White screens of death making this game unplayable

[GrahamMills]

I am finding that FoE crashes on a continuous basis. This morning I was trying to Polish/Motivate 6 people and I got a crash (a white screen of death) every time. Then waiting for it to reload took ages. In the meantime my other 4 cities had gone to white screens of death without me doing anything.

This has become more apparent as I have progressed and my cities have grown but that may be coincidental. It may instead be that the developers should try to make the game more stable rather than adding features every week. I know that NEW features are exciting but I would prefer the effort to be put into correcting the faults.

I did wonder if it was a browser problem since I use IE9 as standard so I loaded up a game in Chrome. It got half way through loading the city and then gave a white screen of death. Is anyone using a browser that does not produce crashes? Perhaps one of the developers could say which browser they use for testing!

Before a moderatot jumps on my back for not reporting a bug I would like them to think about how they would report an event that happens randomly when you are doing different things or not actively doing anything at all!

My partner took 5 attempts to have a battle this morning and feels strongly that the crashes are making the game unplayable.

Regards Graham

 

[DeletedUser]

Hey GrahamMills,

I think there has been a small update this morning (if you look at the game version). This might have contributed to worlds being down.
Also, please check if you have the latest Flashplayer/Shockwave installed. There has been an update to the two recently.

As for making the game more stable, that is actually not a top priority. Right now we're officially still in beta and they're trying to add the content they intended for the game.

They know. They will clean it up once everything is released to make it faster. no point in making it faster when the next update will slow it down massivly again

I hope this satisfies for now, and perhaps the Flash updates will help.

- L

 

[DeletedUser]

I would recommend playing less worlds at a time, I know it is funner to run all worlds at once, but that puts a lot of strain on your computer, and the programs, and will make it crash, especially if you are running five worlds at once. Perhaps limit it to two, or three worlds at a time to see how that works until everything is worked out in the game.

Thanks for playing Forge of Empires.

 

[GrahamMills]

Hi Lodroth,
I acknowledge that there will be problems when updates are applied and I live with those but I have been have crashes continuously for the last 3.5 hours today and that is fairly normal these days. I will check my flashplayer version but I get all the updates so it should be up-to-date.
I think that stability should be raised up the agenda. I appreciate that it is still Beta and some crashes are of course allowable even if it were out of Beta. However if you start to lose players and get a bad reputation for the game then it may never get to be live. I personally have been recommending the game but will not for a time until this issue is resolved.
As a thought I did wonder if the problem was being compounded by a lack of server powerr. The crashes seem to increase in intensity around the time that the USA wakes up and then when Asia does.

.
Hi Herluth,
I did think of that but I tend to turn over the supplies every hour and since it takes an appreciable time to load a world it really does make playing less satisfactory.
.
Regards Graham

 

[DeletedUser4089]

If it's a white screen of death, maybe with a little (!) in the middle, then it's flash crashing, not FoE and not your browser.

As Herluth said, it's best to play one world at a time(and no youtube or other games, etc), and also clear your cache and temp files at regular intervals.

 

[GrahamMills]

Thank you Barti, that is very helpful. No wonder Chrome was no different.
I have just updated Flash/Shockwave from 11.4 to the latest 11.5 so will be interested in seeing if it helps.


NO it made no difference

 

[DeletedUser]

I realised that Flash/Shockwave could have been the culprit and have updated several times, the latest being 3 hours ago. Unfortunately that did not fix it - I don't think it is FoE particularly, but rather the way it uses Flash.(FWIW). I have also stopped recommending the game to friends and, as long as it continues to be unstable I will not buy diamonds.

 

[DeletedUser3157]

Yeah my flash also crashes quite regularly(white screen). Opening all 7 servers at once it would be pretty much quaranteed it crashes within the first 10 minutes of active/eventful gameplay. So I usually log off whenever I'm done with a world and try to not have more than 2, max 3 worlds opened at one. But I still experience crashes on most days. Even if I play only one server(and I usually play only one server, rest i log just few times per day if at all), if I play it for long enough(whole day), flash usually crashes at some point. Nothing that a simple F5 won't fix, but it is still annoying. It is attacking my nabers when it wears it out particularly fast. But when doing PvPs I can usually see the flash crash coming though. The towns and fights will start loading with black backrounds(only units or buildings can be seen). That's when I usually reload the server, otherwise flash crash will come within next few fights. It usually takes about 20 concectutive fights to wear it out when it gets critical again and i reload(or I'm late and it crashes).

 

[DeletedUser7719]

I play on one server, and this game crashes from time to time for me, but if I refresh after visiting 10 guildies (or neighbors ) it's pretty ok for me

 

[DeletedUser]

flash crash come when 2 tabs open with foe and you go to citys of other players. after 10-20 visit flash crash on BOTH tabs. i try system flash newest and chrome internal flash newest all same. is only foe problem, youtube ok 100 tabs. foe use too much ram maybe or make cpu too hot i dont know. funny only flash crash when go to other city (plunder or polish or motivate).

but good with flash crash is you forced refresh, and game need lots refresh, so other problems fixed haha

 

[DeletedUser]

flash crash come when 2 tabs open with foe and you go to citys of other players. after 10-20 visit flash crash on BOTH tabs. i try system flash newest and chrome internal flash newest all same. is only foe problem, youtube ok 100 tabs. foe use too much ram maybe or make cpu too hot i dont know. funny only flash crash when go to other city (plunder or polish or motivate).

but good with flash crash is you forced refresh, and game need lots refresh, so other problems fixed haha

Yeah, that's the heavy resource requirements everyone's talking about.
The moment you visit another town or do anything that requires the game to load, the resource requirements peek for a moment. These peeks will eventually cause Flash to crash, as anyone can confirm after 10-15 town visits.

Right now that's just part of how things are. The heavy resource requirements will be taken care in due course.
I do suggest that they cut back a bit on making it even more heavy on resources, before players need to refresh every 2 minutes by just clicking..

- L

 

[DeletedUser]

Along with what Lod said, myself, and Barti, you take a heavy resource game, play it for awhile, and then times that load on the Flash Player by two, three, four, or even five times, and the Flash Player will crash. Those numbers come from how many worlds you play at the same time.

Adobe Flash can handle FoE, just not multiple instances of FoE on the same computer all at once. Let the game get closer to finish, and the performance level out, and it will work better then, but 3 to 5 worlds opened all at once will be pushing it on the best of days to be honest.

 

[DeletedUser]

May I suggest, therefore, that you add a rider to the login screen to the effect that playing more than one world at a time will drive you crazy

Maybe you should not even allow more than one world to be opened at once. Giving the impression that players can join several worlds and still play each at the same time is just plain wrong at this stage of the development.

 

[DeletedUser4089]

Limiting players to only having one world open at once wouldn't be fun for those that have computers that can handle more. I play 4 worlds and if I wasn't allowed to open them all at once I'd not be very happy.

The issue depends on the number of instances open, and also the individuals computer. Some can only deal with one, some 4 or 5. We need to find our own limits until the Developers get to the point where they can reduce the resource strain.

 

[DeletedUser4879]

Limiting players to only having one world open at once wouldn't be fun for those that have computers that can handle more. I play 4 worlds and if I wasn't allowed to open them all at once I'd not be very happy.

The issue depends on the number of instances open, and also the individuals computer. Some can only deal with one, some 4 or 5. We need to find our own limits until the Developers get to the point where they can reduce the resource strain.

Hi all, I'm playing 3 worlds one at a time. That means I log out before playing the next!
I think the latest update (0.21) contains a lot of bugs, for instance freezing up when popups appear, or the popups remain.
Have to log out and go back to make them go away. Have the same issues with flash using crome browser. Flash crashes a lot!
Mine is always updated and my computer is pretty much made for playing games like FOE!!
I get that feeling that updates being added without proper care! The latest being the worse yet!! That means I did not have all these
problems before 0.21!!!

 

[DeletedUser]

All I can mention at this point in the discussion is, this is a Beta. We are here to have fun, and in the middle of all that, test for bugs, these bugs are ironed out as we go, by highest priority. The point that the game uses a lot of resources to run is known about, and has been discussed a lot, they have done performance updates to lessen this, but as they add more updates to the game, it gets heavy again. As time goes by, and the beta nears an end, the developers will have the resource problem fixed, and put to a minimum, but for now, it will fluctuate every update.

 

[DeletedUser7719]

Why can't these things be updated immediately when you guys solve bugs? (Sorry if this is off-topic)

 

[DeletedUser4089]

There isn't a bug here to be fixed, so there's nothing to update.

 

[DeletedUser]

I've also had this problem since the last update and I have never had more than one world open. Since it generally happens when you're polishing/motivating and since there are at least two other new errors related to that it seems obvious to me that some new edition/change to that aspect of the game is to blame. I am sure that the devs, if they are remotely worth their salt, have come to the same conclusion. There can only have been so many changes to the buffing system so I am sure the problem will be identified relatively quickly.

As an informational aside: I was running Windows Vista and FoE regularly overheated my computer. I upgraded my PC to Windows 8 and the problem vanished in a puff of smoke. Since Win8 is selling as a download at a very reduced price until Jan I highly recommend anyone struggling and not on it to give it a look. It could have been other software I had loaded that the OS change removed but I doubt that, I just think the new windows is more efficient.

 

[DeletedUser]

If you've been using Vista it's no wonder your computer got overheated.
Vista can overheat your computer by just turning it on... trying to run a very heavy resource game like FoE on top of that will probably cause a small fire lol.

As for this being a bug, it's not. The white screens are due to Flash crashing, as has been explained. This has nothing to do with a supposed bug.

- L