UI stops working (*Workaround found*)

I've been playing PA since beta with no real problems.

But now I've just updated to Windows 10 and now, although PA starts OK, after a while I find I suddenly can't box-select units, but I can single click to select them. Then, after a while, I find that when I click on factories I don't get the build menu up, or maybe I click on a naval factory and get the air factory build menu up that I'd had a couple of clicks before.

And eventually PA stops responding to all my input, even though the game seems to be playing fine. Even pressing enter for chat doesn't work. If I kill off PA, then restart, I can re-connect to the game I was playing and it's fine again, for a while, then it all starts going wrong again.

This is with all mods disabled.

I have no idea what the problem might be - seems to be related to just the UI part of the game, but I don't know what I can try to do to fix it.

Is it a Windows 10 incompatibility issue, or is the fact that I upgraded my OS just a co-incidence?

I'm using the latest 15.7.1 AMD drivers.

Help!

EDIT: more info. I just started a game to accurately report the issue. After almost 5 minutes I can't select units with boxes (but I can with single clicks). Factories don't give build order menus.. I pressed F5 to re-load the UI, and I get to the system view with the sun in the middle, but no UI elements. I can zoom into the planet but still have the same selection issues. Some keys work, e.g. F5, or my select-idle-fabbers key, but others don't, e.g. enter for team chat. I can alt-F4 to exit, and then on the re-join it's fine again. For approx 5 mins, then it all starts going wrong again. Rinse, repeat.. Like clockwork, every ~5 mins after I've re-joined the game.

I've also noticed that the game clock in the lower right corner stops at this point too.

This is having removed my AppData/Local/Uber Entertainment folder, un-installed and re-installed PA.

Does anyone have PA running fine with Windows 10 & AMD 15.7.1 drivers? At least if you do it would rule those things out for me..

Do you have any mods installed?

None, as it says in my original post. This is a clean install of Win10, with the latest AMD drivers, a fresh install of PA from Steam, and no mods.

That's why I can't understand what the problem might be - especially the like-clockwork 5 minute period of everything working fine before going wonky. I've got over 400 hours played so far and I've never had a problem other than an occasional lock-up until now. It's very frustrating!

Sometimes mods are disabled, but because they've been installed, they can still affect the game. Could you try running the command --nomods to verify? This can be done in the Launcher in Build Options under the dropdown list by your username. Or in Steam by right-clicking the game in your Library, going to Properties, and Set Launch Options.

I just tried that. 3:40 into a skirmish game with the AI I suddenly couldn't box select things, I pressed F5 and the screen re-drew at the system level but with no UI.

In other words, it made no difference. I'm rather stumped as to what the problem might be.

The only other change to my machine since the game was working (as if an OS re-install wasn't enough!) was a RAM upgrade - I added 2 spare 4GB RAM sticks to bring my total system RAM to 24GB, but I don't see how that could make a difference. I thought I should throw every possible bit of info in anyway, just in case!

Thanks for confirming this. We'll see if we can repro it. I think I've seen other reports of this issue so there may be something going on.
For the RAM sticks, make sure to check your page file / virtual memory. I've seen some where it decreases the max page file for some reason.

Well, that's rather encouraging (for me, at least).

If there's any more info I can provide to help narrow it down, please let me know - I'm feeling rather lost without being able to play PA so I'll do anything required!

It's currently at the automatic size of 3.9GB, which seems reasonable to me, although I'm no expert.

A bit more info.

I played around a bit more today to see if I could spot anything else, and twice the game completely locked up. When it did this I looked at Task Manager and saw that there was another PA window that had appeared behind the main window, with an error message:



The suggested kb article just says to make sure graphics drivers are up-to-date, which they are.

I don't know if this is related to the UI problems above, but I've never had a crash like this before this week either, so I thought it was worth mentioning.

Also, I found the PA logs, and looked at a log for a session where my UI stopped responding (but the game was still running), and saw these entries around the point where the UI stopped responding, at about the 14:44 mark. Note the last line here in particular.

Code:

[14:40:12.109] INFO client::ClientGame::setMusic /Music/Music_Launch_Commander
[14:40:12.109] INFO client::ClientGame::handleLaunchSuccess
[14:40:12.109] INFO client::ClientGame::handleAllLandingsSelected
[14:40:26.734] INFO [COUI] PID: 14044 | 7924 13:40:26.393718 [14044:7924:ERROR:(0)] Onscreen context lost via ARB/EXT_robustness. Reset status = GL_UNKNOWN_CONTEXT_RESET_EXT
[14:40:26.734] INFO [COUI] PID: 14044 | 7924 13:40:26.393718 [14044:7924:ERROR:(0)]   GLES2DecoderImpl: Context lost during MakeCurrent.
[14:40:26.734] INFO [COUI] PID: 14044 | 7924 13:40:26.393718 [14044:7924:ERROR:(0)] Exiting GPU process because some drivers cannot reset a D3D device in the Chrome GPU process sandbox.
[14:40:26.906] INFO [COUI] PID: 14044 | 12232 13:40:26.571033 [14044:12232:WARNING:gpu_process_host.cc(483)] GPU process crash detected!
[14:42:26.719] INFO [COUI] PID: 14044 | 7924 13:42:26.387339 [14044:7924:ERROR:(0)] Onscreen context lost via ARB/EXT_robustness. Reset status = GL_UNKNOWN_CONTEXT_RESET_EXT
[14:42:26.719] INFO [COUI] PID: 14044 | 7924 13:42:26.387339 [14044:7924:ERROR:(0)]   GLES2DecoderImpl: Context lost during MakeCurrent.
[14:42:26.719] INFO [COUI] PID: 14044 | 7924 13:42:26.387339 [14044:7924:ERROR:(0)] Exiting GPU process because some drivers cannot reset a D3D device in the Chrome GPU process sandbox.
[14:42:26.875] INFO [COUI] PID: 14044 | 12232 13:42:26.527588 [14044:12232:WARNING:gpu_process_host.cc(483)] GPU process crash detected!
[14:44:26.719] INFO [COUI] PID: 14044 | 7924 13:44:26.380278 [14044:7924:ERROR:(0)] Onscreen context lost via ARB/EXT_robustness. Reset status = GL_UNKNOWN_CONTEXT_RESET_EXT
[14:44:26.719] INFO [COUI] PID: 14044 | 7924 13:44:26.380278 [14044:7924:ERROR:(0)]   GLES2DecoderImpl: Context lost during MakeCurrent.
[14:44:26.719] INFO [COUI] PID: 14044 | 7924 13:44:26.380278 [14044:7924:ERROR:(0)] Exiting GPU process because some drivers cannot reset a D3D device in the Chrome GPU process sandbox.
[14:44:26.875] INFO [COUI] PID: 14044 | 12232 13:44:26.525536 [14044:12232:WARNING:gpu_process_host.cc(483)] GPU process crash detected!
[14:44:26.875] INFO [COUI] PID: 14044 | 12232 13:44:26.525536 [14044:12232:ERROR:gpu_process_host.cc(511)] GPU process crash limit reached! Rendering will stop on all hardware accelerated pages!

Is that GPU process crash also in the PA logs where you did not have a UI that stopped working?

(And, yeah, it may be that the Win10 drivers still need to stabilize. It's all pretty new of course.)

Since I've done the Win10 install I've not had any games where the UI didn't stop working.

I have some back-ups of my AppData folder from before the Win10 install when it was all working nicely on Win7 and an older AMD driver, and I don't see that GPU crash in the few I just looked at.

So far it's all implying it's an AMD driver issue. Which is a pain, because it means I can't play PA until they fix it, and I'm not convinced they'll release an update any time soon.

I have the same UI problem in W10, the game still runs fine but the UI just bugs out.

Friend has this issue as well. He has a Surface Pro 3 on Windows 10. It has the Intel Graphics 5000, Haswell i7. No mods, fresh install. Any other info needed?

Same issue here. W10 fresh install, no PA mods enabled (or even installed), latest drivers from AMD.

i5-4690K
Asus Z97-A
8GB DDR3
Dual R9 290X's

I should have posted this too, I am also using crossfire 290s...

Switch off crossfire and you can play

Same issues here!
complete new installed, no mods

running 2x7970 (amd) in crossfire mode
intel core i7

No problems under win7 after upgrading to win10 the UI freezes after 10-15min.


Was starting a thread under titans section so here is what i found all out (dont know many things may was be sayd here).:

"First i start a new game doesnt matter what (galactic or KI or titan version) all seems okay and nothing happens. But after like 10 - 15 min the building menues and options and overlays like the options menu disappear and i cant select more units (only with double click). But the games ceeps running i can see all units and can select ONE.

The same is if i am in a multiplayer room and just waiting for other players ,after about 10 - 15 min the chatt freezes and i cant klick anything. In this case i have to restart complete.

If i stay in the loading menu for 10 - 15 min the same happend here (where you select multiplayer or singleplayer or arsenal ...). sounds and mouse still there but the menu freezes."

I was getting the error code too but only every 4-5 crashes.



EDIT: After disabling the crossfire mode all works fine again!

Exactly what did you do to disable crossfire? I thought I'd tried that and it made no difference...

EDIT: I've just double checked, and this is what I did: open CCC -> Gaming/3D ApplicationSettings -> Add -> browse to PA.exe to add to list -> select CrossFireX Mode disabled for this .exe.
Then repeat for the other PA.exe's and CoherentUI_Host.exe's in the PA installation folder.

However it makes no difference for me (AMD HD7990, which is essentially 2 HD7970s on one card).

This is very frustrating, particularly with Titans now out! I want my PA fix, but don't want to buy a new GPU (especially when, overall, my GPU is still a great performer).

Does disabling CrossFire fix the issue for anyone else? If so, what GPU do you have?

A fix that works for me, thanks to /u/HeroesGrave on reddit, is:

• Right click on the game in your steam library.
• Click "Properties"
• Click "Set launch options"
• Enter "--software-ui"
• Click "Ok"

The only side-effect seems to be a black screen when returning to the main menu, which is solved by a quick alt-enter twice to toggle to windowed mode and back.

Disclaimer: I've no idea what --software-ui actually does, so there may be other side-effects.

Original post: https://www.reddit.com/r/planetaryannihilation/comments/3hncgm/my_problem_with_titans/cu9a9q4

--software-ui makes the UI render in software mode, rather than using the hardware accelerated rendering provided by the GPU. And the black screen is unfortunately a known side effect.

Anyway, cool find!

Thanks for the workaround.

I am also experiencing the same problem. Clean Windows 10 install, 290x crossfire with 15.7.1 drivers.