FFVII Steam, 7H 2.0 - Random Crash During Screen Transition

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damosuzuki

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Hello all,

As the title of the thread suggests, I'm running the Steam version of FFVII via 7H 2.0 with all QHIMM catalog mods enabled.  I am experiencing random crashes when transitioning from one screen to the next.  The screen turns black as it normally does when transitioning, but it remains black, the soundtrack continues to loop, and then an error message appears stating that the game driver has crashed.  Any help is greatly appreciated.  I have crash dump files available for upload as necessary.
 
this is a known issue right now, really no way to avoid it atm aside from not using high res mods (and who really wants to do that? lol).Iim sure theyll be a fix eventually but it ill take time as its a very small team working on it. In the mean time i would suggest using the Save Anywhere tweak under the gameplay mod and save often that way if it does crash you dont lose much
 
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Thank you for the prompt reply.  I reviewed the APP.log file after the most recent crash and noticed that the following text string frequently appeared:

"ERROR: texture cache is full and nothing could be evicted!"

I searched the forums for posts mentioning this string, and it doesn't seem like anyone has been able to find a workaround.  I had considered enabling the save anywhere feature, but I wanted to avoid using it if possible as I feel like it takes away that old feeling of clawing my way through tough areas to reach that next save point.  I'm wondering if exiting and restarting regularly after saving would prevent the texture cache from becoming full and hence reduce the likelihood of a crash.  Thoughts?
 
There is literally nobody working on it. The game driver is not 7th Heaven. People need to stop pushing 8k textures into a 23 year old 32-bit game. I'm picking up on the sarcasm, but what people are trying to do is not what you CAN do without consequences. That's on you guys; there's no support for such things or for the driver. You have to follow the directions in the error messages. Maybe someday an experienced developer can improve on it, but you cannot fit a square peg in a round hole. The Aali driver has always experienced random crashing and poor texture memory management since its inception and this has not changed. It will only be worse the harder you push what the game and driver are not designed to do.
 
I don't mean to suggest that these crashes were an issue with 7th Heaven, unab0mb.  It makes sense that injecting textures that are upscaled x4 into the cache would cause instability.  However, given that these high resolution textures both look great and are conveniently included in the QHIMM catalog, I am opting to continue using them and dealing with the consequence of occasional crashes.
 
4x upscale is fine. 4K textures are not. There’s a difference  ;)
 
EQ2Alyza:  If you don't mind my asking, which of the included texture options in the QHIMM catalog are 4k.  I'd be happy to stop enabling said textures if it will provide better stability.
 
Not sure and not home to check. I do know satsuki confirmed his textures are all 4x upscales from the originals, so those should be good. They’re what I use and never experienced your crash.

File size might have something else to do with it. Which textures are using (Miscellaneous - TA Fields included)?
 
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Remako HD where applicable as well as the 'retexture' options for both battle and world textures.
 
The ones primarily causing issues right now that I usually refer to are Jusete's Project Edge fields. They look great of course, but they don't need to be the resolution and size they are to look great. I believe they're working on finding a way to properly downscale them without a bunch of quality loss and I'm looking forward to a new release in the future that doesn't break the game.
 
I have not used Project Edge.  I've tried both Remako and satsuki and seem to get the occasional driver crash in either case.
 
I have not used Project Edge.  I've tried both Remako and satsuki and seem to get the occasional driver crash in either case.
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That's the nature of the beast. We need a new stand in for Aali to continue his work and improve the driver. Send any OpenGL developers our way.
 
So, according to what i've read here and there, the safest things to do to further avoid possible crashes are:

-Using upscales instead of retextures or anything that uses high-res textures.
-Avoid the use of Mipmaps, Post-processing, Linear filtering and Pixel buffer.
-Enable texture cache.


Maybe i'm missing something, but, am i right so far?
 
For now, yes. They're talking on Discord about .dds support, which could drastically reduce memory usage.
 
So, according to what i've read here and there, the safest things to do to further avoid possible crashes are:

-Using upscales instead of retextures or anything that uses high-res textures.
-Avoid the use of Mipmaps, Post-processing, Linear filtering and Pixel buffer.
-Enable texture cache.


Maybe i'm missing something, but, am i right so far?
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Yep.  I'm one of the ones who will be testing DDS once the driver and texture packs are ready, and believe me when I say we'll all be throwing a hell of a party if it works out the way we think it will :)
 
I don't mean to burst anyone's bubble, but it's a band-aid, not a fix. As I've stated many times before already, 7h won't be using ffnx for a really long time, if ever, until the quality and stability vastly improve and the focus again becomes modding, not vanilla, or there's an alternative. 7h would also need this support added in, which also isn't planned right now.
 
Enabling texture cache seems to have helped for now...
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Be sure if you enable/disable or change any settings in your mods that affect what textures would be visible, that you clear your texture cache from the Game Driver>Advanced tab. Otherwise, you won't see current textures.
 
Honestly, after doing all of this i can safely state that it improves the playing time without any crashes by a lot, with the wrong setup in 30 min the game can crash, with the current one i can play for hours without noticing anything, although it still crashes eventually.

I just wish i could help in to solving this problem. Cheers for all the people working on this even if it's only one.
 
I don't mean to suggest that these crashes were an issue with 7th Heaven, unab0mb.  It makes sense that injecting textures that are upscaled x4 into the cache would cause instability.  However, given that these high resolution textures both look great and are conveniently included in the QHIMM catalog, I am opting to continue using them and dealing with the consequence of occasional crashes.
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some of these textures are much more than a 4x increase in resolution.
 
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