Wierd Crashes

[Skurvyskull]

My girlfriend and I recently started playing, and while I am able to play just fine, she is crashing everytime she goes to certain areas.

On her first toon she was able to do everythign fine until she had to go to Theives Den, every time she goes in there on that toon it crashes to desktop.

She started another toon and was not able to get into Barbosa's Grotto. Everytime she goes in it crashes.

She went back to her first one, and same problem with Theives Den, also when she tries to sail to Cuba, when she gets to the other sea, she crashes. She can go to Port Royal, most Places on Tortuga, but certian areas she just crashes.

We both have Unlimited Access, and this is still happening to her.

We've done Spyware and Anti-Virus scans, defragged, and made sure nothing was running in the backround that could be causing this. Same problems persist, in the same areas.

Tonight we are going to try updating all her drivers, though as far as I know they are all up-to-date. We play other games online just fine (World of Warcraft and Final Fantasy XI), though they are older games now. I am also going to try playing my toon on her computer, and hers on mine and see if there are any problems, just wanted to see if anyone else had similar problems and knew of a solution.

We have reported it to Disney, and are waiting for a response.

[Pirate Rose]

It would be interesting to see what happens when you play your pirate on her computer.

I know some people in our guild have a lot of crashes, and others do not. Even when they turn the graphics down in the game, they still have problems.

Usually when these things are reported, Disney will say to update drivers etc. which you're already going to look at. You might also want to talk to live support and see what they say.

[Skurvyskull]

Yeah, did the Live Chat thing with Disney the other night, they just had us send some files to them to look over, no answer yet.

The part that bugs me, is that it's certain areas only, and different characters have different certain areas it happens in. Her first one went to Barbosa's Grotto fine, but her second one can't. Havn't really tried much else with the second one, since it doesn't even have a pistol, but I'm curious now to see if it can get into Theives Den.

[Pirate Rose]

Does she have the same problem on quiet oceans?

I have reflections and gamma turned off, and memory conservation is agressive. You might want to play with her in game settings.

[Skurvyskull]

Yes, did try on quiet oceans, that was the first thing we tried when she had the problem in theives den.

Hadn't played with the settings yet, as our computers are very similar, she actually has a slightly better Vid Card, and slightly slower CPU. I play on max settings no problem. The only thing changed from default on hers was the resolution.

Well, that's one more thing to try when we get home from work. I'll let you know how it turns out. Thanks for the suggestions!!

[Skurvyskull]

Well, updated drivers, and DirectX, and now can't even get into the game at all. Put in login information, it tries to bring the game up, and then crashes right away. Both accounts.

Trying a re-install now.

[Chris]

yes if u have problems play with all the settings if u make it worse no worrys just hit the default button

[Skurvyskull]

That would be great advice, if I could even get into the game to change my settings. I cannot even get past the login screen now. Try to log in, and instead of bringing up the character select screen it crashes.

[Chris]

try everything clear cookies clear files restart shut down re-install go on live chat with POTCO

[Pirate Rose]

Originally Posted by Skurvyskull

That would be great advice, if I could even get into the game to change my settings. I cannot even get past the login screen now. Try to log in, and instead of bringing up the character select screen it crashes.

Might want to restore, and update drivers and see if it works. Or just update direct x.

[Skurvyskull]

ok, rolled back vid card rivers, so only DirectX was updated and still crashed. Got through to live Chat and they told me about this thing in this text file I had to change to force DirectX as by default it was using OpenGL and that fixed the problem.

My g/f and I can finally play together.

[Pirate Rose]

Woot! Glad to hear it!

[mrcharisma316]

i never had crashes myself titll the last week now its happened frequently at sea

[Skurvyskull]

Apparently it must have been a problem with the Radeon Video Card, as that is the one major difference in our computers. Same MB, Same brand and series CPU (though hers is a little earlier in the series), same RAM, pretty much everything except the case and Videocard. Kinda funny story, is that I bought from a guy that worked for me, and was almost identical to the computer I had built.

Anyway, apparently, the Radeon cards, at least in the series I have (X800), use OpenGL by defailt for the API, and the game needs it to use DirectX. You can force it to do so, here is the relevant part from the chat log.

Originally Posted by Live Chat

JAMES: The issue you reported may be due to an incompatibility with OpenGL and your video card driver. Enabling Pirates Online to use DirectX 9 should resolve the problem. To specify Pirates Online to use DirectX 9 you will need to edit the "game_options.txt" file located in the PiratesOnline directory if you have ever saved settings in the Options Panel.

1) Go to Start | Programs | Accessories | Windows Explorer.
2) Navigate to C:\Program Files\Disney\Disney Online\PiratesOnline.
3) Double click on game_options.txt.
4) Make sure "state" has "working" on the line directly below it. If you see "attempted_working" change it to "working."
5) Under "api", please change the text from "default" to "pandadx9".
6) Save the file then launch the game.

If you don't have this file on your computer, you will need to create one in the PiratesOnline directory.
1) Go to Start | Run.
2) Type "Notepad" in the Open input box then click OK.
3) Add the following text precisely as you see it below:
state
working
api
pandadx9
4) Click File | Save As
5) Name the file "game_options.txt"
6) Save the file to C:Program Files\Disney\Disney Online\PiratesOnline then launch the game.
Note: you will have to update this portion of the file after every time you save changes to the game Options Panel until we finalize and release a fix to the underlying problem. These settings changes will instruct Pirates Online to only use DirectX 9 as the graphic API.
After trying the suggestion above, please submit a new bug report and come back into Live Chat so that we may investigate further.

Hope this is able to help someone else.

[Maverik770]

Thanx a lot for posting that information on the forums Skurvyskull! My girlfriend and I we're experiencing literally the exact same problem. We both have Amd processors (hers a little older than mine), same ram and different Radeon video cards, she has the x550. Her game would crash every single time she would load into the sea areas and my game has yet to crash at all. We tried contacting support and never heard anything back, so we're very glad you did.

We applied this fix to her computer just as described and it worked perfectly! Her game runs as smooth as mine now. I knew it had to be something related to the gfx card. Thanx a lot again for posting this information, I'd imagine a lot of people are having this same issue and this fix should really be sticky'd somewhere... unless it is and I missed it, hehe.