arghyle

I’m pretty late to the BioShock party, but it’s been on my “To Play” list since well before the release. I’m getting a bit tired of big-name FPS games, but was really excited about this one. So much so in fact that I held off on buy into until I knew I would have the time to give it the proper attention.

As it turns out, BioShock is as good as everyone says it is. The game is beautifully designed, the game play is excellent, and the RPG elements clearly set it aside from every FPS of the last few years.

Unfortunately, the game is insanely unstable. As in, I am about five or so hours into the game and it has probably crashed about 50 times on me. This seems to be a widespread issue with the PC version, especially with Nvidia graphics from what I have read. I have the newest version with new graphic drivers and a system that is more than powerful enough to handle the game, but it just keeps crashing.

I’m trying to work with 2K’s tech support team.

Right now I am playing on a notebook with 3GB RAM, Intel X7900 processor, and Nvidia 8800 GTS M graphics, on Vista. Before calling 2K I made sure to shutdown any unnecessary programs/services and clean up the startup.

So far I have tried playing the game in DX9 mode with no intro (-dx9 -nointro). These have allowed me to get games up up to an hour here and there but I’ll have to restart about five times before I get lucky enough to get one of those.

I just entered Fort Frolic and at this point the game is unplayable. I’ve given it about 15 attempts, but every time the game crashes under a minute. I’ve tried a number of variables as to the in-game settings, but none seem to help.

Currently I am waiting to hear back from 2K. On my first call with them they just said to run “msconfig” and kill any unnecessary startup programs. I have been waiting about four hours on my support ticket with the advanced team on the next fix, so hopefully I’ll hear back from them tomorrow.

Update 4/12/08 - So no progress, actually things have gotten worse. This seems to be related to the Fort Frolic level, but now the game is crashing every few seconds and it actually corrupted a save file. I did get about an 30 min game out of the system by playing at the lowest levels on every setting at 800×600, but now even that is not working.

2K’s support staff had two tips (that is after an initial phone call where they said to make sure and shutdown any background processes or extra startup programs):

First Ticket:

Hello,

To further assist you with your issue we require you to send us a DXDIAG report from your computer. To do this:

- Hold down the Windows key on the keyboard and press “R”.
- Type “dxdiag” and click OK.
- This will open the DirectX Diagnostic Tool.
- Click the Save All Information button at the bottom.
- Save the file to your Desktop with the name “dxdiag.txt”.
- Attach the file to your reply to this email.

With the information contained within the DXDIAG report we will be able to investigate your issue further.

Second Ticket:

Try running the game in DirectX 9 mode. To do this, go to the Windows Start menu, click on Games in the right-hand column, right click on the Bioshock icon and select “Play DirectX 9″.

Third Ticket:

Hello,

To run the game in Windows Compatibility mode.

- right click on the shortcut for the game.
- left click on Properties.
- click on the Compatibility Tab.
- tick the box called “Run this program in compatibility mode for.”
- select a version of Windows to run the game in.
- click on apply.
- click on ok.

Then, do the following:

1. Delete all temporary files from your system.
WIN9X/ME
Navigate to C:\Windows\Temp and delete all files in this folder.
Win2000/XP
Navigate to C:\Documents and Settings\*Your User Name*\Local Settings\Temp and delete all the files in this folder.
You may need to turn on the ability to view hidden files and folders to do this. To do so, double click My Computer, then click Tools and Options. Then click View and select the option to view all hidden files.

2. Close down all background tasks.
To do this click Start, then Run, then type MSCONFIG and click OK. From there click on the tab marked startup.
For Windows XP users click the button marked as Disable All, then click Apply and Close.
For Non Windows XP users, please remove the ticks from all of the boxes apart from the below four and then click Apply and close.
LoadPowerProfile
ScanRegistry
SystemTray
TaskMonitor
Once this has been done, please reboot the computer and then try the game again.

I am still tinkering with the registry and I might start to experiment with driver versions. I am going to try it on a few different computers as well, though I’ll have to find a way to move my save files over…

Update 4/13/08: No word from 2K yet (it’s the weekend), but I have had some modest success in getting Bioshock running.

I got tired of waiting for help and took a pretty big step and moved to the newest Vista 32 drivers from LaptopVideo2Go. These are modded drivers and INF files specifically built for notebooks and it’s an incredible resource if you want to do some tinkering.

Next I started trying to isolate the game settings to see what was causing rhe problem. It seems like Bioshock is only crashing and freezing when the game quality settings are on medium or high. So keeping them at their lowest points and playing the game at 1024×768 seems to get me a relatively stable environment. If I do this and the game survives the first save, map screen, and store screen then it is generally good to go for as long as I want to play.

The game will crash if there are any interruptions though. For example if I accidentally hit caps lock or the Windows button the game will lock up and I will not be able to get back into it from windows. The good news though is that the gameplay is improved overall and the game will not nearly freeze every time I use the camera (which was happening before).

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