Larian Studios Forums Divine Divinity (English) Technical Problems The crashes on new systems aren't a fluke

I see tons of posts about random crashes on newer sysems in DD and they're addressed as problems with the users' computers. All of these people have had different systems, different soundcard chipsets, different graphics cards. I think it'd be nice if someone really looked into what is causing these crashes for lots of people, now more than ever, rather than assuming it's because the user hasn't defragmented their hard drives or has spyware.

There is a reasonable chance that random crashes are either caused or aggravated by the state of Windows (virus, spyware, old drivers, background programs, etc) on the user's computer. While the system may or may not be part of the problem, it would be inadvisable to ignore that possibility.
There is a file verification technique in the Troubleshooting Tips (& manual install procedure) topic, to try to identify problems with the game itself (missing or corrupt files).

Random crashes are by their nature very difficult to track down, especially if the developer does not have a system that can reproduce the problem. With no idea where or why the problem occurs, you basically have to change 'stuff' and see if it makes any difference. The easiest way to do that is to address issues with players' computers that are known to cause problems with games in general. Larian can not randomly rewrite parts of the game and hope to eliminate the crashes, and it would not be feasible to audit all the code in hopes of finding rare bugs, which if fixed may or may not have any effect on the random crashes experienced by some players.

Anyway, besides installing the patch, that is why troubleshooting tips for unknown problems generally involve the system that the game is running on.

I don't know what kind of tools Larian has to work with, but it seems that one of their many newer machines would be able to reproduce the random crashes so many people are experiencing lately who never experienced a crash when the game originally came out. I think more people than just the computer illiterate with cluttered, trashy drives are experiencing this.

Except that newer systems are more likely to have later versions of DirectX and graphics drivers, etc than the game was tested with, there is no reason to expect them to have more problems with the game. I have not noticed any kind of correlation from forum posts, in any case.

Random crashes are very difficult to reproduce. Even with a hundred new computers, Larian may not have one that displays this problem.

While there have been several reports of random crashes over the past few months, it is not a common issue.


It is entirely reasonable to expect the game to work without crashing, and undoubtedly there are computer literate people who encounter problems not directly attributable to the state of their system. However, short of porting the game to a console system, I don't see how Larian can be expected to solve every problem people may encounter, even several years after the game's release. I am not aware of any non-trivial programs that work perfectly under all circumstances with all possible configurations of system hardware and software. I'm sure that is little consolation for those having serious problems, but practically, that is the way things are.

In any case, development of the game is over. The Larians did the final patch without help from the publisher, which means they did it on their own time, without being paid and while still having to work on stuff that would get them paid. As much as I'm sure they would like to be able to fix every problem, it is extremely unlikely that another patch will be released.


I'd like to be able to tell you to do 'this' and your problems would be over. Unfortunately however, the game is not going to change, so your options are to work with your current system to see if you can reduce or eliminate the crashes, try playing it on an alternate system if you have access to one, leave DD on the shelf until the next time you reinstall Windows or get a new computer to try again, or forget the whole thing and give it to someone for Christmas.

I agree, I'm noticing many more issues in my current game than I can ever remember having. Most of the crashes seem random, although one is the Troll King I've outlined in another thread. Another is the slashx.dll which still happens even with sound accel bumped down, just not as often. And then I'm getting crashes that I haven't been able to figure out reasons for yet. It's all very frustrating.

You think that because all these games are written for PC/WinXP, they'll always work on PC/WinXP systems. Unfortunately, this doesn't appear to be the case. My experiences with DD are making me apprehensive of installing anything over a year old.

You shouldn't feel too worried about installing anything older than a year. It all comes down to how a product is developed (coding methods especially) maintained, and not every game over a year old is necesarrily unsupported by their developer at this point.

While it is true many games eventually stop getting patches, it is just a fact of PC life, even if it is unfortunate. I guess I can count myself lucky, after upgrading to an Athlon 64, new motherboard, new graphics card, etc. I haven't had any major issues.

It is the one major disadvantage that PC's have. Because they are such a flexible platform, finding and fixing problems, can be a maricle in itself. Getting a stable game can sometimes be a maricle itself, lol

I will agree that the crashing issue is not a fluke.

My system is a P4 3.2 with 1Gb RAM Realtek AC97 sound and 9600XT Radeon card.

The game crashes anywhere after 15 -30 mins of play. Most common is the leave building crash, but it has ocurred in other areas too.

I have pegged the sound acceleration right back to no avail.

It would not be so bad if the gameplay was poor, but after playing Oblivion twice through I was hungry for a RPG with a not so obvious plot and some puzzles and thinking. Whilst the Oblivion combat was great the game was simply far to short and dumbed downed (I suspect for a console audience). DD seemed to be providing a better challenge - but I would class it as unplayable due to the crashing.

I will install it on my kids PC tonight and see if it is more stable. The kids pC is a more humble celeron, but still new, so I fear the worse.

I looked through a few posts and Radeon cards and Realtek audio seem a common thread in many of the crash posts.

Regards