Ryzom

This message is a request for an investigation into the issues many users have encountered when trying to launch Ryzom. I am a froob (free noob) and want so much to play this game - on the mainland as well. I'd happily pay for it, but have had such an issue actually getting it to run, I might never do so. I wonder how many others players have moved on to other games because of this difficulty.

What is happening is this:
Upon launch of the game, you are able to log in. You can connect and choose a character. The loading screen starts up and begins to load. On the last triangle, the game freezes. The sound continues, but the game never launches. In order to quit, you have to use Ctrl-Alt-Del.

This happens between 50% and 90% of the attempts to launch. I am a computer tech (or was, for 6 years) and have tried pretty much every option to narrow this down and the only thing I can come up with is that it is related to the video initialization. As far as I can tell, it is NOT network related.

Things that I have tried that have proved unsuccessful at consistently launching the game:

* upgraded my video drivers to the latest version, Nvidia 93.71
* disabled the sound
* set the sound to hardware mode (unchecked the software mode box)
* set the game to run at defaults (graphically)
* forwarded all of the ports on my router for the Ryzom ports
* set up port triggering for the Ryzom ports
* set up the MS firewall to exempt the Ryzom exe
* set up the MS firewall to forward all UDP Ryzom ports
* manually forced OpenGL mode
* manually forced Direct3D mode
* deleted the cache & log files
* killed EVERY non-essential process and app that I could find, to the extent that WinXP sp2 was running on ~160MB. Core files, only.
* completely disabled my antivirus - Avast

None of this has worked consistently, and as far as I can tell, seems to be pretty much random when it loads and when it doesn't. It will sometimes run, but if I exit and try again with the EXACT same settings, it hangs as before. Reboots don't seem to affect it either, with pretty much the same success rate.

THREADS with the same problem:
http://forums.ryzom.com/forum/showthrea ... light=hang (my previous thread)
http://forums.ryzom.com/forum/showthrea ... light=hang
http://forums.ryzom.com/forum/showthrea ... light=hang
http://forums.ryzom.com/forum/showthrea ... light=hang
http://forums.ryzom.com/forum/showthrea ... light=hang
http://forums.ryzom.com/forum/showthread.php?t=15746 (Edit: additional thread)

Needless to say, this is an issue. The last thread goes back to May 2005. How many players have quit in frustration due to this?

For those of you having this same problem, please chime in on this thread with your system specs and configuration. Please don't copy/paste your dxdiag unless requested as it makes the thread difficult to read. I suspect our log files will be more useful to support anyway.

My configuration:

Hardware
Gigabyte nForce4 m/b GA-K8N Pro SLI
AMD x2 4200+
2 GB RAM, generic
Onboard sound - Realtek
eVGA 7900GTO (nvidia)
SATA Seagate HDD
Linksys router

Software
Windows XP SP2
Avast Antivirus
Logitech mouse drivers
nvidia 93.71 drivers

Moderators - if this could be stickied, it would greatly help. Thanks,

Oliver

Greetings there,

I see that you have tried exhausting many solutions that have been able to work for past players. How often do you turn your PC off? Do you have the latest direct X drivers installed correctly?

And here are the actual full latest drivers for your card:
http://www.nvidia.com/object/winxp_2k_93.71.html

Try doing a clean install with those.

And for the first time, try playing in OpenGL with graphics set all the way to low.

(Edit: Also, you may be experiencing an error due to improperly installed RAM, try running a Memtest to see if there any errors.)

Yours.

It almost seems your trying so many things you don't have a base, nothing working "consistantly" is the biggest thing you stated so far.

You haven't even found how to make your system work consistantly and you want a sticky ? Most games will load on any system, MANY others will require some work. Actually I don't recall any game I bought that didn't have some saying that all games work but that one, been playing SoR a long time (thru 3 computers as old timers know, none fancy) and many others games since.

Find what problem is yours with SoR and tackle it... What worked "consistantly" and what doesn't. You are not giving the CSR folks much to work with, other then your credentials...

Thanks for the suggestions. I wasn't trying to suggest a sticky based solely on my issue, but on the fact that this issue seems to be recurring for many users, over a long period of time. As far as I can tell, it is the same issue others are having.

In regards to your suggestions:
* I have done a clean install of my drivers
* I have tried OpenGL only on low settings, as well as Direct3D on low

The 'base' I am working from is this - the game does not load. I am trying a single thing per test; ie: change sound settings. I then try to launch the game. If it works, I let it load completely, then exit as normal. I then try to load the game again without changing any settings. I continue this way to see if it (as I previously stated) works consistently. The trouble isn't that I'm changing all sorts of settings all the time - it's that if I DO get it working, more often than not, it won't work the next time I try. If this is indeed a problem with my methodology or system, why is it so inconsistent? Not only that, in the last few weeks, I've tried the trial versions of WoW, LotRO, CoH/V and DaoC. All have worked flawlessly, with absolutely zero issues. I had Ryzom once before, long ago (bought retail) and it worked fine then as well. Of course, that was a different computer/vid card, etc etc.

My computer is working great with no memory, video or other issues. My HDD is brand new - bought and fully reinstalled Windows clean one month ago. I do not have odd spyware/apps running in the background and when testing, know enough to kill those processes so as to rule them out.

I did not mean to be presumptive and say that since I can't get Ryzom to work properly, this requires a sticky.. I simply have found that this issue has been around for a long while and I have yet to read a post where it has been specifically resolved. I can't honestly believe that the exact same problem on many machines could be caused by different issues; this, to me, speaks of a problem with the way the game client initializes something at the end of its loading phase, be it sound, video or networking, or a combination of the three. I was simply trying to cluster all of the issues in one place so that it is apparent this is not solely MY issue.

Thanks again for the suggestions, I will continue to try to resolve this. Oh, and one more thing - if the game DOES work only on low gfx settings in OpenGL mode (which I will test more thoroughly), shouldn't the fact that it doesn't work on higher settings be investigated? My 2 cents...

Oliver

EDIT: I forgot to mention that I just downloaded and reinstalled DirectX as well and I turn my PC off every day.

Well before you can say that your problem is the same one experienced by many users you have to look at a few things first:

Many of those users had problems that were resolved by the fixes suggested to you already. Looking at a keyword term Hang will not mean the situation is the same. Though it may seem the same and end up stopping at the same point there can be a vast majority of elements with the system of a computer that are very different. I would also like to point out that you referred users to post left in 2005, which may not affect users today.



When you installed your new HDD did you ensure you installed a newer power source with enough voltage?

Does Avast stop background processes? Have you tried turining it off and running ryzom?

Did you ever try running a pingplot to ensure you are not loosing packets?

Are you running on phoneline, cable, or dsl?



I have installed Ryzom on about 5 computers now and have had no problems (aside from Norton)

Systems used:
P4
AMD Sempron
AMD Athlon 64
AMD Athlon 64x2

OS:
Windows Vista
Windows SP1
Windows SP2

GFX:
ATi Mobility 200 xpress 256 mb DDR
Nvidia GeForce 5700 512mb
ATi Radeon X1600 512 mb DDR2

Ram:
2GB
1GB

AV:
AV Free
Norton (Bundled with Personal Firewall)*

Norton was the only thing to give me a problem with Ryzom, until all ports were opened through the firewall in Norton, windows Firewall for SP2, and router.