Cant even start Misery (X-Ray Crash) Thread - MISERY mod for S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat

Hey Folks, i've tried it a dozent times but still cant start this great looking mod.
Problem is that it crashes during the first little loading screen (still at the desktop). I've both, the retail and the steam versin and also the mod 2.0.2 but it doesnt makes an difference.
It just says "X-Ray 1.6 Engine crashed"

- Stalker COP works without the mod
- i've started as administrator
- i installed and deleted all of the contend about 5 or 6 times (with new game installation) -> no change

crashreport is in the pdf, as the forum forbids that long words ^^
Dl.dropboxusercontent.com

On my laptop with CPU 2300 single core, 3 Gb Ram and video on board the game works, its stable.
On the pc wich is by far more powerful in CPU and video, it does same as at you. On pc i have 2Gb of ram. At some point i managed to start the game and play, but was crashing very often.So in my opinion is the ram (memory) at question. Aditional info, i got windows 7 on pc, wich requires some memory, like over 1Gb with aditional programs (nothing serious) so this leaves for the game under 1 Gb of ram for sure. This is a problem in my view.

I dont know what to do next.I copied game folder from laptop, thinking it might be an install problem on pc but there isnt, it was still crashing. What i want to try next is to download a texture optimization. You might want to give that a shot to. I am not saying it will work, but if the game aint working at all what can we loose ? Beside, this texture pack doesnt look bad, as far as people said.
So ... the link is Mediafire.com

Try out patch 2.0.1!
The forum is full of patch 2.0.2 threads that say it crashes the game to desktop alot more than the 2.0.1 patch... that's the only advise i can give.

will try this. i tried the 2.0 as well -> crash

(texture pack didnt help)

This mod is extremely unstable. I don't even know why they released it as is. It's a great looking mod and adds a ton to the game, gameplay wise, but it is not ready to be out in it's state. We are essentially the beta testers for them I believe. It is quite frustrating. What I did when I couldn't get it to work from Modb is to DL, from their site, Misery mod 2.0 install that, then install the subsequent patches. Also, make sure when in-game to not even try using DX11 or DX10. It'll cause crashing every 5 mins and a hell of a lot of stuttering on screen. I have dual GTX 570's and I have this problem. They need to really get this mod optimized quick.

I had similar issues with 2.0 & 2.0.1 just trying to get to play the mod was a nightmare, uninstall reinstall a few times eventually I tried reading the install instructions .

For me I made sure not to run any EXE. in compatibility mode and ran steam as administrator.

2.0.2 has so far been the most stable patch only major problem has been a CTD during Snag's unreachable stash quest, so I have decided to bypass until the next patch which may fix the issue.

good luck and preserver its well worth it!

Same issue here, anyone have a solution to this problem yet? It's getting really annoying.

For one of the reasons you can blame Microsoft update. More info about it you can find here: Support.microsoft.com
Another thing could be driver issues, try to google your specific GPU and possible issues/solutions for original Stalker CoP.

And if you have low rig you should try to play with alternative texture pack (search forums for that) and also try to play with lower alife.ltx distance settings like 250 or 200 - try different settings that will make your game more playable. Between 250 and 200 m range NPC will start to detect you, so you will not be in more superior position to engage fight with them.

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EDIT: Never mind, going to start my own topic on this!

Edited by: wu105

Hey, did you solve the problem? i tried it without the mod and i got no problem/crash. I would be very happy if someone got a tipp for me, i'm trying to get it startet since two days
I'm trying to run the game on Vista 64bit, a AMD Radeon HD 6800 with 1gb, AMD Phenom II X4 955 Processor, and 6gb ram

Edited by: timo1383074587

Besides incorrect installation the only other reason for CoP to crash on startup is if you have any dll hooks running (E.g steam overlay, fraps, msi afterburner's osd) or the microsoft update kb2670838 if you are trying to run it in dx10

Without seeing the crash log (the log not the error report) I can offer no more advice

I'm right now downloading the game again, so i can't test it right now, but i don't even get a proper crash. Its just: i start the game via steam(as administrator), the ingame-notification in the friends window show up, and then disappear after a few seconds.
I'll try to intall misery tommorow and try to get more data.
Update:
I reinstalled everything and the same problem appears.
I followed the instroduction from: Steamcommunity.com installing misery to: \Steam\SteamApps\common\Stalker Call of Pripyat. Where can i find a crashlog, if no window appeared automatically?
I disabled Steam overlay, and the Update does not affect me, because it wasn't released for vista.

Update2:
ok it's running. i have no idea why but its working

Edited by: timo1383074587

Yastiandrie wrote: Besides incorrect installation the only other reason for CoP to crash on startup is if you have any dll hooks running (E.g steam overlay, fraps, msi afterburner's osd) or the microsoft update kb2670838 if you are trying to run it in dx10

Without seeing the crash log (the log not the error report) I can offer no more advice

The answer is "No". The third option is Misery itself causing massive crashing. If you are lucky enough to get in the game it crashes every 5 minutes. And if you are lucky to play longer than 5 minutes without a crash the save-games turn unloadable soon (meaning it crashes on loading). I saved like every 5 minutes having 10 saves one after the other and after the final crash none of these 10 saves could be loaded since all crashed. Misery is a miserable crash galore of the worst. Even a nuclear reactor out of control is more stable than this mod. If you "think" it's stable than put out a "clear and concise" install instruction that works. Otherwise (and this is to 99% the case) your mod is a catastrophic mess for which some people deserve a large amount of bitch-slapping.

2.0 uses an installer, as well as 2.0.2

2.0.2 QF is pretty self explanatory, copy over the directory and overwrite the files it asks you to, same with the save corruption fix. If you can't find the SCF then look for the giant picture of a snork labelled "Pre-patch 2.1 content" on the front page of the mod.

I even have a rough guide to manually installing the game from 2.0 ---> 2.0.2 ----> QF in my thread . I'm not sure how much simpler installation can be explained

If the game is installed correctly you will not be crashing every 5 minutes. Whether the game is installed correctly or not, any problems at startup are due to an issue on your end, and that is not the fault of the mod. I can't create and upload a patch for ignorance

Yastiandrie wrote: 2.0 uses an installer, as well as 2.0.2

2.0.2 QF is pretty self explanatory, copy over the directory and overwrite the files it asks you to, same with the save corruption fix. If you can't find the SCF then look for the giant picture of a snork labelled "Pre-patch 2.1 content" on the front page of the mod.

I even have a rough guide to manually installing the game from 2.0 ---> 2.0.2 ----> QF in my thread . I'm not sure how much simpler installation can be explained

If the game is installed correctly you will not be crashing every 5 minutes. Whether the game is installed correctly or not, any problems at startup are due to an issue on your end, and that is not the fault of the mod. I can't create and upload a patch for ignorance

Pro Tip: did it exactly your way (as well as full installer way): crashes every 5 minutes after some playing time. At the beginning less, the longer you play more until it becomes totally unplayable. Misery is the only CoP mod with this problem. So you really think it's the users (many users by the way) fault if the mod crashes while all other mods don't have this kind of problem? I would certain NOT bet on this to be true, not a single cent.

Edited by: Dragonlord

Can you post the crash logs

Edited by: Yastiandrie

Which file you need from the zip?

Copy/paste the FATAL ERROR section of your .log file

The situation is kinda difficult since in all the log files I nearly never have a FATAL ERROR only access violations. There seems though to be a pattern. One of the only FATAL ERRORs I found is this one for example: Pastebin.com .
The other crashes always have an access violation error "xrEngine.exe caused ACCESS_VIOLATION at 0023:0D7EB017 ". They happen at the same place, here a log: Pastebin.com . As you can see if you are lucky the FATAL ERROR kicks in before the access violation kills the game as in all other cases. Also interesting is that the crash always comes between these two shaders: "compiling shader model_distort_1" and "compiling shader model_distort_2", or close to them. I've got also once a bit farther before crashing resulting in some more strange output: Pastebin.com . Looking at this I would formulate a very lucky guess about problems with texture files either not existing or being broken for one rason or the other. Could be though also random errors after memory has been trashed by a SEGF. Whatever the case as soon as it gets to this place during loading hell breaks loose.

Edited by: Dragonlord

If the problem was with our texture files everyone would be unable to play the game instead of a few

What are you attempting to run Misery on?

Edited by: Yastiandrie

HD7970, AMD FX-8350 8C, 16G RAM. Tried also forcing DX9 and static lighting but it happens there too. From the logs it looks like something in the shaders or textures is pushing the engine slightly over the edge in a way it starts to fail in one config but not others.

Misery doesn't adjust shader models, they are all from vanilla engine.

You can try deleting your user.ltx and also your shaders_cache directory and seeing if that makes a difference. Also make sure there are no dll hooks (steam overlay, fraps, msi afterburner statistics server, etc) running while playing the game and microsoft update kb 2670838 is uninstalled if attempting to play in dx10

If that doesn't work you will need to have a fresh reinstall of CoP, and also re-download 2.0, 2.0.2 and 2.0.2 QF. Make sure you run and install these as administrator and install SCF-E over the top. I can't guarantee your saved game will work if you have any on the fresh install as I still believe it is an installation problem or corrupted download as you should be receiving fatal error sections in your crash logs and should not be getting a stack overflow crash with your system, which i assume uses a 64bit version of windows.

Chances are the problem is not the shader itself. Vanilla CoP without Misery2 works. The problem has to come from Misery in one way or the other. During the loading something goes wrong. Segfaults are typically the result of pushing parameters beyond a boundary the engine is not supposed to handle. On some systems this can result in no error while on others it crashes since Windows is notoriously inconsistent about segfaulting applications allowing some incorrect memory access in the hope it doesn't kill the application. Depending on what goes on im memory before and after this point this can seriously backfire. So the question is what boundaries you ventured very close to in the engine. It's well possible the boundary is not exactly where you think it is especially if for example the boundary has been located by a trail and error approach.

What goes for the other suggestions I tried this all already a couple of times with the same results. The system is 64-bit but I doubt that's the problem. Stack overflow is usually an index boundary problem. You don't write pointers to memory by memcpy or alike. That would be ridiculously stupid.

Chances are the saves got corrupted but this would be strange. I can load a working save standing in front of beard, then hard-save again, then loading this save and it crashes. On the other hand I can run towards the bridge in Zaton and it crashes. If I try to approach from the left side trying to not look into a certain direction before hitting a certain point I can manage to avoid the crash. From this I conclude that some Misery introduced object getting visible or active kills the engine. It's possible during the load this same object kicks the engine too. Interesting is where the crash happens.

I have much lower grade rig and can play for hours without CTD. It seems to me that it is GPU driver/driver settings/textures combo issues.
There is issue sometimes with strange behaviour of mutant/npc, but you should get dialog crash error in log with this. (search bug thread for "0023:0A680CC3 xrGame.dll, CDialogHolder::CDialogHolder() " or similar)

Your rig should be capable with original Misery textures, but try textures from Stivais's thread Moddb.com

You should also try with different driver settings for GPU (not only in game settings). Also try to check GPU temperature immediately after CTD.
Somehow your GPU doesn't like to be pushed ond the edge.

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The driver is not an issue nor the card. I can push the card harder with other games or my own work without crashes and without the GPU even having to speed up the fan much. The memery is also generous and not the problem (you get a clear memory ass-kick if this would be the case). Thus this is definitely not a driver fault since the crash happens in the xrGame.dll not inside the driver. If you crash the driver chances are you lock-up your PC. Here the application clearly trashes his own memory which the crash-trap catches. Keep in mind that in one of the logs a fatail error has been given and in others not. This clearly shows memory trashing is going on which in turn is only happening if you go beyond array boundaries. As mentioned above most probably an array is smaller than you think it should be and you kick over the end of it. GPU drivers you can usually only crash if you go seriously outside specs of OGL or handing wild pointers to the API layer. All of this is heavy scale errors which not show up just randomly in a mod but would make an entire alpha build unplayable.