15 replies to this topic

[Po Dam Sol]

When my MW5 Mercs game & Heroes starts up, my planetary system map starts to lose all it's names and contract info. I can take a contract and do the battle, but if I need to travel afterwards for any reason, the planetary icon info and names are all gone. I then have to quit the game, wait 20minutes or more, then restart it. Once restarted and IF the names are showing, I then have to take advantage of the moment and choose to travel quickly. Sucks because while I'm reading contract info on the planets, it all starts fading in and out b4 it eventually disappears entirely.

I was working with GM Zen on this but haven't heard from him in the past week and a half. Don't know why, but certainly was NOT informed it was fixed and told what to do about it. He did say my graphics card wasn't quite up to par with reqs but that he didn't think that was it.

Help! Having to quit the game every 20 minutes or so really kills it, ya know?

[sycocys]

Doesn't really seem like a graphics card issue - other than the having to wait 20 minutes thing.

Are you running mods? Installed on a particularly slow drive? Cooking your potato?

[Thorqemada]

This is allways hard to come by.

Does something on your PC get really hot and impairs the SSD/HD Drive, the Vram or RAM?

Do you have enough drive space free?

Do you have one of the faulty Samsung SSDs?

Is there a Bios setting like above4g and resizeable bar that you GPU needs or does not work with?

Do you have any mods for MW5 active and they bug the map out?

If so are compatibility mods missing?

etc.

Really hard to diagnose...

Have you tried to clear you caches like the dxcache or a new insallation of the game?

[Po Dam Sol]

I have 3TB of storage on my hard drive, with 16GB Ram. It's an HP i5-4590@3.30GHz with Win10Pro, DirectX 12 and an NVidia GeForce GT720.

I'll try to check the stuff you folks mentioned but I'm not that techy. I'm a button-pushing navigator, not a hard drive computer technician. The Starmap was disappearing before I ever learned how to download mods to the proper file location in the game. I've since put in a bunch of mods and removed the ones that did crash the game, so I don't think my problem is with the mods.

I also have the occasional problem of really jinky targeting, ...but I don't want to go there.

Anyway, now I just wish the Starmap wouldn't keep fading into nothingness as I sit on the bridge of our dropship, looking at a digital universe of planets with zero choices to head to, all while Briana apologizes for her inability to connect with technical support on comms and while Fahad curses at me from downstairs as he looks over the mechs we brought back to him.

[Aidan Crenshaw]

Well, the easy try would be to deinstall all mods, clear the saved games folder and do a fresh and clean installation.

BUT.
Seeing that at least your graphics card does not meet the minimum system requirements and you CPU is dated, too (can't verify if it is below minimum specs, sry), I suppose you got lucky for an engineer even giving it a second thought. The GT720 is almost as old as MWO and never was a high performer.
I think a computer update is your best bet to get rid of your issue with MW5.
Minimum specs are given for a reason and sometimes it's not just about pure procession power, but also supported architecture and technology.

Edited by Aidan Crenshaw, 02 February 2023 - 01:09 AM.

[Thorqemada]

Wow, that PC has really come to age.

I guess your gt720 has only 1GB Vram?

16GB Ram is enough though with mods it could already exceed that amount, i am not sure.

The CPU should still work i guess.

For the HD Windows needs a certain amount of free disk space - at least 100GB should allways be free, for some installations even more than that.

The total amount of disk space does not matter here, it is the free space on the drive with the swapfiles and other caches that your drive is used for.

If the GPU is the culprit that would normaly be easy to find out - switch it with another GPU (a better one) and see if it still happens that the map disappears.

If not it is the GPU, if it still dissappears it is something else.

Be aware that your System may no longer supported in general by devs anytime soon in regard to new games as some move away from supporting even old dx12 gpus.

Edited by Thorqemada, 02 February 2023 - 08:49 AM.

[Po Dam Sol]

Well, thanks for all the info, folks. Looks like I'll try a few things first and if they don't work, then I'll be heading to upgrades. Was hoping to avoid the cost, especially in today's economy. I'll post again when I find some new results. Thanks, again!

*Turns off the coms with an annoyed look, glances at Briana standing attentively the other side of the console. "Alrighty, then. Let's button her up, and tell all pilots to get to their mechs, and all tech crew to their vehicles with everything they might need." Striding to the landing that overlooks the mech bay and Fahad, down below, I shout "Fahad! Last call, finish up what you're doing on my Centurion 'cause we're going on the hunt to steal a new Dropship!" Hearing a few hoots of joy and maybe even... relief?, I turn and smile and head to my cabin for my own gear.

[sycocys]

HD speed matters as well, I won't use anything slower than 7200 rpm, prefer 10k or ssd - if its not for critical data.

If you have low vid card ram, it could just be unloading assets that aren't being actively called for.

[Thorqemada]

Yeah, that HD Speed matters, especially if you have less RAM, the more the HD is used and low VRAM means your System RAM is used for Video Data and if therefore the RAM runs low the HD is used.

Also an old HD could slow down as a sign of developing issues that lead to its failure at some point later.

You still could try to defragment the HD to see if it got disorganized over time (they do) and needs a reorganization so the files are arranged in a way it is easy to read for the Hard Drive.
(This is only for a Hard Drive - do NOT do that ever for a SSD - it could be destroyed!!!)

Edited by Thorqemada, 02 February 2023 - 04:31 PM.

[sycocys]

Also don't run 10k rpm HDs in a laptop if you ever use it on your lap unless you like to have roasted chestnuts.

Edited by sycocys, 02 February 2023 - 06:32 PM.

[Po Dam Sol]

Well, mission update. I ran through all the mods I had installed to make sure it wasn't any of them, removed the ones that would crash the game and that wouldn't play well with others in the mods box. Time consuming, but I learned. And it wasn't them, so I moved on.

Next I found my box of courage, unloaded some and opened up my pc tower, the first time in ages. What I found was a whole lot of dust bunnies running back and forth, leaving a bit of layering throughout. I accidently blew a bunny into nonexistence while looking in and suddenly wondered if I'll die soon from having inhaled it. I wiped off my face, mumbled something like "idiot" and got out a hand vac and a new bottle of SurfOnn to get it all cleaned out. Who knew that cleaning a pc should be a thing regularly? I never knew. My daughter told me her husband does it once a month. He's got a really nice gaming rig and he's military, so I thought it was extreme but now it makes sense.

I looked it all over and found that the small plastic fan on my graphics card had broken loose. I guess dust had collected on it, stuck a bit, causing it to break free and allow the card to begin overheating. That made sense as the Starmap planetary info would fade in and out of existence and this NOT while scrolling in and out with the mouse's scroll button, but likely more probably as my graphics card would get hotter while the radiator on it would try to cool it down as best it could.

I then bought parts to upgrade my ModelT of a pc, found one part needed other better parts to make it work, found some parts just didn't work because other parts were really old tech that was incompatible with newer stuff, considered just getting a whole new pc, and then found the final graphics card I bought took care of the issue all by itself. It made the boss happy it didn't cost us big $$$ and made me sad I put all my $ stash back into checking to cover it early on when it only really cost me a fifth as much. Ah well.

So there we go, and it's GAME ON!!!!

'I stop on my way to my cabin to get my gear, remembering that Fahad had gotten a dirty Capellen tech into his crew last year and I began to wonder. I haul myself down to Fahad in the mech bay and ask, "Hey, didn't you get a Capellen tech last year, one that looked fairly grimy and worn? What did you put him in charge of?" Fahad looked up from his greasy clipboard and said, "Umm... the server room, I think. He was overly qualified for basic mech monkey work, so I sent him there. Surprised he even got hired on and sent down to me, y'know?" I then ran back up and out to the Server room, rushing by and startling other crew who looked at me wondering as I flew by. I yanked open the door, took one look and smacked myself on the forehead numerous times. "Idiot!", I said as I looked around at the room, seeing dirt and grime and grease everywhere. "Bet he didn't ever wash up for dinner, let alone before starting a new job!" I glanced around some more, thinking "Or was that intended?", and walked over to the machine marked "Navigation". I look it over, pulling open access panels numerous times, pushing aside wiring and power feeds to look things over and shutting them again, until I found just the right one. "Yep", I mumble, "that's the one!" I hustle over to the wall, activate the coms panel, "This is the Commander, our big adventure is currently canceled so back to stations". I think I hear a lot of boos and unhappy comments being expressed throughout the ship, echoing through the bulkheads and walkways. "Dept. heads to the bridge, we might be out of here sooner than we thought!". A grin starts to form on my face as I think, "Could've been worse. He could've had a bomb. Give a Capellan a handful of dirt... Clever, clever, clever."

Thanks to GM Zen and any others in Pirahna Games who worked on this bug, thanks as well to those who gave free techy advice in this forum! I'm now cooler and wiser for resting under your shadow, if only momentarily!

Edited by Nightlinger, 17 February 2023 - 05:08 PM.

[sycocys]

There you go, have fun playing.

I'm working on convincing myself to upgrade to 64 or 128 gigs of ram in my rig, didn't think Win11 was so much of a memory hog on its own.

[Thorqemada]

My next PC will have 64GB RAM for sure but that is more toward the 2030s...for now 32GB have to do.

[sycocys]

Thorqemada, on 18 February 2023 - 04:10 PM, said:

My next PC will have 64GB RAM for sure but that is more toward the 2030s...for now 32GB have to do.

32 would probably be enough, but these new boards support 128 soooooooooo.
I think 64 gig of kingston beast in the fastest speed the board supports was like 230 which is a tolerable upgrade. Liquid cooled also makes a huge difference if you haven't looked into it.

The main problem I have is windows eats up so much of the stock 8 gigs that my dsp has issues, which is half because of the age of it and half because windows handles audio in a completely r-tarded manner. its one thing that the linux/mac kernels do substantially better is pipeline audio and graphics directly rather than forcing it through all the layers of the gui.

[SomersetStriker]

sycocys, on 17 February 2023 - 07:45 PM, said:

There you go, have fun playing.

I'm working on convincing myself to upgrade to 64 or 128 gigs of ram in my rig, didn't think Win11 was so much of a memory hog on its own.

If you need more than 16GB of RAM then it isn't Windows 11 at fault. I'm even running it an old and slow laptop with 8GB just fine.

Before you go thinking that's not possible, yes it is lol. You can run Windows 11 on just about anything by disabling TPM and CPU checks.

[sycocys]

SomersetStriker, on 01 March 2023 - 08:20 AM, said:

If you need more than 16GB of RAM then it isn't Windows 11 at fault. I'm even running it an old and slow laptop with 8GB just fine.

Before you go thinking that's not possible, yes it is lol. You can run Windows 11 on just about anything by disabling TPM and CPU checks.

Well I can tell you that I went from a base of ~40% of memory usage to ~2-4% just from upgrading to 128 gigs and another update to fix my dsp issues (so far anyhow). Really don't know anything about tuning win11 to be fair, been using win7 since it came out until I bought a new rig.
The added ram makes a substantial difference in being able to cache all the nonsense the game wants loaded that doesn't need to be like the entire roster of the mechbays.

Edited by sycocys, 03 March 2023 - 06:17 AM.