[Windows] Game crashes on entering sound options / joining a team. Gaming on Hyper-V based Virutal Machine.

[Yeetgor]

Hi!

I have a friend which have an utterly potato PC (laptop from 2014 with i5-4210U and Nvidia GT 840M). The game runs really poorly there but he's coping. In the past he played on a Hyper-V VM hosted by me and he'd just RDP to it via Parsec courtesy of Easy-GPU-PV and brand-new Windows 11 features, namely full GPU passthrough. Worked for Barotrauma. 

On said laptop during blood moon he obviously has a slideshow, and you can count seconds per frame instead. I know this will probably be blamed on the VM limitations, but I wanted to give it a shot and maybe there is a solution to this issue.

 

The game itself runs, loads and he can join servers, run around, shoot, build, open menus etc. However, whenever he joins a team or enters sound settings (entering graphic/controls settings produces no such issues), the game crashes. Something with the way the GUI is drawn maybe? Tried forcing DX10, no luck. GLCore/Vulkan is out of question because this is outright not supported by VM.

Doesn't matter what game type - happens on single and multi.

No mods whatsoever.

 

Client log: output_log_client - Pastebin.com
Error log: error - Pastebin.com

Crash dump: https://drive.google.com/file/d/13IWVnQ9SyNRbQ58OAUPsMFmztdZIsHLM/view?usp=sharing

 

Host specs:
CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 5800X

GPU: AMD Radeon 5700 XT 8GB

RAM: 2x16GB 3600MHz CL16 Kingston Fury Renegade

MB: Gigabyte X570 Gaming X rev 1.0

 

VM assigned resources:
CPU: 4 cores

RAM: 8GB

GPU: Can allocate up to 50% of host VRAM (so 4GB)

[Beelzybub]

Why does your log show 8Gb of ram?

1 hour ago, Yeetgor said:

RAM: 2x16GB 3600MHz CL16 Kingston Fury Renegade

 

[aprodigy]

23 minutes ago, Beelzybub said:

Why does your log show 8Gb of ram?

 

 

read his post again: the host has 16gb but the vm allocates 8gb.

[Yeetgor]

1 hour ago, aprodigy said:

 

read his post again: the host has 16gb but the vm allocates 8gb.

Host has 32GB RAM, 2 x 16GB

[Beelzybub]

I'd assumed the server was running in a VM, not the client. My bad.

[meganoth]

"when he joins a team". What do you mean by that? Do you mean the in-game grouping of players so they see each others position and can play a quest together? If yes, does it happen when he opens the grouping menue or when he clicks on the icon to accept an invitation?

 

 

 

Edited November 23, 2022 by meganoth (see edit history)

[Yeetgor]

I did a test. On a host machine I created a new world and made it open to friends. Hopped onto the VM, logged in as friend and joined myself. I did the whole tutorial, navigated all the menus (including the "players" windows), took a quest from trader and completed it. No issues whatsoever. Then on host I tp'd him to me, so we were standing close. VM client didn't even budge - quickly loaded the new terrain. Then on host I invited the VM as ally. VM accepted, no issues. Then on host I invited the VM to the group (questing together, arrows pointing to the members visible). The moment I accepted invitation on VM - crash.

 

output_client_log from this attempt: output_log_client - Pastebin.com

error log: error - Pastebin.com

crash dump: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1J7VUOagaaMNqVBfxJB3eFn06awGwncPc/view?usp=sharing

Edited November 23, 2022 by Yeetgor (see edit history)

[meganoth]

The crash seems to be in a routine called Epic.OnlineServices.RTCAudio.RTCAudioInterface:SetAudioOutputSettings .

 

My theory is that the client has voice chat enabled and the call above means that is managed by Epic services. I suppose you get added to a group chat when you enter a group and this is the call. That is the only idea I have where sound and network have a connection.

 

If that is correct the solutions could be to turn off in-game voice chat . Since that isn't easy when you can't enter that menue you might have to edit settings in the registry or per editor on disk. Or maybe change the virtual sound device in the vm if there is an alternative.

 

Turning off sound might be another solution but make the game almost unplayable. Lastly there is a very small chance to avoid the crash by blocking the connection to the EOS sound services if one finds out which server it connects to (network sniffing might be needed for this)

 

In any case (whether my assumption is correct or not) you could make a bug report (see link in above banner) to TFP so they might fix the underlying problem (though they could also say that virtual machine is not an environment they support).

 

[Yeetgor]

The voice chat being an issue was a great clue.

 

On 11/24/2022 at 1:20 PM, meganoth said:

If that is correct the solutions could be to turn off in-game voice chat . Since that isn't easy when you can't enter that menue you might have to edit settings in the registry or per editor on disk.

I found the settings in the registry and started to look after options responsible for voice chat. I found a key in HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\The Fun Pimps\7 Days To Die called OptionsVoiceChatEnabled_h771384600. Switching it off didn't help - still crash on entering the sound settings menu.

 

On 11/24/2022 at 1:20 PM, meganoth said:

Or maybe change the virtual sound device in the vm if there is an alternative.

My plan was to install some virtual audio device (Like VB-Cable) but it turns out Parsec already utilizes that software under the hood - there was already a pair of this device.

 

I believe that blocking the Epic connection is a bit overkill and has a very slim chance success because...

 

I noticed that two keys below voice chat enable on VM weren't set as opposed to the host. Namely OptionsVoiceInputDevice_h2291356845 & OptionsVoiceOutputDevice_h1366271940. The values on host of that keys resembled a GUID, so I checked for the same values in driver details and found it under subordinate entry. I translated the strings into hex values and plugged them into the registry keys. No luck. The subordinate entry had 2 values, so next, I swapped them around in the registry. Still no luck.

 

I'll try to install another virtual audio card and try with that. The way Parsec works is that - whenever a user connects to the machine, it spawns a new instance of virtual display that it hooks into. I wonder if same happens with audio device (said VB-Cable). Maybe if there is a permanent (and not used) audio device, that the game could reliably default to, it would fix the issue. 

 

EDIT: I installed the Voicemeeter to add additional sound device. Unfortunately, it didn't help. The issue persists. I tried to plug the GUID-like values into the register of this device, but it didn't help either. My last hope is a fix from The Fun Pimps and wrap this routine with some try-catch clause which will disable the voice chat completely internally if it fails to initialize 🥲

Edited November 26, 2022 by Yeetgor
Added results from installing another audio device (see edit history)