19 replies to this topic

[Thandal]

News of the Hour! Bioware claims "Sound cards to blame for crashes!" Will attempt repairs.
Lord Behlen is still a Bad, Bad Man!

See the following "New patch coming real soon now" announcement posted to the Bioware Social Forums at: [http://social.biowar.../index/2860181]
( And here it is "clickable": http://social.biowar...4/index/2860181 )

I, for one, am extremely curious about the version number. Will it be 1.03b, or 1.04, or (if they really, really fixed as much as they know about and could manage) 1.10?

[spets21]

very nice they finally fix the +100 approval bug .

CTD is caused by soundcards? hmmm

[SaturnC]

Damn, why didn't I get the approval bug in Awakening? As for the soundcard crash, I've been playing Mass Effect and have found out there can be some serious crap with the soundcards, sound and the game so this actually does not surprise me. I always thought my crashes in Dragon Age were due to mods but I'm curious to find out more about this soundcard business.

[danscott84]

Ah, this might explain why I haven't gotten the problems others have had with the patch. I don't use a sound card, just the motherboard 3D sound that is standard with it. This explains quite a bit, if it is indeed the root of the problems.

[RustyBlade]

I guess that expecting them to fix the memory leaks was too much to hope for

@ danscott84: Your on-board sound is the same as having a sound card when it comes to driver crash issues, the fact that you have fewer than most just means that your drivers are more compatible than others. My on-board sound sometimes is the cause of my game crashing (it is usually fairly obvious when it is) but most of my issues are with scene changes or the memory leak.

[Thandal]

I guess that expecting them to fix the memory leaks was too much to hope for

@ danscott84: Your on-board sound is the same as having a sound card when it comes to driver crash issues, the fact that you have fewer than most just means that your drivers are more compatible than others. My on-board sound sometimes is the cause of my game crashing (it is usually fairly obvious when it is) but most of my issues are with scene changes or the memory leak.

For me, 1.03 did appear to fix the memory leak problems (decreasing fps and enormously increasing area load times the longer I played, etc.) But it also made the game unplayable on my rig due to CtD. Finding the FO3 "Large Memory Area Flag" file header fix saved the day (well, about three months, actually!) Ever since using it to (very politely) hack the .exe, all my issues have been "broken script" ones. Plot flags not tripped, wrong dialogue branches firing, etc.

Seeing as how most (all?) of those have already been identified and repaired by the Community, I'm really hopeful that Bioware is addressing them "officially" so that I don't have to cobble together a collection of disparate pieces (e.g. "Dialogue Tweaks", Morrigan Restoration Fixes", "Gate Kisses", "Epilogue Slide Fixes") just to keep from having [... Spoilers Removed ...]

BTW: I also have an on-board sound chip: RealTek 5.1 HD. Still had crashes regularly whenever certain events occurred. Now that there's some indication that the CtD is related to sounds, I guess I can recall that there should have been some sound associated with those events. (But then why would the FO3 Fix make the problem go away?) We'll just have to wait and see...

Edited by Thandal, 12 June 2010 - 09:33 PM.

[Stardusk]

I guess that expecting them to fix the memory leaks was too much to hope for

@ danscott84: Your on-board sound is the same as having a sound card when it comes to driver crash issues, the fact that you have fewer than most just means that your drivers are more compatible than others. My on-board sound sometimes is the cause of my game crashing (it is usually fairly obvious when it is) but most of my issues are with scene changes or the memory leak.

For me, 1.03 did appear to fix the memory leak problems (decreasing fps and enormously increasing area load times the longer I played, etc.) But it also made the game unplayable on my rig due to CtD. Finding the FO3 "Large Memory Area Flag" file header fix saved the day (well, about three months, actually!) Ever since using it to (very politely) hack the .exe, all my issues have been "broken script" ones. Plot flags not tripped, wrong dialogue branches firing, etc.

Seeing as how most (all?) of those have already been identified and repaired by the Community, I'm really hopeful that Bioware is addressing them "officially" so that I don't have to cobble together a collection of disparate pieces (e.g. "Dialogue Tweaks", Morrigan Restoration Fixes", "Gate Kisses", "Epilogue Slide Fixes") just to keep from having [... Spoilers Removed ...]

BTW: I also have an on-board sound chip: RealTek 5.1 HD. Still had crashes regularly whenever certain events occurred. Now that there's some indication that the CtD is related to sounds, I guess I can recall that there should have been some sound associated with those events. (But then why would the FO3 Fix make the problem go away?) We'll just have to wait and see...

I remember the good old days of Black Isle...they were thorough and they made the best RPG ever. I love DA but seriously, we rely too much on player made patches and fixes. And yes, look at toolcrap. It is a malfunctioning piece of junk. Only in the PC game world could anyone hope to get away with such poor quality.

[TerraEx]

I guess that expecting them to fix the memory leaks was too much to hope for

@ danscott84: Your on-board sound is the same as having a sound card when it comes to driver crash issues, the fact that you have fewer than most just means that your drivers are more compatible than others. My on-board sound sometimes is the cause of my game crashing (it is usually fairly obvious when it is) but most of my issues are with scene changes or the memory leak.

For me, 1.03 did appear to fix the memory leak problems (decreasing fps and enormously increasing area load times the longer I played, etc.) But it also made the game unplayable on my rig due to CtD. Finding the FO3 "Large Memory Area Flag" file header fix saved the day (well, about three months, actually!) Ever since using it to (very politely) hack the .exe, all my issues have been "broken script" ones. Plot flags not tripped, wrong dialogue branches firing, etc.

You know, I wondered why my game hadn't been crashing much lately (despite the fact it CTD'd constantly after installing Awakening. THEN I remembered I'd patched the exe using CFF explorer. 1.03 still introuduced a whole host of annoyances for me and I notice that Bioware's current list of fixes for the new patch doesn't look that extensive...

I remember the good old days of Black Isle...they were thorough and they made the best RPG ever. I love DA but seriously, we rely too much on player made patches and fixes. And yes, look at toolcrap. It is a malfunctioning piece of junk. Only in the PC game world could anyone hope to get away with such poor quality.

Now now Stardusk, I seem to recall either BG2 or TOB they messed up Imoen to the point where none of her dialogues triggered at all (vaguely recall all her dialogues referencing the creature "Imoen" when her actual creature was "Imoen2") - my memory's a bit foggy on that one, its been so long since I modded BG2. But to the point, Bioware have always had extensive bugs and psuedo-annoyances in their fantasy rpgs, and it has always ultimately fell to the community to fix them. The fact that they let Godchild's childhood friend have such a crippling bug in the shipped game still sticks in my mind to this day.

Personally, as DA is a multi-platform title I was expecting them to make a bit more of an effort as console players are truly screwed when it comes to bugs, but EA is holding all the cards now...

[Stardusk]

I guess that expecting them to fix the memory leaks was too much to hope for

@ danscott84: Your on-board sound is the same as having a sound card when it comes to driver crash issues, the fact that you have fewer than most just means that your drivers are more compatible than others. My on-board sound sometimes is the cause of my game crashing (it is usually fairly obvious when it is) but most of my issues are with scene changes or the memory leak.

For me, 1.03 did appear to fix the memory leak problems (decreasing fps and enormously increasing area load times the longer I played, etc.) But it also made the game unplayable on my rig due to CtD. Finding the FO3 "Large Memory Area Flag" file header fix saved the day (well, about three months, actually!) Ever since using it to (very politely) hack the .exe, all my issues have been "broken script" ones. Plot flags not tripped, wrong dialogue branches firing, etc.

You know, I wondered why my game hadn't been crashing much lately (despite the fact it CTD'd constantly after installing Awakening. THEN I remembered I'd patched the exe using CFF explorer. 1.03 still introuduced a whole host of annoyances for me and I notice that Bioware's current list of fixes for the new patch doesn't look that extensive...

I remember the good old days of Black Isle...they were thorough and they made the best RPG ever. I love DA but seriously, we rely too much on player made patches and fixes. And yes, look at toolcrap. It is a malfunctioning piece of junk. Only in the PC game world could anyone hope to get away with such poor quality.

Now now Stardusk, I seem to recall either BG2 or TOB they messed up Imoen to the point where none of her dialogues triggered at all (vaguely recall all her dialogues referencing the creature "Imoen" when her actual creature was "Imoen2") - my memory's a bit foggy on that one, its been so long since I modded BG2. But to the point, Bioware have always had extensive bugs and psuedo-annoyances in their fantasy rpgs, and it has always ultimately fell to the community to fix them. The fact that they let Godchild's childhood friend have such a crippling bug in the shipped game still sticks in my mind to this day.

Personally, as DA is a multi-platform title I was expecting them to make a bit more of an effort as console players are truly screwed when it comes to bugs, but EA is holding all the cards now...

I was comparing it to any other product one wishes to sell. Cars, toasters, etc...only game makers can produce defective junk and make a killing off of it.

[RustyBlade]

It is the "as is" clause in the EULA that screws us all and it will take congress enacting a law to stop it and since they can't get their heads out of their collective backsides long enough to do something about BP, expecting them to do something about bad EULA's is a pipe dream at best.