Game simply freezes...

[julyorchid25]

Hi, obviously I'm new and I've been browsing a bit to try to figure out what I need to do to resolve my issue at hand and haven't found anything yet to help me with this.

I have the correct version (3.2) and when I try to start the game itself it freezes and locks up my PC.  I end up having to restart my PC in order to circumvent this, so any help is very appreciated.  I've installed the game twice with the same result both times.

Thanks, in advance, for your time.

[Caarrie]

what are your system stats? without them we cant help you at all.

[julyorchid25]

AMD Athlon 1.3 Ghz processor, 512 Mb RAM, 40G Main HD, Backup 80G HD, 256Mb NVidia GeoForce Video Card, Microsoft Windows XP Pro.  Have ZAP, AVG Free and Windows Defender running in background.

Did I miss anything?  Thanks for the help.

[Caarrie]

you need more ram, you dont have enough to be running ps and windows along with all your other programs running in the background

[julyorchid25]

Alright, thanks a lot for the help.  I've been planning on upgrading for a while now, so I guess this is just another push in the right direction.   

[neko kyouran]

I have seen it running on systems with only 512 mb of ram, but the settings need to be turned all the way down, sound has to be turned off, and other applications have to be closed as much as possible.

[Jonerian]

you need more ram, you dont have enough to be running ps and windows along with all your other programs running in the background

No, he doesn't "need" more RAM. Nice that everybody is suggesting to buy a new computer to play the game.. For my motherboard 512 MB ist the maximum and I can play just fine. (800 MHz and a GeForce 5200 PCI (I have no better slot))

If it really is the RAM, than this is simply a problem of Windows bloat.. (I run linux with fluxbox and a running amarok and kopete).

BUT he doesn't have performance issues, he has a freezing computer, but if it didn't freeze completely and he was just not patient enough (wait 2-3 min.) then I suggest two things:

Make sure that you have the new NVidia driver for the card (My PC was near freezing with an old card, which would be the same like a card without drivers approx...)
Close everything that doesn't need to be open and clean your autoruns etc. (like already mentioned)


If nothing helps:
I am able to run the client with less ressources, so you should switch to Linux 

PS:
800x600, sound deactivated and adaptive distance should also help, but if your computer is freezing, it should be another issue.. imho

PPS:
If you guys would be able to trust your operating system, there would be no need to have another Firewall runnging (ZAP) [personally I don't use firewalls, I just don't open more ports than I need to..]
The AVG could also be a problem. You could turn it off when you only play PS, unless you don't trust the laanx server in terms of viruses. (But don't forget to start it again when you are surfing, downloading and reading mail..)
What is windows defender?
And you should also check, if your swap is at least 712 MB. Swap is very slow, but if it even runs out of that, there might be even more issues.

[Caarrie]

I guess you dont know that [as far as i know] the min requirement for running windoze is 512mb ram so in this case an upgrade is a pretty good idea. and Linux is much better at ram usage then windoze. I would not compare how much ram linux requires compared to windoze as they are 2 very different os's.

[Jonerian]

Well, I don't see any difference in the requirements in Windows and Linux in here:
http://hydlaa.com/smf/index.php?topic=21500.0 or here: http://www.planeshift.it/guide/en/installation.html
IMHO the requirements are right. 256 MB Is not possible and I am playing with 512, so it's possible.

As far as my experience goes you CAN compare the RAM usage. The basic difference is only, that you can turn a lot of things off in linux, which you can't in windows, because linux is more "modularized". It is possible to make windows use less RAM and if you run KDE with all the fancy things you will even have a higher RAM usage in Linux.


Anyways - I am pretty sure, that more RAM can speed it up a lot and 1 GB as a recommendation is a good one. All I am saying is, that some guys in the forum try to tell everybody to get more ressources if they are not as high as their own, even if it's not clear at all, that this is the issue. I might actually try to install planeshift on windows, just to be able to give some advice to some people with low ressources.

@july:
If it is possible to double your RAM to 1 GB without changing Motherboard and CPU: do it. This is the best solution to power up your machine, even if this issue can or should be fixed differently.

[julyorchid25]

Here is the problem I've having now.  I've uninstalled the game again, reinstalled and I have the same result even after shutting down Windows Defender, AVG and ZAP.  The ports for the game server are open via Windows Firewall and the game still freezes.  It takes about 10 minutes for my system to recover even after setting the preferences of the game to the lowest possible settings.  I'm using old RAM, as in SDRAM, not DDR.  I can upgrade to x2 512 chips but as it stands they're nearly $80 each.

The minimum requirements on RAM to run Windows isn't 512, it's 128.  That shows when you go to your system window (Windows automatically reserves the required amount of RAM to run and shows you what's left).  The max allowable for my motherboard is x2 512 chips, so I'll likely get them one at a time and see if this helps.

Thanks for the comments and help.

P.S. - I'm a she, lol.  I get called a 'he' on almost every forum I use...

[Elvicat]

i'd take a peak at what graphics drivers your running with and if they are very old... download the newest possible, uninstall the old first then install the new

[Jonerian]

Oh - I am very sorry to have "mistagged" you. I was kind of aware, that July is a name that is mostly feminin, but I still fell back to talking about the (unspecified) user (which is maskulin in my language..) ... but I guess you don't take it as a serious offense 

The minimum requirements on RAM to run Windows isn't 512, it's 128.

Well, we were not talking about running Windows. We ware talking about running Windows AND Planeshift.. at the same time :-P
Anyways, 128 IS the official minimum requirement for WinXP, but you will have trouble already once you start opening a browser or an office suite. Still somewhat usable, but the system has difficulities to react. I would recommend 256 MB to make good use of XP, but this doesn't really matter, because Win98 and others are NOT an option (security and stability issues) and many people wouldn't like switching to a Linux without KDE and Gnome (colored stuff to click on)..


Back to Topic:
This night (the sun starts going up in my part of the world right now) I installed Planeshift also on my Windows XP partition.
First I tried running PS with the standard Graphics driver that came with my windows installation (a version from 2004..). It took a while to get to the login screen and then it was so slow, that I didn't manage to type in my email address.. not a single letter. Is the login screen even 3D?
After installing the new driver from nvidia.com I tried to run the game again:
It was running good with the standard settings (apart from the fact, that I needed it to run as Adminstrator) and I could even set it to 1280x1024 (my native screen resolution) fullscreen. Standard Settings is: 1024x768, 32 bit, with sound, vertext to off, no loading of maps checked but the preload models box checked.

I did get a runtime error when I tried the game without preloading models, but this isn't an issue, since it runs fine while preloading models.
I had AVG (Anti Virus) running, but nothing else.

So I have PS running in both Linux and Windows (not at the same time though  ) with 512 MB of RAM, 800 MHz CPU (that is 100% used nearly the whole time) and a GeForce 5200 PCI with 256 MB. And today at the fortress (I was using the fixed zip, because of the blackness issue) everything was reaaaally smooth.

Before I forget it: Ingame I was using Adaptive Distance. I did set it to 25 minimum, 15 fps minimum and 25 fps maximum. My framecap was around 55, but I don't know if this value even gets used when I set Adaptive Distance, unless I can see from one side of the map to the other..

Maybe this information helps somehow. I can also check other stuff if asked to. What is important to me: You CAN run PS on Windows and Linux with 512 MB of RAM and a 800 MHz CPU. There is NO point in saying: "No chance, get a better PC".


PS:
Getting 1 GB of RAM could still be good to speed up the system, but is not completely necessary, like I said.

*searching for "he" in his test*
..
*is reliefed to find 0 occurencies of "he"* 

[Wroleader]

Wanna know something incredible?  I PLAY WITH 128 MB RAM!!!!!!!!!!! just i disable AV and other things like Personal firewall switching to windows firewall (letting planeshift as a exception) and i optimize memory and i run the game it works fine well on other posts i writted i say i cannot run the game is true but i fixed it  something good at last

*passes some patience to julyorchid25* 

[Zhaxor]

Wanna know something incredible? 

Wanna know somethng else increible, until you know the graphics chipset being used in the vid card most of your advice is going to waste. The computer can have any amount of system ram and available HDD space but if it its running a vid card without the correct pixel shader support it simply won't work, and judging by the OP's description of their computer this just may be so. This is pretty vague from the requirements section;

You need a good video card. The minimum is around a GeForce3 or ATI Radeon 8500. Usually the video card is more important than the CPU

But PS Won't run on a Geforce 2MX 400, or maybe even on the GF4 MX series since these are based on the GF2 core (of course the full GF4 series are fine, just the MX series may be an issue).

AMD Athlon 1.3 Ghz processor, 512 Mb RAM, 40G Main HD, Backup 80G HD, 256Mb NVidia GeoForce Video Card,

<- not enough info.

To the OP, You need to supply full info on your vid card, many vid cards have 256Mb without having the necessary pixel shader support, so please reply with the exact chipset. You can find this by going to start->run-> type "dxdiag" (without  the quotes) and look under the vid tab for this information.

[Jonerian]

I PLAY WITH 128 MB RAM!

You run Windows XP with 128 MB of RAM and PS and you don't have huge swapping problems? I would be very interested how you reached that and what your other stats are (CPU and gfx card). Are you sure that you didn't confuse the Memory on your Video card with your system memory?