[3019 + 3013] Misc Combat Crash, 2x Background Ingame Load crash

Summary:

[3019] Pure 3019 settlement. In combat, 3 footmen vs a large stone golem. Lots of microing the combat, pause - take a step - pause. Usually when a hearthling runs away, the stone golem will pick an adjacent target. This time it didn’t. Thought that was odd. Then the game autosaved. Then I did something, and a moment later it crashed - I don’t recall if I issued an order, but I think the last act was unpausing; the crash wasn’t instant, it seemed like the game crashed while trying to figure out how to unpause and resume the world. As usual, no error message.

crash_3019_CTD1_stutterstepCombat.dmp (264.8 KB)
stonehearth_3019_CTD1.log (64.1 KB)

[3013] Both crashes were the same basic circumstance. In the game, in combat, something goes wrong (I believe hearthling very recently died in both cases). Pause the game, ESC->load a recent save of the same world. Alt-tab to another window (Chrome browser). Game continues to load in the background. Eventually, roughly when I’d expect the load to complete, it crashes instead (as usual, application insta-closes, no error dialog or any such).

Starting Stonehearth up fresh, the same saves loaded in fine.

I’ve had other “crashes while loading a world while Stonehearth is not the focused application”, but these are the only two I thought to grab the crash dump for.

crash_3013_CTD1_whenLoadingFromIngame.dmp (159.3 KB)
stonehearth_3013_CTD1_whenLoadingFromIngame.log (57.8 KB)

crash_3013_CTD2_whenLoadingFromIngame.dmp (157.9 KB)
stonehearth_3013_CTD2.log (1.2 MB)

Versions and Mods:

Vanilla. 3019 I am sure was a pure world (ie generated in that version, no blueprints created in another version used). I believe the 3013s were also from pure worlds.

System Information:

Windows 7 (x64), GTX 460 (768mb version), separate monitor. Stonehearth is being run in windowed mode, drag-to-top-of-screen-style maximized (hence how you get the odd 1920x1018 resolution - I presume the task bar eats the other 62 pixels).

Notes:

Debated splitting this into two topics (3019, and 3013) vs one - two different game versions, different crash circumstances (though both in-combat), but not much context or detail or clues to give the posts any meat. Would be handy to know which you’d prefer.

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I was able to get a little information from the dumps and logs, but it’s going to take a bit more digging to find the root cause. Thanks for posting!

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Does anyone else get crashes when alt-tabbing to another app while loading a game?

Can some of you try this out?

just tried loading some saves and alt-tabbing while they were loading and none of them caused a crash…

however i was alt-tabbing into firefox not chrome, and a hearthling hadn’t just died, so maybe those things are part of the reason it crashed for @Vyrasa?

I don’t think hearthling death is correlated. Running fullscreen or maximized might be a contributing factor though.

Some quick experimentation. One run of Stonehearth, running maximized windowed as usual:

  • Loaded up my save. Let it run briefly (~10s?), loaded the same save again. Just fine.

  • Set it to fastforward (keyboard ‘3’, 2x speed?), waiting for a combat encounter to show up. Spent this time in Chrome (I don’t expect that the ‘wait’ time being tabbed out is causal).

  • Combat encounter spawns (small v-lizard). Have my 3 footmen respond. Exchange blows, some panic, I start telling them to run off (don’t want to kill the mob, since I personally suspect that the combat encounter being active is key).

  • Start loading the save again, and switch back to Chrome (clicking on taskbar rather than alt-tab, if it matters). Stonehearth crashes.

stonehearth_3019_CTD2_bgLoad.log (50 KB)
crash_3019_CTD2_bgLoad.dmp (159.8 KB)

Trying to minimize my actions for another pass:

  • load stonehearth, load the save. Switch from Pause ‘1’ to normal ‘2’, then to fastforward ‘3’. Swap back to chrome.
  • Combat encounter spawns (golems). Pause it, click the ‘invaders’ banner, set time back to ‘2’, move camera around a bit. Footmen engage autonomously. Wait until the first one panics (also happens to trigger a low-health warning), load save. No crash. (so to be clear, I never issued any combat orders)

Closed and restarted Stonehearth to keep it cleaner. Version 3:

  • Load Stonehearth, load save. Speed ->2->3, pan camera a little, hit ‘7’ to select the combat squad (no orders issued), back to Chrome.
  • Combat encounter spawns (wolf). ->1 [pause, probably clicked invader banner]->2.
  • Give ‘7’ (red flag) a move order. Footmen engage. While exchanging blows, I gave each footmen at least one move order, during various pauses.
  • With game in ‘2’, load the save again. Crash.

crash_3019_CTD3_bgIgLoad.dmp (155.8 KB)
stonehearth_3019_CTD3_bgIgLoad.log (30.0 KB)

General notes:

  • All of the above was done with the same save, an 11-pop, hardmode settlement. Its happened with other saves, however (most of which were Normal mode), so I don’t expect it’s anything special to the town. They’ve probably all been Ascendency-Forest, with the save in the ‘paused’ state, though. All done with my usual drag-to-top-of-screen maximized.
  • Most of the ‘real’ games have been exclusively in ‘1’ (paused) or ‘2’ (normal) - I’m using ‘3’ heavily just in these explicit tests. I mention it so much, just because I’m trying to note what I’m actually doing, and that’s most of the ‘actions’.
  • While commonly being referred to as “alt-tabbing”, I actually do most of the Stonehearth->Chrome->Stonehearth transitions with clicks, either on the taskbar, window titlebar, or window content. Habit from many games not handling the Alt-state well after literally “alt-tabbing”.

While it’s no big test suite, hopefully that narrows it at least a little.

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Just to try to steer away from blaming the ‘other app’ too much, I repeated a CTD3-esque scenario, but switched to Steam instead of Chrome during the load.

  • Loaded in game, speed ->2->3. Switched to Steam, Windows Explorer, and Textpad (again, doubt relevant).
  • Combat encoutner spawned (wolf). ‘1’, clicked banner, ‘2’. Footmen autonomously engaged. ‘7’, gave the squad a move order. After they completed the move, gave each squad member individually a move order, spread over 2 pauses. Various bits of panning, largely with keyboard.
  • After the last move was finished (and was running back to the wolf), started to load the save. Switched to Steam. Stonehearth crashed.

stonehearth_3019_CTD4.log (32.9 KB)
crash_3019_CTD4.dmp (160.1 KB)

Edit - Realized I was ignoring the obvious here. Trying the same basic scenario as CTD3&4, but just not alt-tabbing during the load: crash.

stonehearth_3019_CTD5_igLoad.log (29.8 KB)
crash_3019_CTD5_igLoad.dmp (150.0 KB)

So the whole ‘background’ aspect might be superfluous, and just a correlated-but-not-causal behavior on my part (ie scenario where problem presents is scenario where I’m likely to tab out, rather than tabbing causing the problem).

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