[zeroflag]

[Edit 2009-01-04]
Try DownloadCache instead of the zerofix package.
the other recommendations here are optional.

[Updated 2008-11-28]
This is what I use and what should improve the situation enough to make AoC "playable".
I'm still waiting to hear back from tech-support though... they still don't believe it's actually a bug in AoC.

In Windows:

1. Upgrade DirectX via script (also configures TDR on vista) IMPORTANT: Disable any anti-virus software and run setup.bat as Administrator!
2. Use the latest drivers and configure them correctly.
3. Increase process memory limit (required for one of the configuration-changes below, otherwise you might run out of memory)
4. DO NOT Run Verify/Repair (it turns out the Verify/Repair tool is not very helpful, if anything it deletes content which will cause another freeze. unless you have content errors (like white textures or walking through walls) do not run it!)

In AoC:

1. High quality view distance => 100%
2. Re-enable VRAM offloading
3. Shadows only From Characters

Troubleshooting (if any of the above fail)

• I get an error after using zerofix!
  Congratulations, you have one ridiculously stupid piece of Anti-Virus software and will have to install AoC Quick Start manually.
• I'm still getting freezes.
  Disable Anisotropic filtering (use Trilinear) and revert back to Shader Model 2.0 - sorry, but there's little else I can do for you.
• Old Tarantia is slow!
  Disable Anisotropic filtering (use Trilinear); should get you a few more FPS without being as ugly as SM2.0.

Old:
Content of this post:
1) DirectX upgrade (done by a script)
2) TDR configuration (necessary for Vista. if you have "already done that", do it again because most scripts "out there" will hurt your system eventually)
3) Configuration
3a) High quality view distance = 100% IMPORTANT
3b) Reduce View distance! Optional
3c) Disable "3D Ambient Occlusion Quality" Recommended
3d) Reduce number of maximum Sounds Untested
3e) "Strip Texture LOD" Recommended
3f) Windowed mode (probably vista only) Recommended
3g) Shader 2.0 LAST RESORT
3h) Disable Anisotropic Filtering Recommended
4) Drivers IMPORTANT *link*
5) Things to do
5a) Alt+Tab to trigger garbage-collection/memory-cleanup Recommended
5b) Delete AoC's settings. *link*
6) The remaining issues... (thories)
6a) 2008-09-30 mini patch


(as of the 2008-09-30 mini-patch the 1+2 package is "optional", still a very good idea though. most improvements can now be found in 3e and up.)

1+2) Scripts for directX "upgrade" and TDR fix IMPORTANT
zerofix download - one-stop-solution for most performance/stability issues in AoC
Important: Disable any Anti-Virus or Firewall software while running the setup.bat!

if, after running setup.bat, you are getting an error when starting AoC, you will have to manually install AoC Quick Start.

for this to work you will need the newest version of directx:
- DirectX web installer (requires active internet connection and WGA validation) (recommended)
22kB download for the installer, which will then download another 10-15MB depending on your system.
- DirectX Redist August 2008 (only use this if you have more than 1 PC to install DX on or if WGA fails, for whatever reason)

1) Startup-Script with d3dx*_37.dll "fix"... IMPORTANT
reduces crashes by roughly 50%
-> http://forums-eu.ageofconan.com/showpost.php?p=987062

2) Registry modification to "soften" vista's TDR down. IMPORTANT VISTA ONLY
-> http://forums-eu.ageofconan.com/showpost.php?p=987577

3) Configuration adjustment.
3a) High quality view distance = 100% (aka Disable LOD) IMPORTANT
-> http://forums-eu.ageofconan.com/showpost.php?p=988377

3b) Reduce View distance! Optional and last resort.
-> http://forums-eu.ageofconan.com/showpost.php?p=987623

3c) Disable "3D Ambient Occlusion Quality" (aka dynamic Shadow Map calculation) Recommended
-> http://forums-eu.ageofconan.com/showpost.php?p=988408

3d) Reduce number of maximum Sounds to ~50 (by [URL="http://forums-eu.ageofconan.com/showpost.php?p=994438&postcount=16"]dpg0815[/URL)

3e) "Strip Texture LOD" under graphics->tweaks (with my modification package) Recommended

3f) Windowed mode (probably vista only) Recommended
http://forums-eu.ageofconan.com/show...=1#post1020247

3g) Shader 2.0 LAST RESORT
If you have a certain area where freezes/crashes are extremely bad (or they are extremely bad for you everywhere) a last resort is to reduce shader version to 2.0. That increased stability for me to almost 100%. (also no real freezes)

3h) Disable Anisotropic Filtering Recommended
It seems anisotropic filtering is broken... maybe just on my geforce 8800, maybe in AoC, I can't tell. Anyway, reducing to Trilinear Filtering doubled my FPS in Old Tarantia and reduced freezes quite a bit.

4) Drivers
Follow these instructions.

5) Things to do
5a) Alt+Tab to trigger garbage-collection/memory-cleanup Recommended
http://forums-eu.ageofconan.com/show...54#post1009354

5b) Delete AoC's settings.
ravendorf claims that deleting the settings folder resolves the freezing-issue on ATi cards - definitely worth a shot.
Follow these instructions.


6) The remaining issues... (thories)
6a) 2008-09-30 mini patch
As we all know they released a mini-patch on 2008-09-30 that should address the freeze-issue.

Short: It didn't.

Long (and theoretical):
The issue seems to be a memory-leak in AoC's VRAM (graphics memory) handling, which is gradually filling up the VRAM until it is full, at which point the driver will try to shuffle the data around in a futile effort to get more space, and eventually get stuck.

Now, in the last mini-patch they implemented something that (should) do the same as the above alt+tab recommendation:
clean up the memory.
however, this garbage-collection in AoC seems to be bugged and, when triggered, can/will cause the same freeze it should fix.

The only way to avoid the GC-freeze is to regularly alt+tabbing in/out of the game so the GC never has to run (which, for my PC is at around 1.5GB RAM on AoC, including the VRAM (vista, XP users can't see the VRAM)).
... and stay away from Old Tarantia...

feedback) PLEASE do leave feedback on how/whether these fixes helped you! It's not just for my ego, but also for FC to gather information.

EDIT: had to remove the original post due to post-length-limitation.

[zeroflag]

[EDIT=Original first post]
Hello everyone,

I just downloaded the latest patch and was majorly annoyed when I found out that they didn't fix the nvidia graphics driver crash. As I hope to, eventually, at some point, actually play this game (10-30 minutes doesn't count as "playing"), I will have to try and find a solution...

I already read all the posts I found on this forum and on the web about cleaning the registry and drivers and reinstalling everything but so far none of their solutions (except complete reinstall which I'd hope to avoid) seem to fix anything...

So here goes fact gathering to hopefully find a pattern...

First up, my setup:
- Windows 2008 64bit (read: Vista64 with a different set of configurations)
- NVIDIA 8800GTS 320MB (Gainward GS), latest drivers. <-- Suspected culprit, the low RAM in particular.
- Gigabyte Mainboard with ATi 790FX+SB600, latest drivers.
- AMD 9850BE, stock clock.
- 8GB G.Skill ram, down-clocked to 800MHz.
- 4 WD Raptors at 74GB each, working as Raid0, used as boot-device, containing all of windows and my games-folder.
- all disks freshly de-fragmented.

Game Setup:
- 1920x1200 resolution
- "High" preset
- Bloom enabled
- Shadows reduced to low because anything higher seems to kill my VGA's very limited RAM.
- Most of the sliders somewhere in the (lower)middle to get me my targeted 25-30fps
- That RAM-offloading-for-laptops enabled, even though I don't have a laptop... could this cause such a thing without shared memory?


Here are some facts I gathered so far:
- The driver actually fails (windows reports it as such) and recovers... but not completely, leaving the driver in an incredibly fragile state. after that it will crash again every 5-60 seconds and will keep doing so until I reboot.

- I never had any driver failure in any other game or application, and I try a lot of different engines.

- The game likes to crash the driver...
* after zoning... probably caused by lots of content-loading paired with (potentially) failing depth/range-checks due to incomplete content.
* in large zones where you can see very far, often while turning around to see even more (when the game has to load the content that wasn't visible before)
* while moving quickly through an area that is very open (far view again, paired with content loading)

- The new NVIDIA beta drivers (177.92 http://www.nvidia.com/object/winvist...7.92_beta.html ) do NOT fix the problem, but reduce the frequency of crashes (down from 5-10 minutes to about 15-20 minutes, or it might just be me)

- The (outdated) d3dx10_36.dll in the AoC folder seems to add to the problem, deleting it helps a bit. Although you will have to skip the updater to start AoC because the updater would just download it all over again...
-> more facts about that dll:
* the 36 version of that dll in my system folder was last modified "02 ‎October, 2007-‎10-‎02, ‏‎09:56:30"... making that baby almost one year old... a year in which no one thought an update would be in order... the latest version is 37 and dated ‎2008-‎02-‎05.
* the dll in the AoC folder does not match the dll in my system32 folder, it even has a different size.

- The console output (which you get by avoiding the updater and starting AgeOfConan.exe) keeps spaming several things... for one, there's tons of meshes that fail to map to skeletons... and it increasingly spams those things shortly before a crash:
[14:03:50 #172729] ERROR Cheetah - Error linking bone array: mesh 325715, skeleton 18251 - bones do not match

If anyone else has similar symptoms, please post your setup and findings in order to help (me or FC) identify the cause and hopefully fix it...

I'm going mental rebooting every 20-30minutes...

regards.
[/EDIT]

I just started a little experiment...
I deleted the d3dx10_36.dll from the AoC folder and replaced it with the d3dx10_37.dll (note the version difference) from my Windows/system32 folder. (I obviously had to rename the d3dx10_37.dll to d3dx10_36.dll)

Even though the game had crashed the drivers earlier I have now been dashing around Conall's Valley, trying to force a driver failure, for almost 10 minutes... and it's perfectly stable. The log still spams error messages about failing to map bones to meshes... but nothing crashes...

Will investigate further.


Note: The game used to crash the graphics drivers after a failure within seconds, over and over again. this is not the case now and I will not reboot until I forced another failure...

[zeroflag]

driver just failed with the 37 dx dll after around 5 minutes...
this time I got a different error on the console:
[14:12:36 #181501] ERROR GameCode.Magic - SpellTemplate_t::GetMagicSpell failed to load spell with id 0

[padishar]

This only happens to me when my video card overheats (got a 9800GTX).
I reduced my overclocking by 20MHZ, and no driver crashes.

[zeroflag]

I have rebooted my PC and have since (almost 2 hours) been playing without any crash. no zoning, no hasty movement, no teleportation, nothing got my video driver to fail...
and just by replacing the d3d dll...

come on FC! it isn't that hard! you don't even have to recompile... ~~

if anyone wants to try it, here's the little bat script I use:

copy /Y /V /B "%WINDIR%\System32\d3dx10_37.dll" "C:\games\Age of Conan\d3dx10_36.dll"

if you're on XP, this might work for you:

copy /Y /V /B "%WINDIR%\System32\d3dx9_37.dll" "C:\games\Age of Conan\d3dx9_36.dll"

just replace your AoC folder and put that snippet in a txt file and name that "d3dfix.bat" or something...
run it, then start AgeOfConan.exe directly.
(this works under the assumption that you have the latest directx runtime, if you don't go to microsoft.com and download it)

[zeroflag]

I have to correct my previous statements... some necro with 10000 minions at the teleportation spot just managed to crash my driver... >_<

but it's IMMENSELY better than before... took 3 hours now instead of 30 minutes to crash the drivers...

[Deadman87]

I haven't done a crap since the patch download, and the game chooses to freeze at random intervals for some seconds or fail to load new areas at random times.

Annoying as hell...

[Wingmann]

Same freezing experience here. I've done both suggested changes and I'll try again tomorrow.

[zeroflag]

well, as stated before, the d3d.dll upgrade does not fix EVERY crash, but it reduces crash probability by 500%... so instead of 2 crashes/hour I'm getting 1 crash every 2-3 hours... that's still far from stable (I wouldn't release my engine like that) but it's an improvement.

maybe, if we can gather more information about how/when the game crashes, fc or me can come up with even more improvements...


I have another theory that is based on content loading and (maybe)particles...

I noticed that necromancers severely hurt my FPS and one of them actually managed to trash my drivers. so I'm suspecting there's some sort of effect on necro minions that cause the problem... no way to be sure though, because I'm not going to play a necro to 30(that was the level of the necro who crashed me) to see what minions and effects he gets...

I also recommend anyone who has the error to check their AgeOfConan.log (in the AoC folder) and post the last few lines from it.

e.g. I'm finding lots of content-loading-errors in mine...

let the investigations commence, again.

regards

[zeroflag]

Ok, I might have a little bit of news...

first off, it's not your graphics card... at least my graphics card isn't the problem. I check the heat, at 100C it ran smoothly, a while later, when I ramped up the fan to 80% which got the GPU to 80C (under full load, which is incredibly cool for an nforce8), I got the crash again...

secondly, I found a new error message in the logs right before/during the crashes...

[10:03:50 #86036] ERROR N3 - Cannot get cat-mesh from 51320:122 -- dynel has a mesh!

and yes, it's crashES... something in the Wild Lands of Zelata is very wrong... and I'm not even talking about the flood of useless "run 10 times all over town for no reason at all" quests...

I'll reboot and play around with my settings for a bit... seems my bug has found a new playground.