Hi.

I've just received collector's edition from UBI. Installation was fine, but each time I try to play, after five minutes or so the game freezes. The image is freezed (no cursor on screen) but the sound keeps going for about a minute. After that everything is freezed and I have to force restart.

I'm on an iMac G5, 2GHz, 1,5Gb Ram, ATI Radeon 9600 128MB so my computer is well over the system requirements. No background running apps. No other running apps at all.

Any idea?

Thanks in advance.

BTW, the demo runs fine.

Which Mac OS version are you running?

Hi, Heimdall. I'm running 10.4.2

I've been playing hard with the demo and the same thing happened... This is weird...

Alahmnat posted in Myst V: End of Ages FAQ that "End of Ages is Tiger-compatible, and the demo has been run successfully on many 10.4.x systems." It's a bit early in the game (no pun intended!) to know what that really means.

Right now, I don't have anything specific to suggest that'll solve your problem. But I'd recommend that you update everything on your system that's updateable - all drivers, QuickTime, etc., etc.

Hmmmm...sounds suspiciously like the same problem I had with the demo. Hard system freezes. I have all the latest drivers and QT components.

Artumar, I see you are using the same ATI card as me...the 9600xt.

Heimdall...any chance there is something about this particular card that Myst-V doesn't like?

All of this sounded really weird until I read your post, Thorzdad...
As you say, this is really suspicious... Let me tell you something. The first time I tried the demo was on a iMac G4, 1Ghz, 768Mb RAM and a Nvidia GeForce4 MX 64MB The game was choppy but I had no crashes at all. And I *really* pushed it as I tried every possible combination with the video options. Higher resolution, better effects, etc. The game was choppy but never freezed. Now I own the iMac G5 with the Radeon 9600... mmmmm... I guess it could have something to do with the ATI Drivers or that specific video card.

I have a feeling it's something specific to the video card, artumar. There are many Mac users who have played the demo to completion without a hitch. Most likely, they are using other ATI cards such as the 9800.

Apparently, there are other factors besides VRAM that determine whether a game will run successfully.

You are right, Thorzdad. In fact, I could finish the demo with no problems at all in the G4 (Nvidia).
So sad I can't play the game right now...

BTW, do you know if there are more people with this same problem?

There are a few scatered around in this board with similar problems. I haven't seen much of a response, though, other than the typical "Your card sucks, get a better one." response from the gearheads...or those with more disposable income than I.

Generic Mac freezing:
-- Sometimes, freezing can be caused by having too much "stuff" hooked up, like joysticks, etc. It's a power availablity thing.
-- If you've got two different brands of RAM stick installed, that can cause freezing. Try switching the sticks around in the slots. Or, worst case, buy two of the same stick, pitch the existing sticks.
-- If a video card has a GPU fan that isn't spinning fast enough or at all, that can cause freezing.
-- There have been reports of freezing with G5 Radeon 9600 cards, cured by a new card from Apple. Bad OEM cards, apparently.
-- For the whole nine yards, go to Apple Discussions and do a search for 'G5 freezing' (no quotes). You get over 190 threads!

If the latest video driver from Apple doesn't help, try the ATI Catalyst version. All Catalyst drivers are available from ATI starting here.
-- Click on the "+" in the left-hand pane by Drivers and Software, then on Mac OS > Mac OS Drivers and Software > Mac OS X 10.4.x > ATI DISPLAYS 4.5.5.

For the record, some of the latest driver and utility updates from Apple:
-- Radeon Display Utilities, version 4.5.5, OS X 10.2.8 or later, 8/25/05
-- ATI Radeon Drivers, version 10.3.6, OS X 10.3.6 or later, 1/29/05
-- ATI Radeon Universal ROM Update, Mac OS X 10.3.6 or later, 8/11/05
-- Edirol Audio and MIDI Drivers
-- M-Audio Drivers

QuickTime 7 for Mac is available here.


Some general comments.

If you want to "push it" with a game and have problems, something to recognize and accept is that your hardware can't do things it's not capable of doing. For example, if dialing down video settings makes problems go away - then so be it, and that's the way the game will have to be played. Unless you upgrade your hardware!

Gearheads, disposable income, and sucking aside, the Radeon 9600 chipset simply isn't as capable as (for example) the 9800, whether the chipsets are on separate cards or integrated on the motherboard. This is a fact of nature, and can't be gotten around!

Beyond that, the same video chipset can give much better performance when integrated on some motherboards than on others. This is a function of how the system manufacturer integrates a video chipset with the other motherboard hardware, how much RAM the chipset can access, the OS being run, etc., etc. Also, the Mobility Radeon 9600 (M10 in System Profiler), Radeon 9600 Pro (RV350), and Radeon 9600 XT (RV360) chipsets are not all the same in terms of performance.

Try GDBing it and see what is actually going wrong...

I am on a g5 single 1.8 with an X800XT and 10.4.2... il report back how it works for me (demo works great)

quote:

Originally posted by jjoonathan_:
Try GDBing it and see what is actually going wrong...

What is GDBing? That's a new one to me.

To find out, go here, here, here, or here, or visit GDB's manual page in a terminal window near you

If you don't want to do that, it is a debugger program. This is what I suggest doing:

0) (sorry, I forgot this step) set it to windowed mode
1) Open terminal
2) Type, no quotes "gdb", then return
3) Type "exec-file " (notice the space), then drag the myst V binary file (the app icon) into terminal, then type return into that window
4) Type "r", then return. Myst should now open, run, and freeze (but the whole comp shouldnt lock up yet
5) go to terminal and hit control-C in the GDB window. Yes, control C, not command C. Then type "bt" and return at the prompt that pops up. It will tell you the names of the functions the program is executing, and should give you some insight as to why its crashing...

So, why do all that? Because maybe it is a "stupid error" - maybe it is crashing in something like LOAD_PREFS, because the prefs file is misplaced, or something... (that is an example, I highly doubt that is the case)

Now, is it a "hard freeze" in both full screen and windowed? That would make debugging harder... you still might try a remote debugging session though, maybe it is only the screen that freezes if the audio is still playing...

Thanks for the info!

Yes...it's a hard freeze..both full screen and windowed. The music /sound still plays for awhile, but everything else is locked up...cursor, keyboard, etc. The only way out is to do a hard reboot with the power button on the G5.

Thanks a lot for the info, joonathan. As Thorzdad says it's a hard freeze...

Anyway, yesterday I installed the ATI Catalyst drivers that Heimdall posted. I played for about 35-45 minutes and it didn't freeze...

Could you please try those drivers too, Thorzdad?

absolutely, I'll update the drivers.

I'm a little more hesitant to do the ROM update, though. The ATI page says it's for retail cards only. Will it be okay anyway?

If you don't have one of the retail ATI cards listed, DO NOT install the ROM update. If you don't and you do, you're likely to end up with no video!

Well...updated the drivers and the Radeon Displays software and actually got through the demo. I did scale back to 1024x768, too.
I was suprised to see how close to the end I had gotten in all my previous plays. Pretty short demo. Turn the stones, open the doors and walk into some underground room. But, it was nice to get through it. There's hope for the full game, afterall!

I have to confess, though, that I did run the ROM update (I hadn't gotten Heimdall's reply yet) The updater said if my card wasn't intended for the update, it wouldn't touch anything. Beats me if it did or didn't. In any case, I still have video.

quote:

Thanks a lot for the info, joonathan. As Thorzdad says it's a hard freeze...

how hard? does remote debugging still work? If audio is playing, it might not affect the network stuff for awhile...

Or, even if it does, you could have GDB dump every command (finish, bt...) real time over the network, and that would tell you where it was freezing even if the system would totally lock up...