[Mac] Freezing in certain zones

[Sunday]

Hey!

I've noticed, on the most recent mac version, that certain zones cause my whole computer to freeze, making me force a shut down.

The zones I've noticed it in are:
Heart of the Gloom
and
The Maze. (haven't gotten very far, though, so it might be other zones as well.

The other zones seem to work fine, and those zones work OK-ish. It's just pretty iffy---sometimes if I retry the zone after restarting my computer it's fine. It has crashed with every class I've tried (pretty much just cursed and wyrmic, admittedly).

I'm on OSX 10.7.5.

[CaptainTrips]

Hey there. Could you share what hardware you're using? Also, have you had a look at the console after a freeze? I'm experiencing similar freezes on my newly-built Hackintosh, but I think I've traced my problems back to a driver issue between Intel's integrated HD4000 graphics and OSX.

[bergholt]

I've noticed, on the most recent mac version, that certain zones cause my whole computer to freeze, making me force a shut down.

Yep, same here, though I haven't noticed a pattern in which zones are causing it. Everything freezes, the cursor spins and a hard shutdown using the power button is required. Though - strangely - other applications continue running as if there's no problem. It happened for me when I was having a Skype conversation, and Skype continued to work without a problem, except that I had no way of interacting with it.

So I haven't worked out a way to get more information about it. It maybe seems to happen most often for me when there's a boss monster on screen? Or when there are quite a few monsters active? Not sure. It is annoying, happening probably once every five levels at this point.

Let me know if there are log files or something I should try to pull further information from. I have no experience with ToME but significant programming experience.

[CaptainTrips]

Check the console after rebooting and see what it said before the reboot. Also, what hardware are you using, specifically, which GPU?

Edit: Just to be clear, I mean the OSX console: /Applications/Utilities/Console.app; open it up after rebooting following a freeze and search for 'BOOT_TIME', then look at what the log said right before that, i.e., at the time of the freeze.

My console readout always includes this line (among others) when it freezes:

"1/26/13 9:41:07.000 PM kernel[0]: **** Debug info for *possible* hang in MAIN graphics engine ****"

Apparently others with real macs (I'm using a 'Hackintosh') have run into freezing problems accompanied by this console message as well. It appears that the problem usually, if not always, occurs on machines using Intel's integrated HD4000 graphics, for example the Retina Mac Book Pros that switch between HD4000 and a discrete GPU. There has also been mention of the problem often occurring while using specific programs, especially Google Chrome and Skype.

As for my problem: I made some changes to the way my hackintosh bootloader handles its HD4000 injection and changed one setting in the BIOS, and haven't had another freeze since yesterday evening, whereas before I couldn't play more than about a half an hour without a freeze. I'm still not too confident that I've actually fixed the problem yet. I have a feeling the next freeze is just waiting long enough to get my hopes up before jumping up and laughing in my face like the dog from Duck Hunt.

[Sunday]

Playing on a 2012 mac powerbook 2.9 ghz, OSX 10.7.5

I'm almost positive it's a specific talent that was causing the crash---it tended to happen to me when I came into contact with certain bosses (the Minotaur), or some unique monsters (presumably that had certain talents)---there was a specific unique snow giant in Daikara that was causing it, for instance.

Having searched in more depth through the bugs, it seems to be the OpenGL shaders that are causing the crash. Turning them off in video options fixes it.

Just so people know.

[CaptainTrips]

If it was the minotaur and snow giants, then the effect is almost certainly Confusion, which comes along with a screen-wide effect which has been known to be hard on hardware. The laptop I used to play on had a very hard time with it, usually in the form of massive slowdowns until the effect was over. Good to know that turning off the OpenGL shaders did the trick.

[CaptainTrips]

Also, if you've got a 2012 2.9 GHz MacBook Pro, then you've also got Intel HD 4000 graphics - I'm willing to bet you'd find the "debug info" line I posted earlier in your console if you took a look. Ever had freezing issues outside of ToME?

[sparker]

If it was the minotaur and snow giants, then the effect is almost certainly Confusion, which comes along with a screen-wide effect which has been known to be hard on hardware. The laptop I used to play on had a very hard time with it, usually in the form of massive slowdowns until the effect was over. Good to know that turning off the OpenGL shaders did the trick.

Hey gang, thanks for posting this. I'm on a rather beefy, new iMac desktop but experienced the same crash and hard reset problem as described. The problem was indeed enemies that caused Confusion, and disabling the OpenGL shaders seems to have fixed the problem.

Thanks!

[bergholt]

Thanks all for this, I haven't actually had a freeze since I posted - mechanic's effect? - but I'm turning off shaders anyway.

I get the impression that /var/log/asl will be the one to look at as ToME seems very verbose into it, but it logrotates to 128KB so there's not much history. Will keep an eye on it and if the shader thing hasn't fixed it and I get a further freeze then hopefully will have more information.

[fidelio]

Thanks for this thread. Have been having this problem for a while. Turning off shaders worked for me as well. I thought I had already tried this, but apparently not.

[Ashyr]

Oh man... I'm sure glad I found this thread.

I'm going to go try it now.