[1.1.105] Crash in main menu after a few (or more) seconds

[Medium9]

What did you do?
Start the game from steam library.

What happened?
The game started normally. After the loading bar finished, I let the game focussed but idle. Didn't even move the mosue. (I also tried it unfocussed, no change.)
After an arbitrary amount of time, the game just freezes and goes white, the point where Windows asks me if I want to kill the task. Only option.

This also happens when I actively roam the menu. No matter the sub-menus - creating a new game, options, mods, anything.

If I get into playing the actual game BEFORE this crash happens, the game will run gracefully for days.

What did you expect to happen instead? It might be obvious to you, but do it anyway!
I expected the main menu to be stable indefinitely :>

Does it happen always, once, or sometimes?
Always, and it did so since at least the beginning of this year. (Didn't bother me since, because I always quickly hit "continue [savegame]" and worked on my base, but now I wanted to play with options and create a new game.)

If you can reproduce the issue provide the exact steps!
Start the game and wait.

Additional info
I deleted all mods but "Advanced-Electric-Revamped-v16_0.6.14" and "factorissimo-2-notnotmelon_1.2.3", but both are disabled. Game should run pure vanilla.
I completely un- and reinstalled the game, the error however persists.
My PC runs for months on end without restarts, with no other programs having any noticable issues. Restarting however doesn't solve the issue. (Tried a few times.)

From the timing of things, I do get the impression, that the crash happens right around the time a specific background animation is about to start. It did not ever happen right after or a few seconds after a new animation started. Those I've seen can be described as:
- forest burning bottom to top
- solar panels deployed by bots
- oil pumps
- stone furnaces making iron plates
- spawners attacked from top-left
- spawners attacked by laser defence
- spawners attacked by spidertron lasers
- spawners overrun by tanks from left to right
- labs to the right, copper/iron plate production to the left
- 3-way rail intersection
- player chasing single biter left-to-right, several biters chasing player right-to-left (such a fun one!)
- spidertron traverses a few small islands
- nuclear plant with turbines to the right
- walls to the right being attacked from the left
- iron miners attacked from the left
- sulphur + plastic production
- bots flying between several logistics chests from left to right (and vice-versa)
- yellow artillery train enters/exists an outpost from/to the top-left
- night time scene of some stone furnaces
- red train delivering ores (left to right)

So any of these ran fine, but as soon as "that one" (hopefully) missing background is about to start, the game just faints.

[Pi-C]

From the timing of things, I do get the impression, that the crash happens right around the time a specific background animation is about to start. […] So any of these ran fine, but as soon as "that one" (hopefully) missing background is about to start, the game just faints.

Did you already try to disable the background animations? You can do this from the main menu ("Graphics", section "General"):

show_anims.png (82.38 KiB) Viewed 528 times

Of course, that would only work around the symptom, not actually fixing the bug that caused it.

[Rseding91]

Thanks for the report however there is no crash in the log file. It simply shows normal operation and then you closing the game by clicking the "X".

[Loewchen]

Try if a fresh .zip install with default settings works. You can also check the OS event logs.

[FuryoftheStars]

These are the ones listed in the menu-simulations.lua file of the base game:

background simulation name list

1. menu_simulations.forest_fire
2. menu_simulations.solar_power_construction
3. menu_simulations.lab
4. menu_simulations.burner_city
5. menu_simulations.mining_defense
6. menu_simulations.biter_base_steamrolled
7. menu_simulations.biter_base_spidertron
8. menu_simulations.biter_base_artillery
9. menu_simulations.biter_base_player_attack
10. menu_simulations.biter_base_laser_defense
11. menu_simulations.artillery
12. menu_simulations.train_junction
13. menu_simulations.oil_pumpjacks
14. menu_simulations.oil_refinery
15. menu_simulations.early_smelting
16. menu_simulations.train_station
17. menu_simulations.logistic_robots
18. menu_simulations.nuclear_power
19. menu_simulations.chase_player
20. menu_simulations.big_defense
21. menu_simulations.brutal_defeat
22. menu_simulations.spider_ponds

(Note that the biter base ones all use the same .zip file for their simulations, so the count of simulations vs .zip files doesn't match)

You could try editing this file (located at <Steam-install-directory>\steamapps\common\Factorio\data\base\menu-simulations) to comment out/delete the ones you've seen, forcing the couple you haven't seen yet to be the only ones to play. Would help narrow it down faster if it is one of the background simulations. Could be a case of a corrupt .zip for it, in which case you could use Steam to verify file integrity, though I have noticed that sometimes this is not 100% with all games, so you may actually need to delete the files then use the verify file integrity.

This is, of course, all assuming that it is the fault of one of the background sims.

[Medium9]

Did you already try to disable the background animations? You can do this from the main menu ("Graphics", section "General"): show_anims.png

Of course, that would only work around the symptom, not actually fixing the bug that caused it.

I never noticed this option, thanks! That does indeed avoid the issue.

Thanks for the report however there is no crash in the log file. It simply shows normal operation and then you closing the game by clicking the "X".

Whoops, uploaded wrong log. Sorry!! The one here is from when I recreated the issue right now.

I noticed that the problem seems to no longer arise, when I switch the BG animations off and then on again. (Left it running for~15min.) Which is what I tried to reproduce the error for the log file. Only after restarting factorio (with the animations on from the beginning) did the crash occur again.
And from what I've seen, I seem to have listed pretty much all the scenarios there are. If that's the case, there isn't one specific one that crashes, but for some reason sometimes just transitioning from one to another is the problem. Very strange, and I'm not confident that you can do much about it w/o actually being able to recreate the problem on your end :/

[Medium9]

These are the ones listed in the menu-simulations.lua file of the base game:

background simulation name list

1. menu_simulations.forest_fire
2. menu_simulations.solar_power_construction
3. menu_simulations.lab
4. menu_simulations.burner_city
5. menu_simulations.mining_defense
6. menu_simulations.biter_base_steamrolled
7. menu_simulations.biter_base_spidertron
8. menu_simulations.biter_base_artillery
9. menu_simulations.biter_base_player_attack
10. menu_simulations.biter_base_laser_defense
11. menu_simulations.artillery
12. menu_simulations.train_junction
13. menu_simulations.oil_pumpjacks
14. menu_simulations.oil_refinery
15. menu_simulations.early_smelting
16. menu_simulations.train_station
17. menu_simulations.logistic_robots
18. menu_simulations.nuclear_power
19. menu_simulations.chase_player
20. menu_simulations.big_defense
21. menu_simulations.brutal_defeat
22. menu_simulations.spider_ponds

(Note that the biter base ones all use the same .zip file for their simulations, so the count of simulations vs .zip files doesn't match)

You could try editing this file (located at <Steam-install-directory>\steamapps\common\Factorio\data\base\menu-simulations) to comment out/delete the ones you've seen, forcing the couple you haven't seen yet to be the only ones to play. Would help narrow it down faster if it is one of the background simulations. Could be a case of a corrupt .zip for it, in which case you could use Steam to verify file integrity, though I have noticed that sometimes this is not 100% with all games, so you may actually need to delete the files then use the verify file integrity.

This is, of course, all assuming that it is the fault of one of the background sims.

Ah cool! That's a great idea! I'll play around with this a bit, thank you!

[Rseding91]

Whoops, uploaded wrong log. Sorry!! The one here is from when I recreated the issue right now.

This also does not have a crash in it. It simply shows it running normally.

[FuryoftheStars]

And from what I've seen, I seem to have listed pretty much all the scenarios there are.

You listed 20, and there are 22.

[Medium9]

Whoops, uploaded wrong log. Sorry!! The one here is from when I recreated the issue right now.

This also does not have a crash in it. It simply shows it running normally.

I know, that's what made me pessimistic about any hope for a real solution. The game just goes unresponsive, and when I click anywhere Windows offers me the option to kill the task. There doesn't seem to be anything logged before the hang. That's why I tried to at least narrow things down by excluding animations that ran without problem.

I'll try to disable one-by-one like the kind poster above suggested later, and maybe there really is a specific one. As a dev myself, I'm very aware that the available info is very lackluster and not quite enough for troubleshooting

[Medium9]

Yup, it's the mere transition between animations. I've edited the "menu-simulations.lua" file such that only one entry remained (a known working one), and after re-starting the animation a couple of times, the game froze.

I've also tried every single scenario on its own, and they all work fine. It's just loading the next one that fails occasionally, even if it's the same as before. I fear that this is a fairly isolated issue, and will be impossible to recreate for debugging.

What I can say is, that I've had the game installed on this PC for about 4 years unchanged (except for updates ofc), and one day this issue just cropped up with nothing notable I or the game did. I'll accept if this is a lost cause, especially since just disabling the animations circumvents the problem. This isn't game-breaking enough to waste time on.

Thanks everyone!!

PS: There are some fun subroutine names in this file You guys are the real deal!

[Loewchen]

As I already said, try the .zip version.

[FuryoftheStars]

Do what Loewchen suggests with the zip, and if that works, then for the Steam version try deleting everything out of the Factorio install folder (<Steam-install-directory>\steamapps\common\Factorio) and then have Steam verify file integrity. If after that it's still not working, then try renaming the Factorio folder in your %LocalAppData% directory and run Factorio again (renaming preserves everything in there while allowing the game to create a new one with fresh, default settings).

From there, only other thing I can think of is Windows updates, driver updates, that kind of stuff. (Would bad/failing ram cause this, too?)

[Rseding91]

My theory is something hooking an overlay render and being broken. Steam, discord, riva tuner, anything else that does that.

[Medium9]

My theory is something hooking an overlay render and being broken. Steam, discord, riva tuner, anything else that does that.

I couldn't agree more. The whole thing stinks of very specific combinations of outside influences, of which we're in decreasing control of.
I'm super grateful for everyone's input on this, and will just go ahead with the animations disabled. At least until 2.0 drops. I'll give them another chance then, but hey - as said before: Not a huge deal ever since I knew I could just disable them. Some fun eastereggs lost, but the game itself isn't compromized in any meaningful way.

Rock on!

[FuryoftheStars]

Well, if you ever feel so inclined, it would be good if you did more troubleshooting at some point to find the exact cause, that way if anyone else runs into a similar issue, the devs and mods can point them here for a solution/definitive answer.