Game crashes but also resists being terminated

[Jesaynt]

Greetings Mods and Devs!

First, thanks for a good and promising entry into the into the ARPG genre.

I searched high and low for a similar post but couldn’t find one. The reason for my post is that the game is crashing upon ending the current game session and going back to the character selection screen. More accurately, it’s happened twice to me as of this post.

BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE!

The game doesn’t terminate regardless of which method you attempt to close it with:

1. Instructing Windows to close the program when it generates the “Program has crashed” prompt.
2. Trying to close it via right clicking on the game’s icon in the task bar.
3. Trying to close it via Steam
4. Trying to close it via “End Process” in Task Manager
5. Trying to close it via “End Process Tree” in Task Manager (See screenshot)

The only way to terminate the game is to (the given) cold reboot. Edit: I tried to force it to close via logging off of Windows but it just hangs the system. This is on Windows 11 - most recent build.

It’s a particularly nasty crash.

Player - Copy.zip (103.8 KB)
Screenshot

Thanks all!

[vapourfire]

Welcome to the forums…

From your player.log there are two distinct possibilities - firstly, you are getting errors that usually point to a messed up install and secondly you are getting Particle System errors that almost always refer in some way to in-game settings or GPU drivers…

Game crashing at the points you are referring to could be because these are the times where the game tries to unload components and load in new and are notorious for being potentialt crash moments… In a similar vein, crashes are more likely when loading new maps etc vs randomnly crashing in a map.

Depending on what is ultimately causing the crash, the result could be affecting other system components and neccessitating a reboot… The screenshot you provided where you are unable to terminate a process tree is most likely priviledge based - ie. you need administrative permissions to shut the process tree down. This may be because of the crash requiring elevated priviledges rather than the normal shutdown of an app run on your local account… I do not expect this to be anything nefarious or specific to the LE beyond the obvious.

As you have not provided any further information like your le_graphicsmanager.ini (in-game settings) or the output of a dxdiag report (system info/driver info / diagnostics etc) I can only make some general suggestions based on the player.log errors.

Try/make sure on the following:

1. Ensure that your system OS is patched and that there are no failed or outstanding updates

2. Make sure that your GPU driver is recent (no older than 2 to 3 months) and that it is installed using a CLEAN install - not upgrade.

3. Run the Steam Game File Verification process to ensure that your install of LE is actually ok.

4. LE is generally unoptimised and suffers from known performance related instability when in-game settings are set too high for the hardware & the state of the game right now. To test if you are suffering from this possible issue, set your in-game settings to Very Low quality, 1080p, 60fps framerate limited (not vsync) with all special features disabled or on the lowest setting. If the game is stable at this configuration compared to previously then its likely that your system is struggling and you need to be more conservative with your in-game settings until the devs have optimised the game more (they have recently committed to performance improvements for the upcoming Sept ish patch.)

5. Do not run any other applications while testing LE… this includes things like Steam Overlays (LE doesnt use it anyway) or anything else… even if it seems irelevant, temporariliry dont run it. There are plenty of known issues with other applications conflicting with the Unity game engine that LE uses so its best to test with nothing else running

6. On the same note: make sure that any other drivers & applications that relate to devices are updated and running correctly… This can include sound, keyboard, mouse, controller, headset and even rgb controller applications… Its very important to make sure that they are updated - especially for Win11 - as there are instances where older apps - eg. Razer keyboard software - can cause issues…

7. Open “View Reliability History” on your system and make sure that your machine is not reporting other errors that need to be addressed - remember if there is an underlying error with some other component, it could be indirectly affecting LE.

[Jesaynt]

Thanks for the follow up, VapourFire.

With respect to the points you raised:

• My user (the only user on this machine) is an Admin account.
• GPU’s drivers are up-to-date - though I can’t say if the install method is “clean” due to the fact that it’s the manufacturer’s software that handles the updates.
• The OS is on the latest build.
• I’ll be running Steam Verification here shortly.
• No overlays are used.
• I’ll have to verify that all other drivers are up to snuff.
• Just checked Reliability History and there was nothing noteworthy.

[Jesaynt]

All in all the game has been incredibly stable.

I was taken aback by the fact that I couldn’t even terminate the tree with ordinary Admin permissions. Unfortunately I don’t have a Super Admin user set up to test.

[vapourfire]

Honestly, I am not overly concerned by the admin issue… I too run with admin priviledges on my account but there are instances where Windows will still require elevation confirmation to terminate services or access other system level components. Perhaps Windows 11 is even more zealous in this regard - I have yet to bang my head against that particular wall.

GPU drivers - not sure what you mean by “Manufacturers software” handling the updates - the issue re clean vs upgrade is that an upgrade install doesnt always remove older driver components or replace older ones for whatever reason and this has been proven to cause serious problems - especially for graphic intensive things like games… It used to be that you had to do a safe mode or DDU install process to ensure that drivers were correctly updated - thankfully drivers from Nvidia/AMD now have the clean install option which makes it easier… Without seeing your diagnostics to check if LE is crashing on GPU driver components, this is just guess work at a usual break point - especially because of the partical system errors you were having.

The game stability is, imho, very dependant on each persons hardware setup vs the in-game settings they use. Sometimes a persons expectations can also play into the stability issue because they forget that the game is beta and assume their hardware should be capable of more. It is seldom that the game crashes for an actual code bug although it can obviously happen with a beta game. To use my own situation as an example, I have played almost 1800h now and have had less than 6 or so crashes when I am just playing the game… When I have been testing, I can almost cause crashes, freezing, lag spikes on demand simply by changing in-game settings. I can cause particle system & other graphical errors almost on demand especially if I open map locations in the game that are known to cause issues.

My general advice for stability is to be conservative with settings until the devs release more optimised code - thankfully they have committed to doing so for the Sept update… but only time will tell.

[Jesaynt]

Sorry for not clarifying - I have an RTX 2060 and updates are handled by nVidia’s “GeForce Experience”. “G.E.” will prompt you when an update is available and ask if you want to install it. Once you give it the go ahead it does the rest.

What GE’s exact process is when updating the driver is unknown to me.

I’ll grab the dxdiag as soon as I’m able.

[vapourfire]

Geforce Experience… bleugh… dont say such blasphemy… yuck… dirty words… Thats just Nvidias version of bloatware that causes more problems than its worth because it “tries” to optimise things for you automatically and usually fails - especially for apps that need a little tinkering like betas. Quite a few people have hassles with it and LE because of this… As far as I am aware its not doing a clean install that way just an upgrade…

[Llama8]

I use it & I’ve never had any problems with it…

[vapourfire]

murphy accepts the challenge…