Please for the love of god fix this game on AMD

I love Planetary Annihilation.

However don't you dare own a AMD graphics card. I thought having two Sapphire R9 280x in my system and these are even the factory overclocked vapor x versions would be far more than enough. However the UI is a broken mess and after a while with Crossfire enabled the menu's just disappear leaving you unable to build anything then a moment later it gets even worse to the point were you cannot even move anything and you watch while the AI comes in to rape your commander.

So on AMD's end the next people to talk to. In crossfire making a profile for the game and disabling crossfire does not disable it. I have to actually have to turn off crossfire for everything. Sadly Crossfire is pretty crap I cant really use it with a lot of games. The only game AMD got going really well with it was Tomb Raider 2013.

So please I know its a big annoyance and a big ask but could the legends at Uber please look into this. It seems like all the Developers these days hate being stuck in a room with Nvidia or AMD developers. Maybe Direct X 12 will fix a lot of these things.

If I could ild lock all the Developers for a game title in a room. So it would be Uber locked in a room with AMD and Nvidia while AMD and Nvidia fight each other for supremacy.

So I can play the game but yeah even with Crossfire disabled if I abort a mission or I win half the time the Menu doesnt show up all you get is a black screen. Pushing F5 does nothing. Pressing Alt enter doesn't do anything either.

1. PA uses open gl, there seems to be nothing to do with directX 12
2. PA has(had?) bad support with Nvidia's SLI as well

One thing you could do to make PA run better: "Disable Crossfire" by removing one of you gfx cards from your pc.
I had one single 7970 and run PA just fine.

I can disable crossfire and it works well. There is two options in Crossfire to enable or disable crossfire. The first is under Gaming > AMD CrossfireX go to that then you have two radial boxes. One says Enable CrossfireX the other says Disable AMD CrossfireX. If I use this option it works.

The other way of doing this that does not work is.
Gaming > 3D Application Settings. Here I can add profiles for any game and this is how you set up AMD's settings to work for games.

Click add then find your game's exe when you do that and add it you will get a list of features and settings to the right. Scroll down to AMD CrossfireX and there you will game the modes for the game. i.e Diabled. Default, EFR, AMD Profile. Now if i Disable it here it should disable it only for that game however it does not disable it.

Main thing is we shouldn't have to do this and Id personally like to see Uber and AMD and Nvidia get together to work out the SLI and Crossfire problems with Planetary Annihilation. Doom 3 had both Direct X and Open GL yet it worked properly and I can play that game with as many or as few graphics cards and it runs flawlessly. Shame about the so called HD version though. Just modding the original doom 3 made it look better.

Just a FYI, crossfire *and* SLI (nvidia's version) both cause issues with PA as it's an open GL based game which gets a lot less love than DX (Uber have to use Open GL for PA due to being mac, linux and windows compatible, DX *only* works on Windows).

I'd reccomend looking into getting a faster single card, as 2 cards are almost always a pain. The R9 390 from AMD looks a good deal at the moment as it's faster and cheaper than nVidias equivalent (coming in between the 970 and 980 in perf, whilst costing less than the 970) and has 8gb of vram which should be pretty future proof.

Crossfire and SLI have issues in general, with more than just PA. I really would recommend against blaming a game considering the inherent instability of such systems.

It sucks that you've invested that amount into your computer for the problems you're getting though, I understand that. I could be wrong, but AFAIK you can disable single cards in your Control Centre, or through the use of third-party tools? You can turn off Crossfire for specific game profiles, etc, I think - that's what I would recommend.

Your 280x should be enough to run the game comfortably; I manage well enough on a now-dated 660 Ti (nVidia).

You are correct but disabling crossfire in a game profile DOES NOT WORK.

The way that does work.... Disable crossfire in catalyst this turns off Crossfire for everything.

Sorry if i seam a bit mean but people just don't seem to be reading what im saying.

I am not blaming the Developers if I am then I am blaming every developer lately how many games have we had recently with terrible support day one. See what im saying. Im just asking Uber if they can work with Nvidia and AMD to sort it out.

See the problem is most likely on AMD's end. It does seem weird to me that in catalyst 15.7 and only for planetary annihilation the amd drivers through 3d application profiles are not disabling crossfire when told to. AMD would have to release a hotfix and make a profile in house. This would fix the problem for AMD users.

I can play the game fine. However its just a bit of a hassle. So upgrading to the newer R9 300 series well see I live in New Zealand computer hardware takes a lot of saving to get. Anything Nvidia 980 or Titan you are going to be paying well over 1000 dollars for that here or close to it. The AMD R9 300 series well thats about 600 dollars here still a lot of saving. In a system that for the most part CPU is water cooled in my custom loop. Id like to keep both cards eventually expand my loop and overclock the crap out of things or have a very silent running PC.

Its an older card so in theory it should be running better with newer games.

My CPU is still an older Intel the Intel I7 3820K I don't really need to upgrade everything is perfect the way it is.

No, I do see where you're coming from, absolutely. I have a bad habit where I try to get the most constructive output out a thread when I post in it - sometimes it comes across as condescending.

I didn't realise turning off Crossfire affected all profiles / products, that sucks a bit. I don't have experience with SLI directly either, so I don't know if nVidia behaves in the same way (so I can't say AMD should fix that behaviour, because I don't know how possible fixing that is).

The problem is most likely on AMD's end; I'm not sure if there's anything Uber can do about it, simply. Was just trying to suggest solutions that might work for you in the meantime!

I'm not sure how those application profiles work internally, but PA uses CoherentUI by spawning new processes. Maybe you should add the CoherentUI_Host.exe to an non Crossfire profile as well?

Good idea.

I will try this now... Would be awesome if this fixes it for AMD it would work for Nvidia as well. My other PC with a gtx 760 in Nvidia settings there are also game profiles so the same thing could be applied there.

Edit:
Sadly not even Added CoherentUI_Host.exe works. hell I even added Debugger and told it not to use Crossfire. Same with both Game.exe's the 32 bit and 64 bit.

Edit 2:
I wonder if its some issue with Multiple Monitors so ill try disabling one. This problem did not exist for me back on windows 7 but upgraded because of the newer features of Windows 10. That and it was a free upgrade.

Edit 3:
So nope still doesn't work not even on one monitor.

Guess my work around for now will just be disabling Crossfire Totally or upgrading to a single card or waiting for Uber and AMD to look at it. It could even be a Windows 10 problem as i see a few people having this problem also have windows 10.

Well, it was worth a try
:-(

I disagree, works wonders for me, I see great scaling in most games. GTA V scales extremely well.

I get this too, finish a game and the ui just freezes or the entire game.

The game over freeze is a known issue which affects some people including me (but not every game like others).

You could test the new PTE:

• http://exodusesports.com/guides/exodus-explains-planetary-annihilation-pte/

Well the new PTE it crashes as well. This time worse than before to the point the whole game locks up.

Atleast now I get an error code.

Error code Parsley I hate any form of vegetable not including the actual handicapped people who are actually better than half the people who are considered perfectly fine in today's society.

So time to send the crash log and dx diag info to Uber.

I also let AMD know of the Issue if they ever look into it. Most of the time they do and just forget to mention it to you and in the next update there is oddly a fix but like all things if no one talks about it no one knows its like everyone's to afraid to speak out these days when they should that way problems get solved and not just for me but for everyone.

EDIT:

Poking around in the crash log before sending this off I see Several errors already along with some useful information.

Seems the game uses this file as a local server so another exe to add to my list of dont use crossfire on.

[01:50:12.828] INFO Using local server at D:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Planetary Annihilation\bin_x64\server.exe

Unable to load what im guessing is the ingame store that or a location files are stored at

[01:50:13.344] INFO [COUI] PID: 952 | 12856 13:50:13.118599 [952:12856:ERROR:render_widget_host_view_win_coherent.cc(416)] Unable to get backing store!
[01:50:13.360] INFO [COUI] PID: 952 | 12856 13:50:13.128609 [952:12856:ERROR:render_widget_host_view_win_coherent.cc(416)] Unable to get backing store!

incorrect reference for an in game object
[01:50:23.063] ERROR [JS/game] :1: Uncaught TypeError: Object #<Object> has no method '_trigger'

.........................
[01:51:18.516] ERROR [JS/player_guide] bundle://boot/boot.js:37160: Uncaught TypeError: Cannot read property 'resolve' of undefined
[01:51:18.516] ERROR [JS/player_guide] bundle://boot/boot.js:37160: Uncaught TypeError: Cannot read property 'resolve' of undefined

..............................................................
[01:51:20.016] INFO ClientWorld::updateObservability - Updating [14796]
[01:51:20.016] INFO client::ClientWorld::updateObservability visible hidden mesh 0 0 0
[01:51:20.016] INFO ClientWorld::updateObservability - Updating [14796]
[01:51:20.016] INFO client::ClientWorld::updateObservability visible hidden mesh 0 0 0
[01:51:21.547] INFO [COUI] PID: 952 | 12856 13:51:21.311068 [952:12856:ERROR0)] Onscreen context lost via ARB/EXT_robustness. Reset status = GL_UNKNOWN_CONTEXT_RESET_EXT
[01:51:21.547] INFO [COUI] PID: 952 | 12856 13:51:21.311068 [952:12856:ERROR0)] GLES2DecoderImpl: Context lost during MakeCurrent.
[01:51:21.547] INFO [COUI] PID: 952 | 12856 13:51:21.311068 [952:12856:ERROR0)] Exiting GPU process because some drivers cannot reset a D3D device in the Chrome GPU process sandbox.
[01:51:21.703] INFO [COUI] PID: 952 | 12976 13:51:21.466019 [952:12976:WARNING:gpu_process_host.cc(483)] GPU process crash detected!

Seems my graphics card driver crashes here....

Heres another BIG oops

[01:52:34.297] ERROR Error opening struct crom:articleSystemSpec spec "/pa/effects/specs/commander_step.pfx", file failed to load

Going to the game folder and surprise nothing there when i should see a file called .. commander_step.pfx

So then it gets to the point of the game you selected your starting position then it loads the music
[01:51:33.156] INFO client::ClientGame::setMusic /Music/Music_Launch_Commander

Then we see the missing file again
Can't load something that doesn't exist
[01:52:34.297] ERROR Error opening struct crom:articleSystemSpec spec "/pa/effects/specs/commander_step.pfx", file failed to load

Game continues and tries to keep running while looking for missing file.
[01:52:34.297] WARN ClientUnit::EffectAnimEvent:arse: Effect spec /pa/effects/specs/commander_step.pfx not found.

and now we give up
[01:53:20.000] INFO [COUI] PID: 952 | 12856 13:53:20.764619 [952:12856:ERROR0)] Onscreen context lost via ARB/EXT_robustness. Reset status = GL_UNKNOWN_CONTEXT_RESET_EXT
[01:53:20.000] INFO [COUI] PID: 952 | 12856 13:53:20.764619 [952:12856:ERROR0)] GLES2DecoderImpl: Context lost during MakeCurrent.
[01:53:20.000] INFO [COUI] PID: 952 | 12856 13:53:20.764619 [952:12856:ERROR0)] Exiting GPU process because some drivers cannot reset a D3D device in the Chrome GPU process sandbox.
[01:53:20.078] WARN ClientUnit::EffectAnimEvent:arse: Effect spec /pa/effects/specs/commander_step.pfx not found.
[01:53:20.172] ERROR [COUI/ContextError] GPUProcessCrash: GpuProcessCrashed

So what is Chrome GPU sandbox and is it ever effected by Google Chrome which i had open in the background.... Guess ill try more testing...

Still gunna need Effect spec /pa/effects/specs/commander_step.pfx

I HAVE VERIFIED GAME CACHE ALL IS FINE...

Parsley is a Coherent UI crash and Coherent UI is based on Chromium.

PA:T uses some kind of shadowing for the content from the extension. Look in /pa_ex1/effects/specs/ it should be there. At least it is there in my installation.
My guess is there is something messed up beforehand, that ultimately causes this file to load.

Ive been running the PTE build on my steam copy of Planetary Annihilation this copy doesnt have Titans and also doesnt have that folder as that is for Titans.

I could jerry rig it though and move this file which is in my copy of Titans over to steam.

It still seems like some sort of driver issue as I can play the game fine if I totally disable Crossfire.

Edit:
Well thanks for the suggestion it did fix the commander I can now hear him walking so i guess that file is sound effects.

Sadly Still the same issue.

Its also the latest PTE build so yeah...

Oh well I guess ill wait around. Ive sent Uber my crash log and Dx diag. Ive also told AMD about the Issue. They had to do a lot of things to make Batman Arkham Knight somewhat playable.

@mkrater
Could it be that /pa/effects/specs/commander_step.pfx is missing on the current PA PTE?

It did fix the game from crashing but I still get it locking up.

-Please ignore this statement as it doesn't pertain to the convo at hand -

Why is it that every issue that is brought up begins with "I love planetary annihilation BUUUUUUUUUUT"
I swear this is the 5th one that I have seen with a valid issue but starts with that exact same sentence to some minimal variance..


-rant over please continue your respectful conversation