Game refuses to launch, crashes before I can load in.

[Spookin]

This has been something thats been happening for about almost 2 months now. My game crashed and when the game closed an update was installed, not sure which update but afterwards I've been unable to enter the game. The game takes up to 20 minutes to load, then when it does, i'm only in the game for a minute tops and then it just crashes again. I've tried just about everything, uninstalling and reinstalling, check game files, updated all my mods, powered off the computer, you name it and I've tried it. I even copied all my singleplayer saves and wiped my game completely, mostly out of desperation.

So now I'm here. Please. I just want to play the game. The update is the only thing I can think of that messed it up, is there anyway to go back and uninstall that update? is there any fix?

[Pipinghot]

4 minutes ago, Spookin said:

updated all my mods

Obviously you've done a lot of work, that looks painful. Have you tried removing all mods and then starting fresh on a single-player map with no mods installed at all?

For the purposes of this test, it's not good enough to have mods updated or to disable them, you need to completely remove them from your computer so that only the base game is running. Back up your local saved files again, then clear out the saved directories so that this looks like a brand new install of ARK that's never run anything.

1) If that test fails then something is wrong with ARK + your computer (this would mean that it's not caused by a mod or a corrupt save file).

2) if that test succeeds then your computer + ARK are good, and you can you can start adding mods back in (one at a time) - continue doing this on The Island, don't do any other maps yet.

3) If you get a crash after a fresh re-install of a mod then you know the mod is causing problems for you.

4) If you are able to add all mods back on to your computer then the problem is probably corruption in one or more of your saved map files or a tribe file or a character file. In order to get a good answer you need to test one file at a time.

5) It's possible that at this point you will have fixed the problem and you can just restore your various save files and try your various maps. Personally, I can't think of anything that a corrupt map, tribe or character file could do that would corrupt your base game install but... troubleshooting can be tricky. If you copy back all of your save files and your computer starts crashing again then it will be hard to figure out which file(s) are causing your problems.

 

6) If you want to follow really good trouble shooting you will want to check one map at a time, one file at a time.

6a) Copy your map file for The Island back into the saved directory. If you're working then your saved map file is good.

6b) Copy your character file for The Island back into the saved directory. If you're working then your saved character file is good.

6c) Copy your tribe file for The Island back into the saved directory. If you're working then your tribe file is good.

 

7) Repeat these three tests for other maps.

8 ) Eventually something will cause a crash and you will find what was causing this all along or it's possible that the problem won't come back (sometimes restoring everything carefully like this can get you past a problem. You might never know what was originally causing the problem but if you can start playing again then it won't matter any more).

 

[GrumpyBear]

Do other games have problems?  If the answer is other games don't have that problem, what types of games are we talking about?  

If things crash in 1 minute after loading,  have you checked your hardware stats when this is happening?  How hot is the cpu and graphics card at that moment?   

If you are running on a SSD, 20 minutes is a huge load time.  If you are on HDD, that is still a bit long, but with mods I can definitely see that. 

If the problem isn't the game, then we look at is there hardware issues?  How old is the pc, how old is the harddrive , how often do you clean out your heatsinks of hair and dust, do you clean your pc out properly without damaging your fans in the process...  

[Pipinghot]

3 hours ago, Spookin said:

This has been something thats been happening for about almost 2 months now.

Grumpy brings up some good points & questions - you should be certain that you know the answer to his items before you start going down the list of things I mentioned.

[Spookin]

On 4/3/2023 at 3:08 PM, GrumpyBear said:

Do other games have problems?  If the answer is other games don't have that problem, what types of games are we talking about?  

If things crash in 1 minute after loading,  have you checked your hardware stats when this is happening?  How hot is the cpu and graphics card at that moment?   

If you are running on a SSD, 20 minutes is a huge load time.  If you are on HDD, that is still a bit long, but with mods I can definitely see that. 

If the problem isn't the game, then we look at is there hardware issues?  How old is the pc, how old is the harddrive , how often do you clean out your heatsinks of hair and dust, do you clean your pc out properly without damaging your fans in the process...  

No, its just ark, but ark is the most demanding game I have. Hollow knight, hades, subnautica and raft all run perfectly fine with no issues. And I clean out the heatsinks every 4-6 months. Pc isn't the newest and I do have to play on lower settings but its not much of a problem for me, same with hard drive. And I don't think I've damaged anything when I clean it out, checked a few weeks ago and it was fine.

[Spookin]

On 4/3/2023 at 12:57 PM, Pipinghot said:

Obviously you've done a lot of work, that looks painful. Have you tried removing all mods and then starting fresh on a single-player map with no mods installed at all?

For the purposes of this test, it's not good enough to have mods updated or to disable them, you need to completely remove them from your computer so that only the base game is running. Back up your local saved files again, then clear out the saved directories so that this looks like a brand new install of ARK that's never run anything.

1) If that test fails then something is wrong with ARK + your computer (this would mean that it's not caused by a mod or a corrupt save file).

2) if that test succeeds then your computer + ARK are good, and you can you can start adding mods back in (one at a time) - continue doing this on The Island, don't do any other maps yet.

3) If you get a crash after a fresh re-install of a mod then you know the mod is causing problems for you.

4) If you are able to add all mods back on to your computer then the problem is probably corruption in one or more of your saved map files or a tribe file or a character file. In order to get a good answer you need to test one file at a time.

5) It's possible that at this point you will have fixed the problem and you can just restore your various save files and try your various maps. Personally, I can't think of anything that a corrupt map, tribe or character file could do that would corrupt your base game install but... troubleshooting can be tricky. If you copy back all of your save files and your computer starts crashing again then it will be hard to figure out which file(s) are causing your problems.

 

6) If you want to follow really good trouble shooting you will want to check one map at a time, one file at a time.

6a) Copy your map file for The Island back into the saved directory. If you're working then your saved map file is good.

6b) Copy your character file for The Island back into the saved directory. If you're working then your saved character file is good.

6c) Copy your tribe file for The Island back into the saved directory. If you're working then your tribe file is good.

 

7) Repeat these three tests for other maps.

8 ) Eventually something will cause a crash and you will find what was causing this all along or it's possible that the problem won't come back (sometimes restoring everything carefully like this can get you past a problem. You might never know what was originally causing the problem but if you can start playing again then it won't matter any more).

 

Removed all the mods completely, it always crashes at E2_Near_WIP on the island. I can't get it to load past that, could that have something to do with it?

[GrumpyBear]

1 hour ago, Spookin said:And I don't think I've damaged anything when I clean it out, checked a few weeks ago and it was fine.

When cleaning fans,  it’s important to hold them still so they do not spin.  If you blow compressed air or gas into them,  they spin faster than they do under normal operations.   This causes the packing. Grease to dry up and they begin to spin slower.  This is the insidious problem,  they look like they work because they still spin,  they just don’t spin fast enough anymore.

[Pipinghot]

5 hours ago, Spookin said:

Removed all the mods completely, it always crashes at E2_Near_WIP on the island. I can't get it to load past that, could that have something to do with it?

Yes, so it sounds like you need to do a "Verify Integrity of Game Files" if you're on Steam (I'm not sure what the equivalent is on other platforms). The Verify process should identify that file as being bad and then re-install that file (and possibly others).

After the re-install of those few files (you can check in Library > Downloads to see that it happened) you should be able to run the game, then you can start re-introducing mods.