Intermittent Crashing After Battles

[Hugin]

I've been crashing intermittently at the end of battles, specifically after the fanfare plays and the screen fades to black, just before showing the XP reward screen. The first few times happened after the first Guard Scorpion fight, I think 3 times in a row. After that, I was fine for a while but I've had a few randomly here and there while grinding in the Train Graveyard.

Here are my APP.LOG and profile info (Pastebin):

• APP.LOG
• Profile Info

And here's a link to my full crash.dmp file (zipped, includes APP.LOG and profile info): https://www.clanofartisans.com/crash-2020-05-03.zip

Let me know if there's anything else I can do to help with troubleshooting! I'm a dev myself so I don't mind doing some intensive debugging.

Thanks!

[unab0mb]

It's a known issue. A memory allocation "bug", actually, limitation of FF7 because it is 32-bit and was never designed for the mods we're pushing through to it. The OS refuses to allocate the memory, the driver doesn't know how to handle it, and it crashes. This will be fixed in 7H 2.1 (hopefully out in a few weeks or so). Most people are crashing if their RAM usage gets around 900MB or above (you can check this by turning on stats overlay or titlebar in the game driver settings). Certain mods may significantly increase your RAM usage so you should try mixing up what mods you use and see what works for you. High poly 3D models are the quickest way to eat up your RAM.

Alternately, you can download an alternate driver for now (FFNx). It doesn't always prevent crashes for everybody, every time, but its solution to handle this is to limit the RAM usage to 1GB and not allow anymore textures to load once that limit is reached, so you may see empty (black) textures like a checkerboard on your screen.

[Hugin]

Makes sense! Thanks a bunch I'm giving FFNx a shot in the meantime thanks to OatBran's suggestion on Discord but I'll be sure to switch back to 7H whenever 2.1 is released to test things out.

Thanks again!

[OatBran]

Makes sense! Thanks a bunch I'm giving FFNx a shot in the meantime thanks to OatBran's suggestion on Discord but I'll be sure to switch back to 7H whenever 2.1 is released to test things out.

Thanks again!

the reason why 2.1 will solve the issue is because they are officially implementing FFnX into 7th heaven, at least I am pretty sure.

[unab0mb]

the reason why 2.1 will solve the issue is because they are officially implementing FFnX into 7th heaven, at least I am pretty sure.

The current version of FFNx will not be in 7H 2.1. It is our first update since 2.0's release and the focus has been ironing out several small bugs and a couple of major ones, as well as adding some nice new features to 7th Heaven. An update to the latest stable release of FFNx is on the roadmap for 7H 2.2, as has been discussed with TrueOdin.

Also, I want to clear up a misconception. an early FFNx is already in 7H 2.0. The slightly altered version in 7H 2.0 was to remove a crashing bug that affected world map and spell textures, as well as to clean up the cfg file and UI to be as simple and user-friendly as possible plus setting the best defaults from our testing. These are not competing drivers and I have no desire to maintain a fork of one. It was the most recent and stable version of it at the time 7H went into beta.

Just after release, I started playing with FFNx and unfortunately it was not something I was happy with stability or performance wise. I stand by that assessment even if it may be taken personally, or is unpopular because people wanted The New Shiny Thing (tm) right NOW. I could have expressed my frustration with it better; one of my flaws. With that said, FFNx has had a couple more months to "bake" and many more people are starting to use and test it so I see a lot of bugs being found and fixed. So, when 7H 2.1 is done, focus can be started to integrate an updated FFNx (which should be even better by then) with 7H 2.2 without half-assing it.

[OatBran]

The current version of FFNx will not be in 7H 2.1. It is our first update since 2.0's release and the focus has been ironing out several small bugs and a couple of major ones, as well as adding some nice new features to 7th Heaven. An update to the latest stable release of FFNx is on the roadmap for 7H 2.2, as has been discussed with TrueOdin.

Also, I want to clear up a misconception. an early FFNx is already in 7H 2.0. The slightly altered version in 7H 2.0 was to remove a crashing bug that affected world map and spell textures, as well as to clean up the cfg file and UI to be as simple and user-friendly as possible plus setting the best defaults from our testing. These are not competing drivers and I have no desire to maintain a fork of one. It was the most recent and stable version of it at the time 7H went into beta.

Just after release, I started playing with FFNx and unfortunately it was not something I was happy with stability or performance wise. I stand by that assessment even if it may be taken personally, or is unpopular because people wanted The New Shiny Thing (tm) right NOW. I could have expressed my frustration with it better; one of my flaws. With that said, FFNx has had a couple more months to "bake" and many more people are starting to use and test it so I see a lot of bugs being found and fixed. So, when 7H 2.1 is done, focus can be started to integrate an updated FFNx (which should be even better by then) with 7H 2.2 without half-assing it.

Fair enough, I totally get it and I appreciate the clarification. Its hard to get all of the information about active development and implementation of different drivers/managers/mods whatever. I apologize if anything I said was inaccurate or came off wrong

[EQ2Alyza]

It's good to see cooperation moving forward. We do tend to focus on the NOW (tm) more than anything, but try not to let that distract us from the end goals in mind. Finishing is the easy part. Figuring out how to get there is always the difficulty part.

[Fischkopf]

I have if problem, too. It's very annoying. There are some areas in the game where I literally couldn't progress because of the constant crashing (battles at Mt. Nibel for instance) where only launching the game without mods would let me progress further.

I tried installing the FFNx driver according to the instructions on github for people that have 7h installed, it made the game unlaunchable, though. So I'm hoping for an official 7th heaven fix.

[OatBran]

I have if problem, too. It's very annoying. There are some areas in the game where I literally couldn't progress because of the constant crashing (battles at Mt. Nibel for instance) where only launching the game without mods would let me progress further.

I tried installing the FFNx driver according to the instructions on github for people that have 7h installed, it made the game unlaunchable, though. So I'm hoping for an official 7th heaven fix.

did you follow my own guide or just the readme on the ffnx github? I am willing to bet that you misread their instructions or made some other common mistake.

follow my guide and it will work, if it doesnt for some reason come to the discord and we will figure it out

http://forums.qhimm.com/index.php?topic=19932.0

Be aware though, if you are using windows 7 then that may be the cause of the problem as well. Odin is working on a fix for that, but there is an old version of ffnx that you can download that will work with win7, read about it further in the thread i linked to my guide

[Fischkopf]

did you follow my own guide or just the readme on the ffnx github? I am willing to bet that you misread their instructions or made some other common mistake.

follow my guide and it will work, if it doesnt for some reason come to the discord and we will figure it out

http://forums.qhimm.com/index.php?topic=19932.0

Be aware though, if you are using windows 7 then that may be the cause of the problem as well. Odin is working on a fix for that, but there is an old version of ffnx that you can download that will work with win7, read about it further in the thread i linked to my guide

It was my mistake. I initially put the FFNx.dll into Resources\Game Driver and changed the name to "7H_GameDriver.dll". This step confused me because there is a file with the same name in the game folder. Turns out that when you put the same file in the wrong place the game will refuse to start. Anyway I got it to start now but it's in a tiny window and it will ignore any settings I changed in my FFNx.cfg.

[OatBran]

It was my mistake. I initially put the FFNx.dll into Resources\Game Driver and changed the name to "7H_GameDriver.dll". This step confused me because there is a file with the same name in the game folder. Turns out that when you put the same file in the wrong place the game will refuse to start. Anyway I got it to start now but it's in a tiny window and it will ignore any settings I changed in my FFNx.cfg.

Yet again, I guarantee you are making another common mistake. It is the entire reason why I wrote the guide. Read it. Dollars to doughnuts you are leaving hash marks (#) in front of values in the cfg file, turning them into comments and not anything to be loaded at runtime.

[BlueWolf]

I've been experiencing this exact issue as well. and I've done a lot of reading into others having this problem too and from what I can gather the only true "fix" for this potentially is 7H 2.1. So I guess my question is, is there anytime frame for 7H 2.1?

[OatBran]

I've been experiencing this exact issue as well. and I've done a lot of reading into others having this problem too and from what I can gather the only true "fix" for this potentially is 7H 2.1. So I guess my question is, is there anytime frame for 7H 2.1?

Unabomb has said many, many times that 7H 2.1 is going to be mostly a bug fixing update and has consistently denied that an update to the graphics driver will be included in that update. If you are dead set against not installing FFNx manually, then you are most likely going to be stuck with the constant crashes until 7H 2.2 who knows when that will be. Its possible una might change his mind in the mean time, but I wouldnt expect all your problems to magically be solved with 2.1 Una strives for stability and polish with his software and it takes a substantial amount of time to test things before they are officially implemented. Nothing is stopping you from taking matters into your own hands and fixing it for yourself whenever you want though.

[BlueWolf]

Okay FFNx it is. I have an already installed steam version. Will 7th heaven still work after I install FFNx?

[OatBran]

Okay FFNx it is. I have an already installed steam version. Will 7th heaven still work after I install FFNx?

yep, as long as you do everything correctly it will still function as normal, and will be orders of magnitude more stable. it is easy to make a mistake though, as evidenced by the countless reports i get every day lol. i would recommend following my guide and you will be golden

http://forums.qhimm.com/index.php?topic=19932.0

keep in mind however, that manually upgrading or changing your 7h install is not officially supported or recommended. dont take any issues you have to unabomb or anything like that. make backups of your personal data/saves just to be safe

[BlueWolf]

So I got everything going good and got the game to run but the combat runs very sluggishly and slow compared to before.

[OatBran]

So I got everything going good and got the game to run but the combat runs very sluggishly and slow compared to before.

Yes, if you continue reading the guide from where you left off, you will find the solution to that issue as well. FFNx prefers to use DDS texture format, and most of the catalog mods have not yet been hosted in that format. There are things you can do to help with the issue if you would rather not go through the effort to convert you modpack to DDS.

First and foremost, DISABLE the "60 FPS Battles" mod located in the "Animations" catalog IRO. This mod is severely incompatible with FFNx and it is also very poorly described as to what the mod actually does. It is not worth using in any case with FFNx so that is the absolute first thing you should do. I need to amend this information into the guide, and for that I apologize.

If your game continues to not perform as you would like, turning down the resolution and or the internal resolution scale options in ffnx.cfg can help with performance, as well as switching the backend renderer to Direct3D11 instead of OpenGL (with some cards anyway, especially AMD card will benefit from this)

If the problem persists after all of that, then you have no choice but to switch your mods to DDS format. All of the information needed to do that is in the guide, so make sure you please read the guide in its entirety. Like I have said from the beginning, if you follow the guide front to back correctly, you will be very close to the most optimal performance you can get out of (non-reunion) modded ff7 right now.

[BlueWolf]

Thanks a ton man. Appreciate the immediate response on this. I'm going to attempt to turn off the 60fps and see what happens with that. I actually already went through the DDS process and the sluggishness continued but I will try to switch off that 60fps option and see what happens. Thanks again for the help.

[OatBran]

Thanks a ton man. Appreciate the immediate response on this. I'm going to attempt to turn off the 60fps and see what happens with that. I actually already went through the DDS process and the sluggishness continued but I will try to switch off that 60fps option and see what happens. Thanks again for the help.

Yeah, no problem glad to be of help. I'm sorry I didnt have the info about disabling the 60FPS mod in the guide until now, because that is an extremely important thing you need to do. I am confident that doing that will help or outright solve your issue. I hope everything ends up working out for you and you have a great modded gaming experience 

[Fischkopf]

Yet again, I guarantee you are making another common mistake. It is the entire reason why I wrote the guide. Read it. Dollars to doughnuts you are leaving hash marks (#) in front of values in the cfg file, turning them into comments and not anything to be loaded at runtime.

I wouldn't be writing that post if I didn't think I did everything accordingly. You are right, I had to remove "#" in front of lines. I think this step preassumes knowledge that the average person doesn't have, though. I've been messing with config/ini files before but never had to "uncomment" a line before changing it.

[BlueWolf]

Yep that 60FPS mod was doing it. Got everything running just fine now. Played for a little while with no crashes either. Thanks a ton. I'm hoping that the memory allocation problem can be fixed in 7H 2.1 and FFNx can be fully implemented into 7H down the line as well. Huge thanks to OatBran and unab0mb for helping me to understand this problem and find a work around.

[OatBran]

I wouldn't be writing that post if I didn't think I did everything accordingly. You are right, I had to remove "#" in front of lines. I think this step preassumes knowledge that the average person doesn't have, though. I've been messing with config/ini files before but never had to "uncomment" a line before changing it.

You are correct in the fact that its strange to have the cfg file formatted in the way it currently is. Almost every config file in existence has the ability to comment lines, and usually does have information in-file via comments, because separating the information about the variables and their possible values into a web page or different file would likely cause even more problems.

Most of the time, however, cfg files with comments don't actually have the default values configured as comments in the first place. And I don't really know why Odin set it up that way, because it would function just fine without the default values being commented and would be way less confusing.

I don't know how I could make it more clear in the guide that you need to do this though, it is clarified in 2 different bullet points with capital letters right at the beginning of the section. If you follow the guide you shouldnt make this mistake. But it still happens on a very regular basis. I will talk to Odin about changing the format of the file for the future.

Yep that 60FPS mod was doing it. Got everything running just fine now. Played for a little while with no crashes either. Thanks a ton. I'm hoping that the memory allocation problem can be fixed in 7H 2.1 and FFNx can be fully implemented into 7H down the line as well. Huge thanks to OatBran and unab0mb for helping me to understand this problem and find a work around.

Thats great to hear your issue has been solved! Im always glad to help in any way I can if you end up having more  issues in the future dont hesitate to ask.