Game crashing regularly part way into match

Commandrew

Been playing with friends the last few days, however part way through each and every game, my game crashes, freezing the game for everyone, until I am forced to force quit. At that point, it starts up again for the other players. I have tried testing to see if there were any similarities between gameplay that might have triggered a crash event, however there seems to be no rhyme or reason I can discern.

I am on Windows 10, Ryzen 7 3700X, RTX 2060 Super, 16gb 3200 Ram Dual Channel. I turned my headset back to stereo as I saw that was an issue for some people, but that doesn't seem to have had any impact.

Below are the Log file, and the crash report text file. This was the first time I was able to save a crash report as well. The previous games I had to force close the crash window in order to unfreeze the computer.

game_16360958.log

crash_report-2_12_22.txt

Let me know if there is any further info you need, just trying to play a full round with friends.

Thanks in advance!

Zokora

Unfortunate, I can not pinpoint the error. It seems there are some entries missing or not getting written to the file while the game crashes.

Maybe it has something to do with the sound system/driver. But that is a guess.

warning: Unknown DirectSound speaker configuration 8. Defaulting to Stereo.
warning: SND: XACT3DApply failed. Invalid arg

Does the window event manager have more information about the crash?

Sprouto

That's usually enough proof to point a finger at surround sound as being the issue. The random crashing supports that assumption as well.

Commandrew

@zokora Looking through the windows event manager, Looks like at 7:22 (a previous game from the night before that also crashed) there was an Application Hang error, stating that the top level window was idle ( I assume this is FA). The crash that happened this afternoon at 3:41, I see two errors at the time it crashed, but both just state that there was an error with ForgedAlliance.exe, with no real further info.

Here are two previous log files from this afternoon. The first one is from a game that ended in defeat, but there is a strange error at the end of it that I am not familiar with. The second is potentially from the same game that crashed at 3:41? I am not sure.

game_16360743.log

game_16360845.log

Commandrew

@sprouto For a surround sound issue, how would I go about fixing this? I already disabled 7.1 in the Alienware control panel (the software used to manage the EQ and such for the headphones). I see on a FAQ post from 2018 that you have to set the windows sound settings to 44100hz. Is that still valid advice?

Sprouto

It can contribute, but you should also make sure that you've disabled or removed all the additional sound devices that new hardware can install these days. In particular, HDMI monitors and video cards, can often add new sound hardware to your machine, without you even noticing. Normally, with modern software, this is no issue at all - but SCFA is old - and can be confused by this. Sometimes this will clear your issue up by itself.

Also, many motherboard manufacturers include an audio control applet, like that one you mentioned, that add effects and EQ to your audio. These are often the cause. If you suspect this may be the case, turn that applet off temporarily. This is something that frequently causes problems for USB headsets as well, as they often have either their own software, or they have a little external 'dongle' that has some processing built in (often that's just volume, but sometimes it's surround sound processing).

Lastly, Microsoft itself, has repeatedly introduced it's own 'psuedo-surround' effects, and has been known to re-enable them, even after you've turned them off. It often hides these effects in the 'Enhancements' tab - but MS has moved them around several times over the years.

Commandrew

@sprouto Okay, cool. I appreciate the help! I will update after I have had a chance to test a long game with all the other sound devices disabled.

Sprouto

Glad to be of some service. The last resort, that will definitively prove that it's a sound issue - is to use the /nosound switch on the command line that launches Supreme Commander. This will turn off ALL sound - and if the game is stable then, you have proof positive that it's a sound related thing.

Some people have had success in these matters, just getting rid of the music files - which is just a matter of deleting the files associated with the game music - but I'll leave that for another discussion.