Slitherine

Every time i click on new game, the "inizializing game..." box comes up. However around a minute into this, a runtime error appears and the game stops responding.

I have tried running the game with avast and windows firewall disabled.
I have tried making the pandora and autorun run as admins.
I have tried making them run in windows 7 compatibility mode.
I have tried uninstalling and reinstalling multiple times.
I have tried running with and without the dlc.

Is there a solution or should i try to get a refund from steam?

One thing I see in your dxdiag report is a very low amount of video memory: 96MB. The official system requirements for the game state a minimum of 256MB video memory, so you are well below that. These kind of laptops often have an option in the system BIOS to configure the amount of video memory. It could be worthwhile to have a look in the system BIOS of your laptop and see if there is an option there to increase the amount of video memory.

Not sure why its at that, should be 128mb, which is still too low but has allowed me to play games requiring larger amounts as long as the settings were low. Bios doesnt allow me to select the option, otherwise id have ramped it up.

Could this be what's causing the runtime error then? I'm amazed i havent seen it before if so.

I am not sure, but one of the things the game does at that time is to load textures in the video memory, so I would not be surprised if a lack of space would case a runtime error. Can you also post the game log files? This may give further clues.

Where can you find them on windows 8.1?

%APPDATA%\<UserName>\Application Data\Proxy Studios\Pandora\Logs

... so quite near to your savegames.

I've tried to find it but searching has yielded no results. I'll be trying again later, but as i haven't actually been into a game yet, barely off the main menu, would you still expect these logs to be present and useful?

Yes. As long as you retrieve the logs after the crash and don't restart the game again.

I've attempted to search for the logs again and still no luck. could be i'm doing it wrong but the search function is pretty convinced there are no results regardless of how much of the line dmantione kindly provided i use.

Try searching for Pandora.log, that is the filename of the log. But you should be able to find it quickly with the Windows Explorer. APPDATA is usually under Documents & Settings, but differs per Windows version. (I don't use WIndows myself anymore.)

Please also note that the Application Folders are usually hidden.
http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows- ... d=noscript

The game start to log information the moment you run the game.

I have no idea why but everywhere i search i find nothing. I've revealed the hidden folders and still nothing turns up, thanks for the help anyway guys.

Please search on:

C:\Users\<YOUR_USERNAME_ACCOUNT>\AppData\Roaming\Proxy Studios\Pandora\Logs

Are you login to Windows as an administrator?

That worked! thanks, here's the logs. Guess my laptops all about being specific.

Are you online and logged in your Steam account?
Could you please try starting the game with your Internet Security programs (Anti-virus, firewall, etc.) temporarily disabled?

I already tried that. Unless there's one hidden away i don't know about.

VPaulus his suggestion is not random guess. The last lines in the log file are:

[2015-Jun-14 16:08:02] Connecting to 127.0.0.1:6121 on :0, connectionID: 0, relayConnectionID: -1
[2015-Jun-14 16:08:02] Communicator.cpp:207: void __thiscall proxy::network::tcp::Communicator::connect(class boost::unique_lock<class boost::mutex> &,class proxy::network::tcp::Connection **): Debug: CONNECT: 0
[2015-Jun-14 16:08:02] Communicator.cpp:712: void __thiscall proxy::network::tcp::Communicator::handleResolve(const class boost::system::error_code &,class boost::asio::ip::basic_resolver_iterator<class boost::asio::ip::tcp>,class proxy::network::tcp::Connection **): Debug: 127.0.0.1:6121

These lines mean that the client (Pandora.exe) tried to connect to the server (PandoraServer.exe). Apparently this fails in a horrible way. In a single player game, client and server run on the same computer, so no network hardware is involved. A firewall that prevents the communication is the most logical explanation. If not there is for sure is something wrong with loopback commications on your computer, i.e. to solve the problem it is necessary to look at the networking in your computer. Maybe try the other way around: enable the firewall, but give Pandora & PandoraServer full network access?

Yeah, I have seen those before in the log of spyderrmr or sth. like that.

While this thread's topic might sound unrelated, it came to something similar. You might want to read it:
viewtopic.php?f=268&t=62579

He eventually solved the problem for him by changing to another combination of Firewall and Anti-Virus-Software. They were somehow preventing the connection of Server and Client.

If you look at the source code, is it possible to handle the situation that server connection fails in a less fatal way (put a try/catch around it?) and display a more helpful message to the user? Apparently quite a bit of people are running into this, a proper message might will make the troubleshooting quite a bit faster.

Hello LordVulcanos,

This is a known issue with Avast Antivirus, they are sandboxing / dllinjecting our executables which causes crashes.

See http://slitherine.com/forum/viewtopic.p ... ox#p468703 for more detailed info.

Note that some security programs will continue to partially run even when disabled. They may require full uninstallation or reconfiguration to resolve.

Sincerely,
Rok