Freeze In Mission Editor

[efs2]

I have been a casual LO pilot for awhile now and am trying to do a little more, including some mission editing.

However, I usually encounter an unrecoverable freeze if I am in the editor for more than a minute or so.

Most of the time, the mouse arrow disappears, and there is no response to the keyboard, although the sound continues.

Sometimes, however, there is a full-screen graphic glitch

A technique I have used with some success is to create/change things, save them, and leave the editor before the feeze, and then repeat the process for each thing I want to create or change, but that is a pain in the butt.

Also, sometimes I can stay in the editor for several minutes without a freeze.

 

I am running LO 1.02 with generally lower graphics settings at 1024x768 @ 32-bit depth.

 

Also, I have the hardware acceleration slider set one notch down from max, thanks to information I got off this board.

That helped considerably with game play but not the mission editor freezes.

 

My system specs:

Mobo: Abit IC7

CPU: Intel P4 2.4GHz (Northwood) @ 3.0GHz (FSB @ 250MHz)

RAM: 1024MB Mushkin Standard PC3200

Graphics Card: Chaintech nVidia FX5700 (the real one, not the LE)

Windows XP SP2

 

Any ideas?

Ed

[christopher m]

Mission Editor freeze

 

Hi efs2,

 

Yes i got the same problem.

 

I found it was related to how much I accelerated my MB.

I have Asus MB and used 5% system acceleration.

It boosted the CPU and Memory Bus speeds by 5%.

Also I had my 6800GT accelerated 10-15%

 

I reset the MB back to default and the Mission Editor freeze went away

I lost just a few FPS

 

Normaly I hate loosing FPS but in this case it was a trade off.

 

Still have the 6800gt in accelerated mode.

 

Hope this helps

 

Regards,

[efs2]

Thanks for the reply, christopher m.

I have tried running the FSB at standard speed, 200MHz, but it seems to make no difference.

I also note that my motherboard allows me to lock the RAM speed at 200MHz while upping the FSB speed to 250MHz.

Because RAM generally will not overclock nearly as well as the FSB speed or CPU, that feature greatly opens up overclocking potential and is one of the big reasons I bought this motherboard.

 

I have also tried running my graphics card at standard speed and overclocking it around 10 percent.

That also seems to make no difference.

 

Nor do different drivers for the graphics card.

Ed

[christopher m]

H......mmmm Any other prob with your machine or just LO ?

 

Do you have XP tweeked at all ?

 

Any backround prog's running ?

 

Regards,

[efs2]

No, no problems.

The system is rock solid in everyday usage, mostly web surfing and word processing, and in benchmarks/stress tests.

 

The only background programs are MBM5, a temperature monitoring application, and an application that monitors the HDD temperature.

Shutting those down does not help.

And, relatedly, I vary rarely encounter a freeze in gameply, as opposed to the almost certain freeze in the ME.

 

I have a few minor tweeks enabled thorugh TweakUI - i.e., no shortcut arrows - but nothing I can remotely imagine that would cause this problem.

Ed

[christopher m]

dxdiag

 

Do you use dxdiag at all ?

 

you should turn the sound card hardware acceleration all the way down to zero.

 

I noticed you mentined hardware acceleration but I don't know if it is the

sound card you are talking about.

 

Also have you tried to reinstall LO

[efs2]

I was referring to the graphics hardware acceleration slider/settings. So I tried the sound hardware acceleration at the lowest/off position on the slider.

No joy.

 

And, yes, I have reinstalled LO a number of times in the months I have been using it, and that makes no difference.

 

Also, I find it very weird that the problem only shows up in ME. It's hard for me to believe that the ME stresses the hardware more than all the eye candy during gameplay.

Was it the same for you, Christopher M?

Did you have freezes in the ME but not during gameplay?

Ed

[christopher m]

Game freezes

 

I was also getting freezes during game play with

 

Su25 and Su25T ground pounding action.

 

I mostly got the freezes when I was jumping between screens

 

like map view and cockpit view.

 

Especialy if I was jumping around druing heavy action:

 

Explosions, gunfire, damage to my aircraft, like that.

 

Then I was most likely to get a freeze up.

 

and I alway's had to reboot after that.

 

since I set the MB to zero acceleration problems have not returned.

 

even during hard game play.

 

I really think it's some kind of memory problem or problem with the memory.

 

Can you test your memory ?

 

Regards,

[efs2]

I ran Memtest86 for 8 passes/95 minutes, I think, without finding any errors.

The common wisdom is that most shaky memory will be exposed within an hour or so, but it's generally recommended that it be allowed to run longer, for some number of hours. So I may fire it up again and let it go all night just to be sure.

Ed

[christopher m]

Freezes

 

I think your system is Ok

 

Maybe you need to just find the right config for LO on your machine.

 

Do you use LOMAN ?

 

Have you played around with the graphics config in it ?

 

Have thought about getting FC ?

[efs2]

I have not specifically fiddled with the graphics settings to test their effects on the Mission Editor.

I have them generally at lower settings, recognizing that my hardware is pretty skimpy for LO.

I have splurged on "objects visible distance" (or whatever it's called) by setting that to medium rather than low. I needed that one because I mostly fly the A-10, and I like to spot the Shilkas before they shoot me full of holes.

So I don't think there is much I can give up in the graphics settings. But I will take a look at it.

 

As for LOMAN, It's for managing add-ons, right? Does it do more?

I have it stored somewhere on my HDD, but I haven't used it. It was one of the things I had hoped to get to in my new, ramped-up attitude toward LO.

 

The same goes for FC.

 

:D

 

Ed