Problems with Big Pack 8.4

[nekroturkey]

I went ahead and posted this over on the Corona forums a few minutes ago, and I thought I might go ahead and try my luck here as well, to see if I could get any help on this matter.

A copy+paste of what I had written over on the Corona forums:

"So I recently installed ECX RC2 for ESF, and everything was working fine. A few slowdowns here and there, maybe one crash in a three hour time frame, nothing I couldn't handle.

After installing ECX RC2 though, I decided to install Big Pack 8.4 as well. So I download the Big Pack, install it, and launch it. No problems thus far. The game launches fine, the game runs fine, I'm messing around as SSJ4 Goku and all that. After about an hour of Big Pack being installed though, ESF starts to get a little problematic. I'm getting constant slowdowns and CTDs, it's taking about 15 minutes just to make a room, and distorted see-through textures are appearing.

After like, the fifth crash that I had gotten with Big Pack 8.4 installed, I couldn't even stay in a room for more than 3 minutes at a time. I would keep crashing right after I would join, or make a room. Sometimes the screen would just freeze, and I would have to do ctrl+alt+del to get to the desktop, or the game will just crash completely and give me an error message (this happened about 10% of the time, where as 90% of the time the screen would just freeze).

Sequence of events:
*Launch ESF
*Make a room
*Wait 15 minutes for it to be made
*Get in to the room
*Stay in the room for about 3 minutes until I crash
*Rinse repeat

This would happen every time I would try and make/join a room. So naturally, I assumed I just had a bad installation. I uninstall ESF, ECX RC2, and Big Pack 8.4. I go ahead and reinstall all three programs again, and try to run the game. It runs fine for a bit, but all of the problems that I've had before, are happening again. FPS slowdowns, hitching, screen freezing constantly, CTDing, and that texture problem.

ESF+ECX RC2 runs just fine, like I said at the beginning of the post. Only a few minor problems here and there. But Big Pack 8.4 just reaks havoc on the game.

I was wondering, are these common problems for Big Pack 8.4? Or is something causing all of this to happen?

Here is the location as to where I had downloaded Big Pack 8.4:

http://files.filefront.com/ECX+Big+Pack+v84rar/;8231608;/fileinfo.html


My PC info if it helps at all:
Video Card: 8800 GTS 512
CPU: C2D E6850
OS: Windows XP Pro SP3
RAM: 2GBs at 800MHz"

Sorry about that link up above in the quoted part. I wanted to go ahead and post that to see if I had downloaded the correct version of Big Pack 8.4, but wasn't able to put it in the proper format due to my n0by limitations.

Lurking these forums for awhile, I know the first question asked by people is usually, "Are you using a legit copy of Half-Life 1 to run ESF?" Yes I am. I purchased Half-Life 1 directly from Steam.

Anywho... from the quoted part above, are all of these just common problems with Big Pack 8.4? Or is there something that I can do to fix some of these problems?

I'd appreciate any help.

 

[KYnetiK]

ECX is generally clunky because it practically maxes out HL's limitations of memory. However you have a fairly decent machine for it, and you werent having problems before you installed BP 8.4.

I would get random freezes sometimes, but they were rare, and only when there was simply too much going on at once for my RAM to flush. And any slowdowns I got were very typical of the Stone Age PC Ive been using.

Post whatever error messages you might be getting. Seeing as you are getting strange slowdowns and freezes, I would guess you may have something else in play, background apps, or video issues etc.

 

[nekroturkey]

Unfortunately, I'm having some trouble recreating the error message that I would get on ESF with Big Pack 8.4 installed. Before my initial post, out of the ~15ish times that I had crashed, the message appeared twice I think. Ashamed to admit, I got a little click-happy when my game crashed, so when the error message appeared those two times, I wasn't able to see what it had said.

For the past hour or so, I've been trying to get the error message to appear, but so far I'm only getting that screen-freeze problem, where I would have to manually crash the game with ctrl+alt+del. No error message would appear during these times.

While I can't remember what the full error message said, I think it had something to do with the memory that the game was using. I remember that the word "memory" appeared on the error message, but that's about it. I can try to run memtest to see if my RAM might be the problem.

As for the background programs, I thought that might have been part of the problem as well. I went in to msconfig to disable all of those start up programs, and then once the PC had restarted, opened up Task Manager to turn off some of those useless processes. My idle CPU/RAM usage was at 0%/250MB.

At this time, the only background programs running with ESF up were Kaspersky, Steam, and Xfire. Still had the same problems. I also tried turning Kaspersky off (even though it rarely interferes with any of the games that I run), but I still had the same problems.

 

[KYnetiK]

Im not too sure, everything seems to be alright, but i would test your memory. If worst comes to worst, reinstall everything.

 

[Darth Revan]

i had the same problem i had to uninstall hl esf bigpack and reinstall it all over again

 

[Skyrider]

Fixed the link for you as you were unable to create links with your post count .

 

[nekroturkey]

Appreciate that Skyrider, thanks!

A little update on the problem: I reinstalled everything (HL1, ESF, ECX RC2, BP 8.4), and the game seemed to run fine for a bit. No slowdowns, freezes, crashing, transparent textures, or errors.

After about an hour in though, I started to get some hitching again, while I was doing the transformation to SSJ3 as kid Goku. During the transformation, my screen would constantly hitch for like 1-2 seconds. Once the transformation sequence was completed, the game went back to running like normal.

I went ahead and collected the Dragon Ball's to try and get Shenron to wish the moon on the map. Once I had wished the moon on the map, and was about to turn in to SSJ4 Goku though, my game crashed. But lucky me, I got the error message that I've been looking for. So as I hit the Z button on my keyboard to go in to SSJ4 Goku form, my game instantly crashed, and this error message came up on my screen...

"Cache_TryAlloc: 3911296 is greater then free hunk"

Apparently the message didn't say anything about memory, like I had thought before. My stupid brain must have mixed what this error message said with another error message I had gotten on something else.

Anyway, once I had gotten this error message I had gone back on to ESF, and all of my PL/CF info was still stored. So I go ahead and try to wish the moon back on the same map as before as SSJ3 kid Goku, and am about to do the SSJ4 sequence. I hit the Z button on my keyboard, and the transformation runs through like it should, and I was able to turn in to SSJ4 Goku. The game doesn't crash, and I'm not hitching like I was during the kid Goku SSJ3 sequence.

I also went and descended in to base Goku form a few times, and had reascended in to SSJ4 Goku a few times as well. All of the times that I had done this, it had gone through smoothly, and the game did not crash. Kind of strange that it crashed during the initial transformation, but not the rest.

At this point, I run through ESF for about another hour or so, and the game seems to be running fine. No crashing, freezing, slowdowns, texture problems, etc. So I think I have the majority of the problems ironed out now (or at least I hope I do). So thanks KYnetiK, and madman121 for the advice on a complete reinstallation of everything. It seems to have fixed the worst of the problems.

Would it be possible for anyone to shed some light on the error message though, that I had gotten? Also, is it normal to hitch like crazy during the full SSJ3 seqeunce for kid Goku?