did have crashes during battle missions but they seemed more random to me.

So what is being worked on right now? The end-battle bug OR crashes during battles?

 

[Kallocain]

As a developer I have a suggestion: release a beta patch that is compiled in debug mode

I don't think this will happen. If the developers gave out a debug exe, it would be much easier to reverse engineer it.
I'm not as sure as you that is is a memory leek, seing as most computers do not get the crash. An external QA company has tested this game, with lots of different cofigurations, and they had not seen the crash before release. This suggests driver of software incompatibility issues to me. We'll see when it gets solved though, which can not happen soon enough.

...because I don't believe that Lionheart has as advanced 3D graphics engine as Startcraft2. Mass Effect 2 is no problem so is Dragon Age...all graphics demanding games.

Games with lower budgets can actually be more demanding on the computer, since they do not have as much time to optimize. I think you are correct in this case, but it's not always easy to tell just by looking at the graphics.

 

[Peter Ebbesen]

I'm not as sure as you that is is a memory leek, seing as most computers do not get the crash.

To be fair, he said memory leak or something wrong with the game engine.

An external QA company has tested this game, with lots of different cofigurations, and they had not seen the crash before release. This suggests driver of software incompatibility issues to me.

It may yet end up with this being the case, yet the suspicion for any owner of multiple Neocore games has to be that the game engine is at least partly at fault somehow, given that in-battle crashes occurred in the previous Neocore game, King Arthur, which game engine Lionheart uses, which are remarkably similar to those observed in Lionheart, and that they occurred on different OS platforms with different drivers. Such suspicions are based on nothing whatsoever save seeing the external symptoms, historical knowledge, and a suspicious mind, but lacking access to the code or debug traces, what can one do?

I mean, Lionheart carefully preserved several other bugs from King Arthur (the most obvious one and easiest identifiable probably being that the "+500 ranged defence shield" didn't actually add anything to the ranged defence in either game until they fixed it based on my bug report for Lionheart, something that somehow completely managed to pass through whatever QA they had for both games, be it internal or external, suggesting that there are at least some parts of Neocore's games that have not been subjected to extensive QA), and while the identified bugs that carry over aren't anywhere nearly as serious as the showstopping crash bugs, it is not inconceivable that the things that made King Arthur crash were actually at least indirectly caused by the the game engine and were carried over to Lionheart.

We'll see when it gets solved though, which can not happen soon enough.

If my guess is correct, which I sincerely hope isn't the case, then Neocore is quite likely to fail to solve their crash bugs in Lionheart, just as they failed to solve them in King Arthur - a game that when patching stopped after several patches had had some causes of in-battle crashes removed but still to this very day occasionally crashes in battle for a great number of people with different configurations, though mostly only after playing an extended amount of time when several big battles have been played through.

As a previous customer of Neocore, the only crash I expect them to resolve is the blasted "crash at the end of crusader mission 1" crash (and any others that were caused by the same circumstances that brings it around), and that only if we are lucky enough that they manage, without it being reproducible for them and with no debug traces to go by to luck out in writing a kludge before they have to abandon support for Lionheart in favour of developing their next game, which will likely use the same engine and crash in much the same manner with whatever OS and graphics drivers are popular at the time.


Of course, if they had the inclination, were willing to devote the time needed, were willing to take the risk, and if Paradox as publishers agreed, they could probably get some of us who suffer the crashes to sign a reassuring enough NDA that we could be issued a debug enabled executable (which wouldn't in any way, shape, or form guarantee that a solution was found, though it would certainly increase the odds) - but that's a lot of work to go into for people who are likely to just say "fuck this for a game of soldiers" and chuck the game in the wastebin a few weeks from now and it isn't likely to significantly affect future sales anyhow since, as you note, the game does work for most people and, as a result, doesn't get slaughtered in the reviews.

 

[Steinfisch]

Bought lionsheart yesterday (boxed version, germany). It always crashes at the same point (finishing the siege of the first town). Windows 7 64 bit is the major pc op.system in 2010! So you cant say it crashes only in some special cases. Without saving within the battle there is no way to continue. Sorry paradox, but the game is unplayable.

 

[unmerged(170172)]

as a long time sufferer of this game,on Vista 64 bit I have to say what a terribly shabby effort this crash resolution has been. I have 24 hours playtime now, 10 hours of which relate to crashed mission 1 (Crusader) and also 4 hours to last crashed mission in Saracen. Interestingly both of these always freeze just after the battle stats on the final phase, as the walled city is conquered. I have not been able to get past mission 1 on Crusader.

Since your success in this is so poor, please can you confirm your refund arrangements, and streamline this as partial recompense for wasting our time. And don't please produce such sloppy work in the future : )

 

[Kallocain]

Windows 7 64 bit is the major pc op.system in 2010! So you cant say it crashes only in some special cases. Without saving within the battle there is no way to continue. Sorry paradox, but the game is unplayable.

The game does not crash for everyone with that OS, that is why we say some cases. I understand it is very frustrating for you who get the crash though.

Since your success in this is so poor, please can you confirm your refund arrangements, and streamline this as partial recompense for wasting our time. And don't please produce such sloppy work in the future : )

The refund arrangements are in the first post.

 

[JG53_Jaguar]

I don't think this will happen. If the developers gave out a debug exe, it would be much easier to reverse engineer it.
I'm not as sure as you that is is a memory leek, seing as most computers do not get the crash. An external QA company has tested this game, with lots of different cofigurations, and they had not seen the crash before release. This suggests driver of software incompatibility issues to me. We'll see when it gets solved though, which can not happen soon enough.


Games with lower budgets can actually be more demanding on the computer, since they do not have as much time to optimize. I think you are correct in this case, but it's not always easy to tell just by looking at the graphics.

Regarding your response to my first quoted text, I wasn't saying that that's the only option, this is one of the ways to get more information from the user. I'm not saying that it is 100% memory leak but something sure is not right. I was just trying to help how to solve the issue. If it was graphics problems then how come I can pass the first two mission objectives just fine ??? The map is the same in the 3rd part of the crusader 1st mission, the unit are the same...so what gives ? Regarding your external company testing....obviously they haven't done their job as I'm not the only one experiencing this problem. And having Win 7 64bit with more than 4GB of ram is not exactly rare these days.

About your second quote, all I'm saying is that I have enough graphics power to run this game. I even have F-1 car simulator for code masters and I can drive just fine with maximum graphics settings at resolution 1920 x1200. So my current graphics drivers works just fine...

Now regarding the solution, before deciding seriously to return the game I have decided to give it one more try...but this time I have reduced all my video options to minimum (Grass Visibility/Env./Character/Shadow/Texture/Physics Details) I only run the game in 1920 x 1200 resolution..and it WORKED. I was able to finish the first mission just fine...so looks I solved the problem. Now all I have to do is perhaps replay the mission in few times with different features turned on to max to see which of the options will crash the game.

 

[Kallocain]

I'm sorry if I came off as defensive, it's just that.. I am. It's very stressful when things are not working right, but I know you just want to help and I do appreciate it. It is very interesting to hear about the video options, because as you say, you have good enough of a computer not to have to lower those at all. If you find a breakpoint for when it starts to crash again, I'd be interested in that as well, but we do have a QA company investigating this, so I hope they'll find the exact cause soon.

Btw, what graphics card do you have?

Regarding your response to my first quoted text, I wasn't saying that that's the only option, this is one of the ways to get more information from the user. I'm not saying that it is 100% memory leak but something sure is not right. I was just trying to help how to solve the issue. If it was graphics problems then how come I can pass the first two mission objectives just fine ??? The map is the same in the 3rd part of the crusader 1st mission, the unit are the same...so what gives ? Regarding your external company testing....obviously they haven't done their job as I'm not the only one experiencing this problem. And having Win 7 64bit with more than 4GB of ram is not exactly rare these days.

About your second quote, all I'm saying is that I have enough graphics power to run this game. I even have F-1 car simulator for code masters and I can drive just fine with maximum graphics settings at resolution 1920 x1200. So my current graphics drivers works just fine...

Now regarding the solution, before deciding seriously to return the game I have decided to give it one more try...but this time I have reduced all my video options to minimum (Grass Visibility/Env./Character/Shadow/Texture/Physics Details) I only run the game in 1920 x 1200 resolution..and it WORKED. I was able to finish the first mission just fine...so looks I solved the problem. Now all I have to do is perhaps replay the mission in few times with different features turned on to max to see which of the options will crash the game.

 

[JG53_Jaguar]

After the first mission, I have maxed out all the settings under the Video tab except Shadows which is set to nimimum as I don't really care about it. I have played about 5 missions and so far not a single crash. If I see something again, I will report back...

I'm sorry if I came off as defensive, it's just that.. I am. It's very stressful when things are not working right, but I know you just want to help and I do appreciate it. It is very interesting to hear about the video options, because as you say, you have good enough of a computer not to have to lower those at all. If you find a breakpoint for when it starts to crash again, I'd be interested in that as well, but we do have a QA company investigating this, so I hope they'll find the exact cause soon.

Btw, what graphics card do you have?

 

[unmerged(235189)]

Work Around Kinda Win7 64 Crash

Hey all.

If you are frustrated like I was, you can progress the Crusaders side by using the cheat "CTRL + SHFT + 1" then type "WinBattle now", This needs to be don for the first 2 Crusader mission then you can happily play about 15 or so missions before you hit another error. I do suggest that you wait as long as possible before using the cheat as it alows your units to get appropriate xp and items.

Hope this helps some people!!

Cheers
Jaie
Australia