[rel 949 x64 ] - Drop to Desktop


The game will randomly just drop to desktop after a certain amount of time playing. It’s always random but rarely takes place with less than an hour of playing. Usually it’s during a 2, 3, or even 5 hour session. There are no errors that pop up and no way to anticipate it’s going to happen. One second you’re playing then you’re looking at your desktop. I do, however, notice it happens quicker when you’ve accidentally loaded up the wrong game and go to load another, or accidentally end up in the mod screen and have to backtrack to the main menu again. Thankfully I make sure to use the periodical save option.

Steps to reproduce:

  1. Play the game for over an hour
  2. ??
  3. ??

Expected Results:

The game will play until you decide to exit.

Actual Results:

The game randomly drops to the desktop without any warning.

Version Number and Mods in use:

Revision 949 x64 with no mods

System Information:

AMD FX8320 @ 3.5Ghz
Windows 7 Ultimate SP1 x64
GeForce GTX 750 (up to date drivers)

it’s a feature that prevents players from spending to much time on the game without taking a break

or it is a problem with the programming that causes memory isuues and eventually CTD’s
there should be an annoying amount of lag before the crash

usually happens during an attempt to auto-save when the game has been running for a long time + lots is happening in-game – the kind of situation where your PC’s memory is already full and then suddenly there’s a massive draw on it, causing an overload and CTD.

If that’s the case, it’s not really a bug so much as your computer reaching the physical limits of its memory… which is, sadly, inevitable in a simulation-heavy game. There is a “garbage collector” function built in to prevent/delay this as long as possible, but it can’t be too aggressive about what it considers garbage (i.e. out of date/no longer relevant information) in case it deletes something that turns out to be important later.

Taking regular breaks allows the game a chance to sort through and delete all the information it currently has stored, and during that process it finds a bunch of information that it couldn’t be sure was garbage while it was running. So taking breaks isn’t just good for you, it’s good for the game too.

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Well, as stated, the issue is totally random. Sometimes it’ll happen a couple minutes after a save, sometimes it’ll happen when I’m anticipating a save happening, so I can’t specifically link it to the “save” task. In addition I’ve played a few times keeping an eye on the processes (via the in-game display) and it regularly bounces between 25 to 50% idle so I don’t think it’s an overloading issue. I also have status monitors running on my secondary monitor and my memory is never even close to full, nor my CPU’s maxed out, while playing Stonehearth. My GPU memory (2gb) runs high, but that’s normal for most games made after 2017 and doesn’t usually lead to anything crashing.

Last night, after posting this, there was a CTD that occurred under an hour into a multiplayer game, but I exclude that due to the fact it could have been related to Multiplayer.

I do agree that there is a possibility the “garbage collector” is removing something that’s critical or in-use, as loading the most recent save allows you to just continue on after you restart the game. Would be nice to have some kind of dump output on it though, as confirmation.

multiplayer is worse than singleplayer when it comes to those problems because all the data from all players gets to fill up memory

there is a log file in the game’s files which should cover exactly those kind of situations. One specifically for errors, and one which logs the game as a whole as you play it.

Could you maybe provide more information on the log file? Name? Location? If I need to somehow turn logging on?

logging is automatic, which means you’ll already have the log from the most recent crash/es.

First off, go to your Stonehearth folder (if you’re using Steam then open the Steam library, right-click on Stonehearth, go “properties”, “browse local files”; if you’re playing outside Steam then just go to wherever you installed the game), in that folder there will be the following different logs/etc.

  • crash.dmp which is the crash log
  • crash.zip which contains the latest game log and the latest crash log (this is used by the “crash reporter” to automatically send crash logs for debugging, not sure if the server for this is still active now that development is finished)
  • a text file simply names “stonehearth” which is the game log. It lists every action the game does from the moment it opens to the moment it closes, so prepare for a looooooong read and lots of computerspeak.

crash.zip is basically the back-up in case you can’t find/open/make sense of the others for some reason, you can easily upload that zipped version for someone else to take a look at. What you’re looking for is probably in crash.dmp though. Sadly, I’m not sure how you go about actually reading that one, it’s not simply a text file like the game log is… that .dmp was probably sent to a program which automatically tracked + collated crash data during development to help pinpoint common causes of crashes. The good news is that anything in the .dmp file will mostly likely also be in the log file, probably right at/very near the bottom.

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