So i have been up to playing PA quite a bit, but i've noticed a huge problem that either crashes my game or replaces what i'm assuming is the skybox with lots of weird images and colors (usually bright and neon and sometimes there will be text from the settings menu, one time it showed the lore of a planet from the galactic war, it talked about this one guy taking this system and turning it into a huge farming system and becoming quite rich.) it has happened reapetedly and without fail, and after a while i got fed up and started testing around. here's what i've got, the most common place for this error to occur is just after 3 things, the system has loaded and begun orbit, the texture of the sun is loaded and the closest planet )or possibly just the far low resolution render of the planets, however the planets themselves are not affected but they seem to affect this issue, if i zoom in too quickly the texturing doesn't load quickly and has forced the "broken skybox" or crashed my game.) and the music track "the dawn of battle" has begun playing. i have NO mods installed other than the mod enabling the advanced formations which is simply a text file setting "enable line formations" to true(also i quite love this hidden feature.. only problem with it is that i have to draw out yet another arrow after i draw my line which doesn't seem necessary as it adds another step but your not here for that are you?) so i do not think that is the cause as it has done it without it, it has occurred less frequently when i only have 1 or two planets at minimum radius and from my testing it does not care about if it's just one planet. what you will notice isn't loaded yet is the UI. and the UI loading in is what i've found is either doing it or coming really close, once it loads up it happens almost instantly (or right as the UI loads up and show's itself) i do not know why the UI is doing this but i will note the number of occurrences of the skybox issue or crash has increased with the new UI you guys have added in, which while it certainly is nicer i'm finding it more and more difficult to play the game asking my friends to pause while i relaunch the game in hopes that it doesn't crash a second time. another thing i will note is that outside programs will cause it to happen more often, specifically google chrome, firefox, itunes, safari, and skype when my friend forgets to turn his camera off. i will note skype by itself does not increase the rate of occurrences. i hope there is some fix for this issue but i will post my specs here OS: mac osx 10.9.5 ram: 4 GB at 1333 MHz on DDr3 processor: 2.3 GHz intel core i5 Graphics: intel HD graphics 3000 384 MB thank you for taking a look and i hope this helps you to solve the issue
Your memory is quite low. Actually, I think you are just below the minimum system requirements because the Intel HD actually steals the 384 MB it says it has from the main memory. At least, I'm pretty sure the Intel HD's don't have dedicated memory. That could well cause the crashes you are experiencing. Though technically Mac OS X's swap file should take of that. That being said. A new test build has been released. In the patch notes it states: (see here) So you might want to try out the latest PTE and see if that helps. You'll be mostly confined to AI Skirmish games as not many people use the PTE, but this is just for testing purposes.
thank you, and as for me being just below the minimum requirements, it feels odd that it lets me load up the game, especially since if the UI loads propper and lets me play i get a good 60 frames (lowest settings). i'll look at the PTE right away however, as anything that may help my issue is worth trying. thank you!
By the way, can you make a screen shot and upload it here with the "Upload a File" button? I'm curious to see what it looks like. Also, I forgot to mention that the changes in PTE will make it to stable at the end of this month. So if the PTE works for you, then your troubles will be over in less than two weeks.
huh. how do i take the screenshot then? i'd actually quite love to show you what it looks like... actually i'll not be a fool and look in the game itself in the settings and see if i can find the keybinding for it. i'll post it here once i get the time to load up a game this afternoon
Press Command (⌘)-Shift-3. It will put a new file on your desktop with the screen shot. That's a general Mac thing by the way.
oh! well i thought it was a thing in the game itself. thanks for letting me know before i blundered into being really confused. like i said i'll have time for a match this afternoon and i can gurantee you a screenshot of it at that time
