Miserable experience for a new player

[allanonmage]

Hello!  Someone bought me Ark Survival Ascended, and it's been a miserable experience thus far, and I'm not even talking about the game crashing.  Of course, it does crash, and I got no traction on my Steam post, unprofessionally rejected by email, and then had to divine artistic nomenclature of which DLC was first in a fragmented multiverse of a timeline.  I am quite frustrated.

 

As far as the crash, it happens before the game launches, so I don't have a config file.  The error message leads me to believe that it's a hardcoded developer error message, and it seems to be related to shaders, which idk where they would or would not come from.

 

From my steam post:

I don't use Steam much, but my friend had me buy this game. Got it downloaded and it complained about drivers, so I updated my nVidia drivers. Now the game crashes on launch. I have not gotten into the game at all. I've seen lots of people complain about the game crashing, but this is crazy.

I'm a dev and a sysadmin, and I have SteamGuard turned off, so I can post but not reply, so has Steam decreed. plz talk nerdy to me.

I don't have the config file (GameUserSettings) that's outlined here:
https://steamcommunity.com/app/2399830/discussions/0/3881599433114356712/

...\Steam\steamapps\common\ARK Survival Ascended\ShooterGame\Saved\Config\Windows

Presumably because the game hasn't launched yet.


This is part of the file "CrashContext.runtime-xml", which I found in ...\Steam\steamapps\common\ARK Survival Ascended\ShooterGame\Saved\Crashes\UECC-Windows-96D9F06F49A6F8371EB51487BA10446A_0000


<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<FGenericCrashContext>
<RuntimeProperties>
<CrashVersion>3</CrashVersion>
<ExecutionGuid>12B67A3E4BA9E20D5800FA8B28AF9A79</ExecutionGuid>
<CrashGUID>UECC-Windows-96D9F06F49A6F8371EB51487BA10446A_0000</CrashGUID>
<IsEnsure>false</IsEnsure>
<IsStall>false</IsStall>
<IsAssert>true</IsAssert>
<CrashType>Assert</CrashType>
<ErrorMessage>LowLevelFatalError [File:E:\ASAContinuous\Engine\Source\Runtime\RenderCore\Private\ShaderResource.cpp] [Line: 681]
FShaderMapResource_InlineCode::InitRHI got platform PCD3D_SM6 but it is not compatible with PCD3D_SM5


</ErrorMessage>
<CrashReporterMessage></CrashReporterMessage>
<ProcessId>12120</ProcessId>
<SecondsSinceStart>0</SecondsSinceStart>
<IsInternalBuild>false</IsInternalBuild>
<IsPerforceBuild>false</IsPerforceBuild>
<IsSourceDistribution>false</IsSourceDistribution>
<GameName>UE-ShooterGame</GameName>
<ExecutableName>ArkAscended</ExecutableName>
<BuildConfiguration>Shipping</BuildConfiguration>
<GameSessionID></GameSessionID>
<PlatformName>Windows</PlatformName>
<PlatformNameIni>Windows</PlatformNameIni>
<EngineMode>Game</EngineMode>
<EngineModeEx>Unset</EngineModeEx>
<DeploymentName></DeploymentName>
<EngineVersion>5.2.0-0+UE5</EngineVersion>
<CommandLine> -VideoReplayEnabled=false</CommandLine>
<LanguageLCID>0</LanguageLCID>
<AppDefaultLocale>en-US</AppDefaultLocale>
<BuildVersion>UE5-CL-0</BuildVersion>
<Symbols>UE5-CL-0-Win64-Shipping</Symbols>
<IsUERelease>true</IsUERelease>
<IsRequestingExit>false</IsRequestingExit>
<UserName></UserName>
<BaseDir>D:/Games/Steam/steamapps/common/ARK Survival Ascended/ShooterGame/Binaries/Win64/</BaseDir>
<RootDir>D:/Games/Steam/steamapps/common/ARK Survival Ascended/</RootDir>
<MachineId>CCAB530E4F5DA99BB90B32AD58945E5F</MachineId>
<LoginId>ccab530e4f5da99bb90b32ad58945e5f</LoginId>
<EpicAccountId></EpicAccountId>
<SourceContext></SourceContext>
<UserDescription></UserDescription>
<UserActivityHint></UserActivityHint>
<CrashDumpMode>0</CrashDumpMode>
<GameStateName></GameStateName>
<Misc.NumberOfCores>16</Misc.NumberOfCores>
<Misc.NumberOfCoresIncludingHyperthreads>32</Misc.NumberOfCoresIncludingHyperthreads>
<Misc.Is64bitOperatingSystem>1</Misc.Is64bitOperatingSystem>
<Misc.CPUVendor>AuthenticAMD</Misc.CPUVendor>
<Misc.CPUBrand>AMD Ryzen 9 5950X 16-Core Processor </Misc.CPUBrand>
<Misc.PrimaryGPUBrand>NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080</Misc.PrimaryGPUBrand>
<Misc.OSVersionMajor>Windows 10 (Release 1909) [10.0.18363.418]</Misc.OSVersionMajor>
<Misc.OSVersionMinor></Misc.OSVersionMinor>
<MemoryStats.TotalPhysical>68610719744</MemoryStats.TotalPhysical>
<MemoryStats.TotalVirtual>78811267072</MemoryStats.TotalVirtual>
<MemoryStats.PageSize>4096</MemoryStats.PageSize>
<MemoryStats.TotalPhysicalGB>64</MemoryStats.TotalPhysicalGB>
<MemoryStats.AvailablePhysical>59997134848</MemoryStats.AvailablePhysical>
<MemoryStats.AvailableVirtual>62190374912</MemoryStats.AvailableVirtual>
<MemoryStats.UsedPhysical>1145511936</MemoryStats.UsedPhysical>
<MemoryStats.PeakUsedPhysical>1145516032</MemoryStats.PeakUsedPhysical>
<MemoryStats.UsedVirtual>2501976064</MemoryStats.UsedVirtual>
<MemoryStats.PeakUsedVirtual>2501976064</MemoryStats.PeakUsedVirtual>
<MemoryStats.bIsOOM>0</MemoryStats.bIsOOM>
<MemoryStats.OOMAllocationSize>0</MemoryStats.OOMAllocationSize>
<MemoryStats.OOMAllocationAlignment>0</MemoryStats.OOMAllocationAlignment>
<NumMinidumpFramesToIgnore>3</NumMinidumpFramesToIgnore>
<CallStack></CallStack>
<PCallStack>


lots of not-human-readable stuff



<Thread><CallStack>ntdll 0x00007fffe3820000 + 9c744
KERNELBASE 0x00007fffe0b40000 + 46931
ArkAscended 0x00007ff73fe50000 + 3eedbea
ArkAscended 0x00007ff73fe50000 + 65ea9f0
ArkAscended 0x00007ff73fe50000 + 3ef2406
ArkAscended 0x00007ff73fe50000 + 3ef225c
KERNEL32 0x00007fffe3520000 + 17bd4
ntdll 0x00007fffe3820000 + 6ced1
</CallStack>
<IsCrashed>false</IsCrashed>
<Registers></Registers>
<ThreadID>14264</ThreadID>
<ThreadName>ScreenSaverInhibitor</ThreadName>
</Thread>
</Threads>
</RuntimeProperties>
<PlatformProperties>
<PlatformIsRunningWindows>1</PlatformIsRunningWindows>
<IsRunningOnBattery>false</IsRunningOnBattery>
<PlatformCallbackResult>0</PlatformCallbackResult>
<CrashTrigger>0</CrashTrigger>
</PlatformProperties>
<EngineData>
<MatchingDPStatus>WindowsNo errors</MatchingDPStatus>
<RHI.IntegratedGPU>false</RHI.IntegratedGPU>
<RHI.DriverDenylisted>false</RHI.DriverDenylisted>
<RHI.D3DDebug>false</RHI.D3DDebug>
<RHI.Breadcrumbs>false</RHI.Breadcrumbs>
<RHI.DRED>false</RHI.DRED>
<RHI.DREDContext>false</RHI.DREDContext>
<RHI.Aftermath>false</RHI.Aftermath>
<RHI.RHIName>D3D12</RHI.RHIName>
<RHI.AdapterName>NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080</RHI.AdapterName>
<RHI.UserDriverVersion>546.01</RHI.UserDriverVersion>
<RHI.InternalDriverVersion>31.0.15.4601</RHI.InternalDriverVersion>
<RHI.DriverDate>10-26-2023</RHI.DriverDate>
<RHI.FeatureLevel>SM5</RHI.FeatureLevel>
<RHI.GPUVendor>NVIDIA</RHI.GPUVendor>
<RHI.DeviceId>220A</RHI.DeviceId>
<DeviceProfile.Name>Windows</DeviceProfile.Name>
</EngineData>
<GameData>
</GameData>
</FGenericCrashContext>

Edited November 6, 2023 by allanonmage
attachments

[Joebl0w13]

Bug reports -> https://survivetheark.com/index.php?/bugs/