GP3 sometimes crashes when playing

Hi there!
My problem concerns GP3 crashing when playing.
I have to say that I have Windows XP, GeForce FX 5500, 512 DDR, DirectX 9.0c

Sometimes, when I play GP3 ,the game crashes for some undetermined reason.
Last time it happened today while I was heading for another victory and I was at the final lap.

I have to admit that I play using 2006 carset applied to the game with GP3edit.

Maybe this is the cause of my problem?

Maybe there is a patch or something which would prevent such things in the future?

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if you've installed the patch 1.13, there's no other patch available

If the crashes occur on addon tracks, then the cause of your problem is WinXP.

This happens with GP3 on many addon tracks under WinXP.
There is no known solution.

This almost never happens with GP3-2k.
The failure to differentiate between the two different games is likely the reason why you will find many people claiming that GP3 never crashes for them under WinXP, when they actually mean GP3-2k.

It will almost always crash in WinXP unless you run the GP3.exe file in Win98 emulation. That reduces the frequency of crashes but when a lot of graphic 'events' are going on (like a multi-car pile-up in front of you) it will still crash. You probably already run from GPxPAtch in debug mode, low verbosity as several modern tracks insist on that.

I'm running a similar PC to yours with an Athlon 2600+ chip and a Radeon 9600 graphics card. I have not noticed any difference in crash rate from when I used a GF4-440 card and I doubt if any other card reduces the problem significantly. Its one of the burdens we devotees of old games have to accept if we throw a lot of mods at it, I think.

Brian

Nico bites yer tyres!

So , as I have noticed, there is no way out of this bug.
Well, I will have to face up to this and take under consideration that some of my achievements may be suddenly wiped out by a stupid game-bug.
Thanks for Your help, Guys.

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JackiMatra Wrote:
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> This happens with GP3 on many addon tracks under WinXP.
> There is no known solution.



Which tracks? I have never suffered CTD in GP3 with my curreny XP PC. That would be somewhere in the region of 18 months. Maybe I am just not using the right (or wrong) tracks.

I don't set any compatibility mode, and have GPxPatch 3.91 running in Medium verbosity debug mode.

On my previous PC I had a lot of problems in wet weather, plus the infamous keyboard freeze, but I am confident that was due to a crappy Intel 810 chipset. These problems aren't replicated with my 6600.

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The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function. -- F.Scott Fitzgerald

abdelkader,

One person told me that his solution was to pause and save the game every few laps.
A bit of a pain, but it does save you from losing an entire race.

JackiMatra Wrote:
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> abdelkader,
>
> One person told me that his solution was to pause and save the game
> every few laps.
> A bit of a pain, but it does save you from losing an entire race.


JackiMatra, pretty good idea.
Strange, that I didn't think of it before.

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Yeah, that is one way around it. Funnily I notice it far more often in quick races than in full-distance ones, though it is far more frustrating when it happens in the last part of a long race.
@StHubbins what tracks are you using? I admit, I use two tracksets for 2006 season with the first 16 on set A and the rest, along with practice tracks on set B. Maybe the constant changing of slots is increasing the likelihood of CTD. I'm interested in just getting some common experiences together so we may be able to pin this one down a bit. My experience is that CTD is more common with the less used tracks (I also put mexico on the B set) or tracksets with these ones.
Here's my full list for my B set:
[TrackFiles]
f1ct01=circuits\Melbourne_2002.dat
f1ct02=circuits\Jerez1997_GP3_113.dat
f1ct03=circuits\PaulRicard.dat
f1ct04=circuits\Estoril.dat
f1ct05=circuits\Barcelona_2002.dat
f1ct06=circuits\Spa_2002.dat
f1ct07=circuits\A1-Ring_2002.dat
f1ct08=circuits\MexicoSF.dat
f1ct09=circuits\Valencia Long.dat
f1ct10=circuits\Hockenheim_2002.dat
f1ct11=circuits\Hungaroring_2002.dat
f1ct12=circuits\BandonPark.dat
f1ct13=circuits\Monza_2002.dat
f1ct14=circuits\Shangai.dat
f1ct15=circuits\17Suzuka04Hw_Pf1_Gp31.13.dat
f1ct16=circuits\Interlagos_2002.dat

Nico bites yer tyres!

Nothing specific, but I have nearly 300 tracks in the "Circuits" folder that all work without fault. Must admit I have never tried any Belini tracks with 1.13 though, as I only ever use them with 2000.

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The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function. -- F.Scott Fitzgerald

Previously, if I exited GP32K, made a change of tracks in GPX Patch, then closed GPX Patch and restarted it and GP32K, I would often get CTD's, especially when starting a session/race. But if I leave GPX Patch running after making changes the CTD's are very few. Maybe it's the same with GP3. For the record, using GPX 3.83 (3.91 messes up the sounds of other cars) on Win98, 64mb, basically a caveman's PC! Hope this helps.

GP3 used to crash on me when I used the 2006 car set. It used to happen on the Bahrain track and Sepang track mostly and if I ever made contat into turn 1 in Malaysia.
It never happened before I used the 2006 mod

What I did was to create a new carest on GP3 edit, and then use the same cars by saving them onto the computer and then loading into the new carset. Anything I didn't usually use like team art I left out as it wasn't that important to me. When I uploaded my new carset it worked fine! (I must add, I first uploaded a carset that worked before my new one)

It may take a little time, but it now saves me a lot of stress.

I have GP3 crashing on many addon tracks regardless of the carset used.
The only common denominator seems to be that the tracks where this occurs are all fairly detailed.
(It never happens on the original GP3 tracks or largely "older" less detailed addon tracks.)

So tracks like the Belini ones, while running on GP3 do use a lot of resources, leaving a shortfall when an 'event' happens? Could that be it? I too notice it more often on very detailed tracks and it has happened with '05, '04 and earlier carsets as well as with '06.
What about engine revs? I run with 19k max which lets me over-rev to 19900. If I take the revs down a bit for '07 setups, what are the chances of reducing CTD's?

I'll try to keep a record of them from now on and see if I notice anything too co-incidental.

Nico bites yer tyres!

If my memory serves me decently (I no longer play GP3, but only GP3-2k), Long Beach CART and the new Hockenheim were both absolutely guaranteed to crash the game within the first three laps of a race, no matter if there were any on-track "events" of any sort or not.

Wow i've been playing GP3 for a while on XP and it hasn't crashed once!