Dear Andrea, or any dev from this amazing rouglike game :)


I found a strange bug, and maybe it is happening only to me. Maybe not. Because I found this kind of bug all across the different games but with different setups.

Quite a few of gamers described this bug in the past at various forums. It was very similar or exactly the same experience in different games with different HW specifications and of course in different games.

In my case this game screen freezing occurs in this examples: Nauticrawl, Bridge Constructor Portal. But more hardware stressing games like Alien Isolation, Tomb Raider, Thief or newer like The Forest or Prey are working perfectly. So as a dev I would like to know how this bug happens.

From this moment I will describe only the Nauticrawl bug experience.

So the game screen freezes in almost random moments. Usually after the submarine engine is firstly started, but not immediately. Sometimes even before the engine is started. Sometime a little bit later in game. But in all the cases it looks the same. Sound is working perfectly. The mouse isn't visible, but I am able to click blindly. And if I hit something like button or lever, it creates response in an appropriate sound. So I suppose the game is running but I can't see it.

After ctrl+alt+del and jumping to Task Manager where I can see, that the game is running and responding. I can jump back to game, but the screen will always stay black. In Task Manager under Nauticrawl is even one more executable running.
Called the UnityCrashHandler.exe .

Maybe the game is in halfway to full crash mode.
I don't know why, is this happening.
So I tried to google some solutions.

My notebook is working properly. In Win 10 everything is working properly. Videos, sound and programs. All working without a bump.

Just to be sure, if the problem lays in the hardware malfunction so I tried next steps.
Searched a lot of forums for tips and tricks.
Examples:

https://forums.tomshardware.com/threads/games-keep-crashing.3016674/
https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/why-do-my-games-keep-crashing/
https://www.maketecheasier.com/check-cpu-temperature-windows10/
https://www.pcgamer.com/game-crashes-freezes-wont-run/

etc.

In the halfway I thought that I have a lot of dust inside my gaming notebook. If this would be true, then my rig would be overheating. That could be creating the crashes.

I've opened it and found just slight film of dust. Just in case, I cleaned it anyways.

Nope. This wasn't the case

So I've installed CPUID HWMonitor and CPU-Z from:
https://www.cpuid.com/softwares
Just to be able to monitor my HW while those crashes occurred.

I've realised that I don't know what is the proper voltage and temperatures while my graphic cards and CPU are under the stress.

But I think everything is ok.
- My PC is not overclocked.
- And from the observation I can see that the voltage is stable and not fluctuating around 12,235 V.
- The temperatures for CPU never jumped over 85°C for all four cores.
- For both GPU units the temperature never went over 70°C. The second GPU never crossed the 55°C threshold.
- For both GPU units I've turned on the SLI mode. Its working without problems in Win or in other games.

So from this observation I can assume, that my problem does not come from the power supply voltage drop or fluctuation. Nor from the CPU/GPU temperature overheating.

So I installed the Lenovo Diagnostics Tool and ran all the tests. This tool contains a lot of different tests for all HW parts. I've ran them all. Everything is green and fully functional.
I think that this tool could found some issues regarding RAM memory or GPU RAM even for HDD broken clusters. It's not all-powerful tool. But I hope it is enough for basic diagnostic.
It didn't found a thing.

So I suppose that all the memories are completely fine.

Then I found https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/app/369110/discussions/1/535152276593433003/
which transfered me there:
https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/forums/discover/207742/upgrading-to-windows-10-read-me-first-/

TLDR, This sollution says:
Prevent Automatic Driver Downloads on Win 10 and then completely Reinstal all the Nvidia drivers

It didn't solved the problem

Then I found this:
https://forums.tomshardware.com/threads/computer-freezes-but-sound-still-continues-while-gaming.2896369/

In this forum one user says that the problem was related to the drivers, but not Nvidia's drivers, rather the PCI drivers. If you go to your Device Manager > Systems Devices, you'll find a list of around 8 PCI-related drivers. Update all of them.

This also didn't solved my problem.

Then I found this
https://forums.kleientertainment.com/klei-bug-tracker/oni/game-never-starts-but-shows-in-task-manager-r11612/

But it says:
Just remove UnityCrashHandler.exe from game folder or rename it. And then just start the appropriate game.
In this specific case it was Oni folder and game. But I applied the same solution to Nauticrawl folder and game.

Didn't helped at all


Game screen freezes but game not crashes. Mouse clicking and game sounds continue working on background of frozen screen.

I tried to undust the bowels of my PC to prevent overheating. I measured temperature and voltage of power supply. I made a lot of diagnostics of my HW and I think I did it for all of important parts including RAM, HDD and GPU. I made a clean install of the GPU drivers and a few of PCI drivers.

After the game freezes, there is an UnityCrashHandler .exe running under the game task in Task Manager. Maybe the game itself thinks that it crashed. But it didn't, only screen had frozen.

I really don't think that new hardware is necessary. Because If my game rig was not enough it would not even start the game. And my PC meets the requirements for this game.

Lenovo y510p
OS Win 10 upgrated from Win 8.1
CPU Core i7-4700MQ default 2,4 GHz (Turbo Boost 3,4 GHz)
- currently it seems the default value of CPU clock in Win 10 is 3,4 GHz maybe there lays the problem
RAM DDR3 16 GB
GPU 2x Nvidia GT 750m in SLI with 2 GB of RAM each
HDD SSD Sandisk 447 GB size with 345 GB Allocated for Win 10 (currently 12 GB of free space, I think it is enough for smooth running of everything)


Maybe this problem is caused by some library when the game is compiled. And the game somehow overflow my system resources. But I don't know what triggers this freezing bug.

Maybe, my PC is just an old HW which could not support this game. But again, I think the game would not start at all. Like Elite Dangerous. Since 2017 when I was able to play that game at max settings, the devs added a lot of content into that simulator. After they updated their game a few times, it become so HW demanding, that I can run only the main menu, but the game crashes in few seconds in the process of loading. But the Nauticrawl should be playable, cuz I don't think it is so demanding. But maybe I am wrong.


Thank you for your time and I look forward to your reply.
Eriduan

Bridge Constructor Portal:
https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/app/684410/discussions/0/1629664607002245696/