Lord of the Rings Online Forum

I've not been able to run the Helm's Deep battles (esp. Deeping Wall) without it regularly crashing, sometimes within a minute of the battle loading. First the window minimizes to the menu bar, and then when I click on it, the window comes up to an all white full screen. I have to force quit WineLoader and then exit PyLotro to start the game up again.

I've tried running on the Very Low graphics settings, but that doesn't help. No other programs are running when I fire up LOTRO.

My current system is a MacBookPro from 2008, OSX 10.6.8, 8GB memory, running the "better performance" internal graphics card. I often use a 24" Apple Cinema Display running at 1600x1000 full screen resolution, but it doesn't seeem to matter whether I am using the laptop screen or the external display. Also I am stuck with 10.6.8 for various reasons, otherwise I would upgrade to Mountain Lion and run the native client.

Maybe the MacBook just isn't up to the needs of Helm's Deep, or maybe the infamous memory leak problem has reared it's head again (where the screen used to minimize to the upper left corner).

Any ideas would be greatly appreciated. Even knowing that others are having this problem would at least let me know not to both with Helm's Deep Battles on the MacBook

There are two answers.

Answer 1- LOTRO's Mac Client (which you are not running) is designed to run on OSX 10.7.5 or later. While I realize you are running 10.6.8, there are many issues between OSX and WINE which are related to release and OS levels.
I don't know specifically what they are.

Answer 2- In general, the issue has to do with "transitions." While I don't know the causes, I know the effects -- exactly what you describe. LOTRO "runs" in Version 13.1 (13.1.0.27669) of Crossover, it is guaranteed to crash on certain "Graphic" changes -- found on transition screens and for things like "start of a new 'killl-deed.'

You can try posting over at WINEhq -- http://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=version&iId=29436
However, with the release of the MacClient for LOTRO, support for WINE/LOTRO on the Mac is virtually non-existent.

Thanks for the quick response. i actually upgrade to Mountain Lion on my 2008 iMac and it runs the Mac client very well. Better than LOTRO on the XP Bootcamp Partion on the same iMac, and nearly as well as the Windows 7 PC I bought specifically to run LOTRO.

Unfortunately, for reasons that are no use to go into here, I am locked into 10.6.8 on my laptop. I haven't noticed the crashed to tranistions, but maybe I just don't know what signals a transition. So I'll just keep tinkering with the graphics settings, or just not run Helm's Deep battles on my laptop.

sg

The most obvious "transition" is the "shimmery yellow window -- entering or leaving building, instances, etc. They also occur when you "swift travel" -- any time you "transit" from one graphics display to another.
The other "transition" which is not "normally" as crash-prone is the "land-block" transition. These tend to be notable as "pauses" or "jerks" or "hick-ups". "Land Blocs" are the way in which LOTRO Graphics are presented to your character/screen display. The Land Block you are physically in is roughly 160 meters on a side. (If you are standing exactly centered the "edge" will be 80 meters away.

Land-block transitions occur any time you move. This gets into some seriously gory technical issues involving your disk drives, graphics "card" physical memory, graphics memory, Internet communications speed, game graphics settings. Going from one block to another involves "swapping" the block you are in for the block you are moving into. (and I am really simplifying here.) These are not normally an issue, but they can be.

One thing I would add. WINE is very "graphically challenged." That is to say, all Graphics are controlled by WINE, not by your system or the game client.
Off hand, I don't know which settings are significant and which are not. However, if/when you have a mismatch between the information being supplied by the Servers and the information WINE is capable of dealing with, you get a problem. The main mis-match I am aware of, is now successfully communicated with the LOTRO client, namely that WINE is capable of ONLY DX9. Things that probably are involved are settings for post-processing and lighting effects -
"Specular lighting" is one thing to uncheck.

Thanks for all the "gory details" I do like digging into problems and debugging to find solutions. But maybe in this case, the best solution is to focus on leveling my alts <grin>. And keep pushing to get a laptop that can run the native Client (Bootcamp is also not an option for my laptop).

sg

Yea ! I found a tweak that seems to work. I set Texture Detail to "Very Low" ("Low" didn't work), and was able to complete a Helm's Deep battle without a single crash. Any other setting for Texture Detail resulted in a white screen crash about every minute or so.

Hi Steve.

About the crashes, this is not just a CX issue as it also happens under real WXP. When I set graphics to anything higher than Low the game at times crashes, especially in Bree. However, it crashes a heck of a lot more often when using a war steed. So now under both Wine and XP I set graphics to Low when playing my higher level toons, especially while questing. This increased crashing began back in September 2012 with that update. From what I read Turbine started doing some type of fancy (bizaro) memory management. So you can't completely blame CX for this.

I'm running CX 12.2.2 under Linux Mint 15 64 bit MATE desktop. 12.2.2 seems to be about the best of the worst of all the versions I've tried.

Good luck and cheers.