NWN EE Random Freezes - sometimes resulting in a hard crash.
Jimbobslimbob
Member Posts: 206
I have been having some strange issues with NWN of late - which seem related to whenever I am connected to my network. When I am, NWN will periodically go non-responsive (music and sound still plays, but the game screen and gamplay itself will freeze). This happens often during play - and is guaranteed to do so at least once when loading the initial "splash screen" that appears straight after the intro videos. Sometimes it recovers in 10 or so seconds, sometimes not.
NWN provides no logs of this - the only contents of "nwclientLog1.txt" being "nwsync: reconfigured successfully".
On closer inspection, it seems if I disable my Ethernet connection, it works perfectly. This lead me to taking a peek at what was happening with a processmon. Results of which are that NWN seems to continuously try connecting to "Jim-Chillblast" (the hostname of the PC I run the game on), with different ports. These take a few seconds each time and it continuously loops around this with apparently no end in sight. This APPEARS to be the thing that's creating these freeze and crashes, but I have no idea what to do (if anything) to fix it.
I have tried disabling IPv6 to no avail and there is nothing out of the ordinary with my connection - other than my router not supporting NAT Loopback. Given the request is a local one, pointing to a local resource (the originating computer), I doubt this has anything to do with it - but thought it worth mentioning as you never know.
DXDiag reports no issues with graphics or sound drivers... and literally everything else works fine. I have tried all the obvious stuff such as uninstalling, verifying files, compatibility mode, removing mods, deleting the settings folder in Documents etc. At a loss as to how to fix it at present - if there is indeed anything I can do. It makes the game completely unplayable though.
You can see in the attached screenshots how long the TCP requests take (and there are a lot of them - all to the same place). So what's going on here? Why does this happen when connected to the internet/LAN, but not otherwise - and what on earth can be done to fix it?
NWN provides no logs of this - the only contents of "nwclientLog1.txt" being "nwsync: reconfigured successfully".
On closer inspection, it seems if I disable my Ethernet connection, it works perfectly. This lead me to taking a peek at what was happening with a processmon. Results of which are that NWN seems to continuously try connecting to "Jim-Chillblast" (the hostname of the PC I run the game on), with different ports. These take a few seconds each time and it continuously loops around this with apparently no end in sight. This APPEARS to be the thing that's creating these freeze and crashes, but I have no idea what to do (if anything) to fix it.
I have tried disabling IPv6 to no avail and there is nothing out of the ordinary with my connection - other than my router not supporting NAT Loopback. Given the request is a local one, pointing to a local resource (the originating computer), I doubt this has anything to do with it - but thought it worth mentioning as you never know.
DXDiag reports no issues with graphics or sound drivers... and literally everything else works fine. I have tried all the obvious stuff such as uninstalling, verifying files, compatibility mode, removing mods, deleting the settings folder in Documents etc. At a loss as to how to fix it at present - if there is indeed anything I can do. It makes the game completely unplayable though.
You can see in the attached screenshots how long the TCP requests take (and there are a lot of them - all to the same place). So what's going on here? Why does this happen when connected to the internet/LAN, but not otherwise - and what on earth can be done to fix it?
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Comments
* Do you run any kind of antivirus?
* Is this via Steam? Is Steam Overlay enabled?
NWN:EE itself doesn't connect to 9977 tcp, or any other port on localhost, by itself.
I noticed NWN kept asking on the network about a particular IP address (192.168.0.8) - which no device on my network has. I thought that perhaps the continual queries to it (and fails) could be causing issues.
NWN kept trying to save a files in
192.168.0.8\Archive\resources\source\Models_01\Animations\NULL.mdl
192.168.0.8\Archive\resources\source\Models_01\CreatureModels\NULL.mdl
192.168.0.8\Archive\resources\source\Models_01\PlayerModels\NULL.mdl
...so, for a test, I tried setting my computer's IP to this and it started working without freezing again. WTF!!??
So... what is going on here? Why is NWN constantly trying to save model files on 192.168.0.8? I cannot keep my IP as this for "reasons", so need to know why and how to stop this.
EDIT: Infact you can even see this occurring in the above screenshots.
NWN itself certainly won't try to save anything to 192.168.0.8, or Archive/resources/.
I have no idea what's going on here.
This is related to supermodel loading, and a humongous hack back from 200x.
It's trying to read from the "n:" drive when a supermodel cannot be found. Apparently that resolves to that particular IP on your end.
Do you have any "broken" custom content (with missing supermodels) in your load chain?
Good grief.
God only knows why this started happening for me, but I would guess it could affect others as well. I eagerly await the fix. In the meantime, I may as well post up the screenshots. NOTE: These ONLY occur during NWN being open, it's absolutely 100% not another process doing this.
Cheers!
Ref screenies:
EDIT: No folder locations are incorrect in my NWN.ini that I can see:
[Alias]
HD0=C:\Users\[REDACTED]\Documents\Neverwinter Nights
MODULES=C:\Users\[REDACTED]\Documents\Neverwinter Nights\modules
SAVES=C:\Users\[REDACTED]\Documents\Neverwinter Nights\saves
OVERRIDE=C:\Users\[REDACTED]\Documents\Neverwinter Nights\override
HAK=C:\Users\[REDACTED]\Documents\Neverwinter Nights\hak
SCREENSHOTS=C:\Users\[REDACTED]\Documents\Neverwinter Nights\screenshots
CURRENTGAME=C:\Users\[REDACTED]\Documents\Neverwinter Nights\currentgame
LOGS=C:\Users\[REDACTED]\Documents\Neverwinter Nights\logs
TEMP=C:\Users\[REDACTED]\Documents\Neverwinter Nights\temp
TEMPCLIENT=C:\Users\[REDACTED]\Documents\Neverwinter Nights\tempclient
LOCALVAULT=C:\Users\[REDACTED]\Documents\Neverwinter Nights\localvault
DMVAULT=C:\Users\[REDACTED]\Documents\Neverwinter Nights\dmvault
SERVERVAULT=C:\Users\[REDACTED]\Documents\Neverwinter Nights\servervault
DATABASE=C:\Users\[REDACTED]\Documents\Neverwinter Nights\database
PORTRAITS=C:\Users\[REDACTED]\Documents\Neverwinter Nights\portraits
AMBIENT=C:\Users\[REDACTED]\Documents\Neverwinter Nights\ambient
MOVIES=C:\Users\[REDACTED]\Documents\Neverwinter Nights\movies
MUSIC=C:\Users\[REDACTED]\Documents\Neverwinter Nights\music
TLK=C:\Users\[REDACTED]\Documents\Neverwinter Nights\tlk
PATCH=C:\Users\[REDACTED]\Documents\Neverwinter Nights\patch
OLDSERVERVAULT=C:\Users\[REDACTED]\Documents\Neverwinter Nights\oldservervault
NWSYNC=C:\Users\[REDACTED]\Documents\Neverwinter Nights\nwsync
DEVELOPMENT=C:\Users\[REDACTED]\Documents\Neverwinter Nights\development
MODELCOMPILER=C:\Users\[REDACTED]\Documents\Neverwinter Nights\modelcompiler
Regardless, thanks for your help and I look forward to the fix!
N:\ is a mapped VPN network drive on my computer - only in use when connected to it.
Haha - just checked - its IP is also 192.168.0.8! A temporary fix might be disconnecting that mapped drive then? It's inaccessible unless I am connected to the VPN - which could be the cause of the freezes when NWN is trying to read non-existent model files from it.
This exact issue as reported was a game issue specifically for people who had N:\ drives, because of a practice Bioware used for compiling models. It was fixed in 8193.16, but 8193.16 was not the end of all crashes patch, there are still hundreds or thousands of reasons for NWN or any other game really to crash during gameplay.
If you do not have an N:\ drive, then, you are crashing from something else, and probably should post in a new topic, with your .dmp and .log files from the crash (if NWN crashed, and was not actually terminated by Windows or something else instead), or post those files to https://beamdog.atlassian.net/servicedesk