Game crashing during loading screen, 100% of time. Game not playable

[travelgamer]

I just bought the game on steam.
Since the game is telling me to send the crash reports to dev, I googled where I could send these and I ended up here.

I can't play the game, it crashes whenever I start a game. My guess, is that when anything 3d or game related starts, it crashes. I can choose the landing spot, choose the colonists and game option, so far so good, everything crashes where the actual game starts. I lost hours looking on google on how to fix this, I didn't find anything.

I got nvidia, if that matters, the starts of the error is the following:

Unity Player [version: Unity 5.6.3p1_9c92e827232b]

nvd3dum.dll caused an Access Violation (0xc0000005)
  in module nvd3dum.dll at 0023:6e5ae301.

If someone could give me 1 email where I can send the full report to receive help it would be nice, otherwise I'm forced to ask for a refund on steam cause I can't play.

[Calahan]

Please can you post you log file (as an attachment). As well as confirming what O/S you are using, your CPU and RAM, and confirm that your GPU drivers are up to date. Details on where to find your log file can be found here (see #6): https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=513.0

[travelgamer]

Please can you post you log file (as an attachment). As well as confirming what O/S you are using, your CPU and RAM, and confirm that your GPU drivers are up to date. Details on where to find your log file can be found here (see #6): https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=513.0

thanks, I'm on win 8.1 x64. CPU Intel i7, 4gb of RAM, all my drivers are always up to date. I have an nvidia 930m. Of course I tried to verify the game files via steam, nothing changed.
Here's one of the 1000 crash logs, the latest one: https://expirebox.com/download/e0b472593ad33cbbbb4b50541e8b8efa.html

[Calahan]

Thank you for the log file and system info. This appears to be entirely a GPU / GPU driver issue, and not something related to the game. Most obvious causes/suggestions are:

1 - Your Nvidia settings are trying to force/deny certain 3D settings that are incompatible with the game. I don't know how extensively (or not) you have customised your Nvidia 3D settings, but try restoring setting to default to see if that fixes this.

So please use the "Restore" option in the Nvidia Control Panel* to reset all settings to the defaults. As I said, I have no idea how extensively (or not) you've customised your 3D settings, but if you don't want to manually check and change every setting to see which, if any, is causing the crash, then you should be able to restore everything to default via the "Restore" option.

2 - Try running the game without the Nvidia GPU enabled. Either by disabling it in Device Manager, or running the game with the integrated Intel GPU (note that I'm assuming you are using a dual GPU laptop given that your GPU model is made for laptops. Meaning you should be able to run programs either with or without using your Nvidia GPU).

3 - Similar to 2. Try completely uninstalling your Nvidia drivers. Then try running the game again. If it still crashes then reinstall your Nvidia drivers and try again. (you can usually find a clean GPU uninstall utility on Nvidia's website).

4 - Try using an older Nvidia driver. I can't recall anyone having any problems with RimWorld and any Nvidia driver version(s) before, but it's happened with AMD, and if all else fails it's something worth checking.

5 - If none of the above works then please check you power management options and your GPU power management settings. And check that everything is set to maximum power/performance (power conservation settings have been known to cause some problems with GPU's, as they can idle your GPU and the game isn't able to wake it up when it launches, which causes the game to crash because it can't use/detect your GPU).


I'll leave it there for now as they are the most obvious suggestions. I can't see how this isn't a Nvidia GPU issue though, since all the info points towards that. So if you still can't, get the game to work, and I'm not around later to suggest anything else (I'm out for the evening now I'm afraid), then your best option will be to Google that error from the crash log. As there seems to be a number of hits for it so I'm sure somewhere amongst them is an answer.


* Nvidia Control Panel - In case you don't know how to open it, and assuming there's no desktop shortcut. You should be able to open it by right-clicking on the Nvidia tray icon (but perhaps not any GeForce Experience icon, as that might only open the GeForce Experience Control Panel). Otherwise (assuming default install paths) you should be able to find it in Program Files>Nvidia Corporation>Control Panel Client> nvcplui.exe . Or just try searching your files and folders for the nvcplui.exe file.

[nccvoyager]

Just in case it is still needed, I've attached the OPs log archive to this post, as the hosting site it was uploaded to is about to delete it.
(That's kind of the point of the hosting site, so not unexpected.)

If running the game with the integrated graphics doesn't work, (or even if it does,) I have another option I would like to suggest.
It is possible this is an issue with the power management options with Nvidia ~880 through ~980 cards. (And their model "M" mobile counterparts.)
Many of these cards use a low power or "zero power" technology, which is good in theory, reducing power consumption by cycling down or even disabling GPU cores when they are not needed.
In practice, however, this can lead to issues like this type of crash.
These cards will sometimes run in low-power mode when a program starts in 2D, the software "thinking" it doesn't need to wake up those GPU cores, and then the management software (colloquially) "freaks out" and crashes something when it switches to 3D graphics.
Effectively, while the GPU has the power to run the game, the drivers read the GPU as running at some outrageous rate when they suddenly jump from 0% usage to 100% usage as the GPU cores essentially "wake up" suddenly.
For some systems, this leads to the graphics driver crashing.
For other systems, this leads to an issue like yours, where the program that was attempting to use the resources crashes.
In yet others, this causes a system restart, possibly due to some GPU protection mechanism reading the sudden jump as a power surge or something.

The Steam in-game overlay can cause this issue at times, being (essentially) a 2D overlay.
As such, disabling the overlay can mitigate the issue in some cases.
Disabling the applicable "low power" or "zero power" technology could allow the Nvidia GPU to be used with RimWorld, and other programs that cause essentially the same problem.
In some systems, disabling this feature is technically not possible.
In such cases, using a third-party overclocking software to force a minimum GPU level to be sustained in 2D applications could serve a similar function, stopping the power management utilities from turning off GPU cores.

[attachment deleted due to age]