Left 4 Dead 2 Forum

I'm sure the admins are aware of this, but incase this helps any, this is what I've tested and surmised:

Campaign/Single Player Mode: After 1-8 minutes I crash to desktop, audio repeats and I have to quit CXgames 8.1.3.

Scavenger/Survival Modes: I can play full rounds, change to next round and continue.

Possible Problem: It seems my game crashes when it has to load new map/zombie information into memory. I can play Scavenger and Survival modes because the maps are locked to a specific area (no reloading of map) and the maps are smaller.

Hope this helps.

I have noticed the same. In my case, however, I don't have to quit cxgames, audio does not loop after the crash (it stutters a second or so prior the crash), steam itself does not crash and I can just relaunch l4d2 from steam without any problems.

It is about the same for me with the duration of crashing. The 2nd map of Hard Rain crashes almost immediately, 1-8 seconds instead of 1-8 minutes. I assumed it may also be related to loading HUD text. I am kind of wondering now if it is crashing due to a witch being spawned. It would make sense considering they are spawned almost immediately in the "Sugar Mill". They are also not spawned in Scavenger or Survival modes. The Witch problem has been reported on the Steam forums and here previously. This is just frustrating because no Steam, L4D or System Updates were done for me since two days ago when it was working with Witches and everything else. It is hard to help the CrossOver guys/gals figure out what is wrong with it.

Are you guys running with or without the -lv launch option? Does it make a difference?

Ken Thomases wrote:

Are you guys running with or without the -lv launch option? Does it
make a difference?

Yes, but no difference, but as I mentioned in the other thread, adding

cl_forcepreload "1"

to autoexec.cfg fixes the problem for me. I also added -heapsize 1048576 to launch options...

Ken Thomases wrote:

Are you guys running with or without the -lv launch option? Does it
make a difference?

cl_forcepreload "1" didn't work for me, with or without -lv in the launch options. Steam did just update L4D2 again so who know what'll happen now. lol I'm verifying right now.

Chris Sooley wrote:

Ken Thomases wrote:

Are you guys running with or without the -lv launch
option? Does it make a difference?

cl_forcepreload "1" didn't work for me, with or without -lv in the
launch options. Steam did just update L4D2 again so who know
what'll happen now. lol I'm verifying right now.

Try removing the quotes if you haven't already, they shouldn't be there. It should be cl_forcepreload 1.

Eh, even without quotes the game crashes as soon as i get off the boat in Swamp fever.

The map preload hack didn't work here either. With and without the -lv switch.

It's very odd because I can play the entire Dead Center campaign without an issue. Swamp Fever and Hard Rain appear to cause the most random crashes.

I've turned all the settings to low to see if it was a memory issue but that seems to have had no effect.

UPDATE

I just played through Dead Center with no crashes. Everything else either crashes within the first 5 minutes or as soon as it loads.

Can anyone else confirm?

I've also noticed that after a crash, I validate my files and 1 file fails and has to re-download. I then re-boot steam and if I validate it's perfect. That is until it crashes, then I have 1 invalid file again.

And a couple of times, after I load a campaign it'll quit saying they cannot validate my steam login. In-game message comes up I'm back to main menu.

Hope this new info helps.

Gentoo 32-bit
ATI 4850 1GB (GDDR5)
Phenom 9950
4GB RAM
built-in ATI sound (snd_hda_intel, Realtek ALC662)

My experience:

I've had crashes from day 1, initially the multicore rendering crash (hard lock, as soon as the engine came up). Now, the CTD. Mine was a hard system lock every time with the repeating sound loop, until I turned on sound driver emulation in winecfg. That seemed to insulate the crash from the system, and I'm now able to kill the game from a remote ssh session and get my desktop back. I have cl_forcepreload set and working (checked in console), did not seem to have an effect. I've also tried setting -lv without effect. This is a known issue for Valve, and friendly fire / Witches seem to exacerbate it (I've been able to crash the game a number of times simply by opening up on the friendly bots in the safe room). I guess we'll have to wait for a fix.

I have also experienced this problem as well.

I await to hear what the solution is, I'd love to help, but it's a new College Quarter and I have like 3 videos to pump out, I want to get the one done on my birthday since it has to do with the Happy Birthday song Copyright battle and their is a bunch of research to be done. PS December 3rd is my birthday ;)

So anyway, I can launch and since if your fixes work, but I don't have time to fiddle around, sorry guys.

I'll be able to help out in a few weeks.

Edit: Did I hear this right, that the Multiplayer works well? I don't want to be playing MP yet and have game crash and ditch my freinds who will get mad at me.

Alright, well, I've played through the entire Hard Rain and the last two maps of the Dark Carnival campaigns without a single crash. The only change is that I started running in windowed mode.

Is anyone else able to confirm?

EDIT

Sorry, I've also added the heapsize launch switch. I will try with either/or tomorrow.

I went to windowed mode and it still was crashing on me. I changed a bunch of stuff but I noticed that it stopped crashing once I set my heapsize to 1048576 (that's the recommended for 2GB of ram – I have 8GB).

I still crash to desktop after a while, even in windowed mode and with the heapsize mentioned above. =S.

It seems to take longer to crash, though. I think I actually got like 10-15 minutes of play in Hard Rain.

Have you tried passing -dxlevel 90?

I was able to play Hard Rain, Swamp Fever and Dark Carnival for about 2 hours without a crash by passing the heapsize option (I removed the -window option).

Here is what I'm using for launch options:

-console -heapsize 1048576 -high -noipx -nojoy

-noipx and -nojoy may speed launch time. You'll have to remove -noipx if you want to play on an IPX-based LAN (do people still use IPX?).

Use the heapsize calculations found under the Tips tab.

Caron Wills wrote:

Have you tried passing -dxlevel 90?

Yes I've tried that with the same results, CTD.

A new Steam Client Beta is out, I'm testing it now.