PS4 v1.09 - v1.11 Crashing when saving at tent

Hi @EDenney, thank you for that update, I shall add this to my report for the team and also pass along your feedback regarding communication if it is the number of items causing the issue. I know the team were also looking at the difference in how saves from different versions were being affected so I’ll be sure to highlight the differences in your saves there too.

@Merkraith - I think my response above to EDenney covers some of what you said.
I’m sorry if I missed where you said it before, but are you playing on PlayStation also? If this is the case would you be happy to share a copy of your save with the team?
I’ll add your comments on your experience to my report regardless. Thank you for taking the time to share that update.

@Merkraith If you followed my whole thread, you’d see that the bug definitely doesn’t affect older saves only. I’ve had the same problem with older and newer saves, but as I mentioned above, it doesn’t happen if you minimize the number of items the game has to keep track of. In my experience, the more items you discover, harvest, scavenge, chop, etc., the more the game has to keep track of, and at a certain point the game simply becomes unstable to the point that it will sometimes crash when saving. The reason it hasn’t crashed in my recent games is simply because I did a very minimal amount of of discovering/scavenging/harvesting/building. It is not triggered by how many days you play the game, as I’ve had the problem start at day 35, and in another game not start until around day 60. I was working much faster in the 35 day game than I was in the day 60 game.

Obviously 400 days into the game, you’ve discovered, scavenged, and built a heck of a lot, so the game should certainly be in the state where it can crash periodically while saving. In my personal testing, simply standing around and saving periodically once the game was in a bad state, didn’t cause the crashing. Nor did it crash if I just loaded up the save game, and saved over and over and over again. I had to do some sort of menial tasks, save, rinse and repeat, and it would crash about every 5 or 10 times that I saved. I have not played past day 129, so if you have anything new and definitive to add, perhaps it will shed additional light on the problem.

@Clare How would I share a save by the way , yes I’m on PS4.

All of my items and progress were not an issue prior to co op update , so clearly this all worked fine and dandy before also , so what changed during these updates?

I played more after my prior comment and it seemed if I waited until the next day I would have a crash no matter what .

It seemed I could only do a few short tasks for maybe 15 actual minutes , and still save successfully in the hands free way.

Any time I immediately saved after a successful save , was an automatic crash , like within 10 seconds of a successful save.

I really think I may have to put this save on hold until it’s fixed . It’s frustrating to not know if things will save , and reloading the game constantly takes a lot more time.

I’ve yet to beat the bosses on this save and it is my first ever save. ( yes I did a lot of exploring , farming and building and just never did the bosses yet lol )

I think I may just start a new save in the meantime , I’ve been enjoying a co op game with a friend too when we find time to play together.

Hi Merkraith,

Sorry for the delay in getting back to you. Considering you felt issues appears after co-op update I think it would be worth it for the team to see a copy of your save and maybe do some comparisons with other saves they have (Including EDenny’s younger save) and with different versions if that’s possible (I’m not a dev myself so I cannot say for sure). As some issues only start to show up in more established saves, you save may be a good baseline for other issues too if you’re still happy to share it.

To transfer the save…

  1. Turn on PS4
  2. Insert an External USB Drive into one of the 2 USB ports on the front of the PS4.
  3. In the main menu, go to “Settings”
  4. Click on “Application Saved Data Management”
  5. Select “Saved Data in System Storage”
  6. Select “Copy to USB Storage Device”
  7. Select Stranded Deep
  8. Select all files and press “Copy”
  9. Wait until transfer is complete
  10. Remove External Drive
  11. Zip up all files copied to USB drive including “.bin” and “Profile” files
  12. Email us the Zip files to contact@beamteamgames.com - please include your forum username in the subject line and let me know here when you’ve sent it. That way I can quickly find and grab it for the team.

or, if unable to send the files via email you can upload the files to your Dropbox or other cloud file service and email us the link.

Thank you.

@Clare

Hey Clare. It’s been a month or so since I’ve posted, but I’ve literally been playing almost every day since the last update. During that time I’ve probably completed around 20 single player games. Because of the save-crashing bug which occurs the longer you play or the more you explore etc., my focus has been strictly on trying to see how fast I could escape on the various game modes and settings, so none of those games was longer than 15 days and most were 7-8 days. I wanted to let you know that during all of those short games and thousands of saves I experienced zero save-crashes.

However I still have a save slot at 35 days where the the save-crashing had begun and continues to occur, at least up to today’s new update. The team fixed a very impressive laundry list of issues with this update, but I can’t say that I specifically noticed this problem as being listed as fixed in the update notes, nor was it listed as a remaining “known issue” at the bottom of the list of fixes. Did I misread the list of fixes and miss this, or if not fixed, is there any feedback from the devs on this issue? It’s been a persistent, recurring problem on any of my longer games, but it would be nice to be able to do more than just race to escape ASAP before the save crashing sets in.

You’ll probably have a lot of feedback and new issues cropping up after today’s update, and some of those will be a higher priority, but when you get a chance please follow up on this issue for me. Thanks

A post was split to a new topic: [2078] Crashing and Spears Flying

Hi EDenney,

Thanks for that update, I’m glad to hear you’ve avoided crashes but understand these are all short games with not a lot of room for expanding the saves.

The known issues mentioned at the bottom is not the full list of the known issues the team are working on - this was just something the team felt they wanted to mention as they included a workaround for the desyncs when can cause trickle down effects in multiplayer games.

There was no specific fix listed for crashing when saving, but I believe there are a number of issues fixed that the team hopes will help combat the frequency for some players. The team are continuing to work on investigating this issue and the various triggers that may cause it. I’m sorry to hear that the issue still occurs for you in your older save slot. I’ll make a note of this for the team along with newer reports from players since the update.

One player did mentioned experiencing crashes when they saved after getting error messages. Would you recieve a lot of error messages in your 35 day save? This could be a seperate trigger or unrelated, but I’d be interested to see what you think about it.

Dear team,

first of all, I have really been enjoying this game (until the crashes started). I am going to post in this thread as it matches my experience and EDenney did a good job analyzing the issue already.

Short (sad) story (long story below):
I am experiencing the same problem as EDenney with one big difference now.
I am now at a point that when returning to my main island the game would just crash right when still loading the island. Every time! Reproducible! (in-game time is day 480)

Details:

I am going to try to include as much information as I can (remember).

  • It is a single player save created with version/build [2033]
  • It is at default settings
  • No custom islands (seed?)

I have been “living” with this issue (game crashing every few saves) since the the interaction bug was fixed. Same as EDenney I was playing and saving when the interaction bug kicked in (introduced with version/build [2071]). After version/build [2073] fixed the interaction bug I was continuing playing that same save that was affected by the interaction bug - haven’t had an issue with interaction since. However my game started to crash after some “quit to main menu” / “continue” cycles. Even with version/build [2074] which was supposed to fix the crash at save issue it was getting worse and worse.

The crash could be triggered (at least for my save) when doing some continued “quit to main menu” / “continue” cycles and for me was then happening either on returning to menu (when the menu loaded) or when hitting continue and the game tried to load the save or when trying to save at the shelter. I think all these have in common that on all these instances the save file is accessed (either loading or saving). I also concur with EDenney’s suspicion that this could be some memory leak kind of bug that builds up on consecutive save/load cycles. I also concur with his observation that it may have to do with how many resources / structures are collected / built on the main island.

From my observation the crash could also be triggered after traversing from one island to some other (I believe this would also trigger some kind of save/load cycle - but the devs should know this better). After a few saves on new island it will also crash. I have not noticed the crashes so far when freshly loading into the game and staying on the same island and doing consecutive saves there.

Until last week the game was “only” crashing when doing one of the above mentioned things. So I could work around that issue by frequently saving, quitting the game and freshly reloading. This helped keeping the crashes to a minimum. However, beginning of last week I started to experience the crash as soon as I returned to my main island and tried to save there. I was about to report the issue when I tried some last time and did “things a little different” - meaning after arriving I did not save right away but did some other stuff first and then only saving after a couple of minutes. This worked and I could continue playing on my main island. I built some more structures with the resources I brought back and as long as I was staying on this island it was fine to save and load. I could even go to two other adjacent islands to get more building material and further build the base. But now I am on the third island trying to get back to the main one and it will always crash on approaching / loading the island.

For me it was getting worse and worse the more stuff I have collected and built on the main island - and I have A LOT of stuff lying around - up to the point right now where it would crash at each approach to my main island.

Before: When approaching the main island the game would start to stutter and come to a complete freeze (in display) but the raft would still move towards the island until it hits the shore (when aimed right before the stuttering starts). After some time the island will appear completely empty (no rocks, no trees, no structures, no loot, nothing but the ground). After a couple of minutes it will start loading the structures on the island and the stuff collected (e.g. crates, materials). At first it looks like all the stuff is just spread everywhere on the beach and in the water. After some more time the stuff will be placed where I previously left it. This whole procedure would take more than 3 minutes.
Now: It is crashing during the loading of the island.

Additional info (not sure this has anything to do with the issues though):

One odd thing I noticed: one of the giant crabs did not show up lately on my home island.
I did not investigate though and just thought it might have been stuck somewhere under water.

Things I did (which I can remember at least) which are probably not intended by the devs :slight_smile:

  • built a raft base + floor + container shelf where the anchor is (but this never seemed to cause any issue)
  • harvested container parts of containers with “multiple” spawns at the same position (got like 5 x 8 walls + 8 doors before the container was broken down)
  • tried to build some foundations “around” non-fell-able trees but they were just not aligned with the rest of the structures, so I removed those again

Hope that any of the information can help the devs find and fix the issue so I can continue exploring. Sill have 9 islands left to explore and my building / perimeter is only half finished :slight_smile:

Thanks and keep up the good work.

PS: I do not think the latest update [2078] did any change to that crashing issue - and as far as I understood there was no intention in that release to fix the crashing issue.

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Hi fox-spooky-mulder0 - there is a great amount of information here, thank you for taking the time to share your experience and confirm you’ve seen the same problem - even though you now have the bigger difference in your own save.

I shall add a copy of this information to my report for the team. Thanks for including some of the potentially unintended actions too. I don’t think these would have a huge affect but you never know! It’s definately good to include them :slight_smile:

Would it be possible to get a copy of your save too? I think save like yours could help the team in testing this issue as you have managed to reproduce the crashes in the past. If you’re happy to do so, the instructions are here: [Save File Request]

Thank you once again for all this info! :smiley:

Hi Clare,

thank you for the offer to upload the save games.

You can find the zip files on my OneDrive (sent you a PM with the link).

I have added two, one before leaving my home island (last successful save - as reference), one before trying to return to my home island (from an adjacent island - before the crash happens).

I have also tried in the meantime to first go to a completely different island and then try to return to my home island to no avail, it will always crash on loading the home island.

For the second file I added a screenshot of the cartographer with some notes for better orientation (also in the OneDrive folder).

Hope this helps in finding the issue. Thanks.

PS: as mentioned before this save was created with version [2033] and updated to [2071], [2073], [2074] and [2078] at last. The main game (480 day progress) is in save slot 2.

Thank you for the PM and for sharing those files, I’m downloading them for the team now and will pass it along to them along with your comments about the files as soon as they’re done.

Thank you for taking the time to send them our way :slight_smile:

Hi, here an update: after spending some time on other games, I tried again to get the save with the 480 days progress running, and (at least temporary) succeeded, by doing this:

  • reloaded the last successful save on my home island (the one also shared with you)
  • before leaving the island I did some “spring cleaning”
    – reduce a ton of fibrous leaves by crafting lashing/cloth/bandages out of them
    – dispose of many yucca fruit that I had collected by planting and clearing the plot
    – use up some palm bunches I had collected
    – take a ton of leather and dump it on some neighbor island

This at least seems to have cleared up at least that much, that I can return to the home island again, and I was also able to build some more on the base.

So for the time being it seems that I have found a workaround for this issue, however, I fear that the more I will build the more the lag will build up and soon the crashes will start again (as mentioned the whole structure is only half finished).

Do the devs have any clue as to how this kind of crash is triggered? I know they have their hands full with the other type of crashes (where the save file is destroyed) and this is higher up on their priority list, so I don’t mean to be prying too much :slight_smile:

One thing this would already prove: the crashes that we (in this thread) experienced definitely are tied to the amount of stuff we have collected on the main island. I have also seen some suggestion/request to have a way to get rid of or dispose of items for good. I second that suggestion as it would make it easier to keep the items “manageable” for the game :slight_smile:

Anyway, as it seems I can at least temporarily work around that issue, I as well can be trying to explore the rest of the islands. Hopefully not running into that other crash issue (seeing reports coming in daily) :worried:

Cheers

PS: btw. after doing this the second (missing) giant crab also decided to return to the island :grin:

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Hi, I can confirm that this crashing when saving issue (I think some call it blue screen - not the save file corrupting one) still persists with version/build [2079].
I cannot comment on the save file corrupting ones (with the “cleanup” crash) as fortunately I did not experience them.

Thanks for all of this info fox-spooky-mulder0 - I’ll share your comments with the team investigating.

I’m not sure if the devs have confirmed the exact trigger or not and not being a dev myself there’s only so much behind the scenes stuff that I can see :eyes:

Interesting that the crab returned to the island after the clean up. I wonder was it’s spawning being prevented by the amount of items - so the game was aware it shouldn’t add another item itself. Like the way custom islands have a limit on how much can be added. I’ll make a note of it for the team anyway.

While it’s unfortunate that the crashes are continuing, I’m glad you’ve avoided the “Cleaning Up” issue in your save and I appreciate you letting me know you have experienced this in 2079 too and will update the report on crashing and also note it for the team members investigating the “Cleaning Up” triggers as they may wish to investigate why your save has avoided it.

Thank you as always for taking the time to share all of this info :slight_smile:

Hey Clare is there anyway you can open a Topic for not being able to see the Island you’re on in the Cartography menu. I moved Island and save, still it says I’m in the middle island that’s marked Red. I’d really appreciate it. This is Co-op Save on PS5. We’re trying to reset the Islands and we can seem to figure out which one We’re on.

@fox-spooky-mulder0

The more I played it definitely became obvious that the game was having increased difficulty and instability the more objects the game had to keep track of, to the point that it started creating the intermittent save crashes. It seems you took it to the extreme and had so many objects in your island that you literally broke the game lol. Glad you were able to go back to an older save though and take some corrective action that allowed you to keep playing, at least for now. The problem is that you’re now going to live with the fear of exceeding the resource limit again at some point and be unable to access your home island.

Obviously if a person plays long enough, it’s no surprise to me that we can amass enough stuff that it exceeds the games’ resources, and I think most of us are fine with trying to work around the problem if we know how. It would be helpful to know a few things from the devs though, which I mentioned in a previous post. Such as whether storing items in crates (especially very large quantities of fibrous leaves, sticks, etc.) uses less game resources than simply piling them up in the ground. I had also inquired previously as to whether the game had to use resources to track items that were discovered in wrecks but were not picked up. I don’t need 17 flash lights or label makers, so if leaving them where I discovered them helps at all with the game resources it would be nice to know that. Unfortunately I never heard anything back about this, but I understand that fixing the multiplayer issues has been a major priority recently.

Btw I definitely agree with the proposition that the game should give us an option to trash items that we don’t need to help with game resources as well as general tidiness on our islands.

@Clare

I haven’t been on the forums for a while, so I apologize for the delayed response. No, I have not received any error messages whatsoever prior to my save crashes on any of my games. They would suddenly just get triggered by something and begin happening intermittently upon saving. As I’ve mentioned many times though, it never starts happening until I’ve done a lot of scavenging and harvesting. So far, no earlier than day 35 for me.

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Thank you for that information EDenney, and no worries on times between responses, I will make a note of these details.

A post was split to a new topic: Cartographer Island Displaying Incorrectly

@Clare

Hi Clare. Just a routine follow up to let you know that this problem persists, no matter which version of the game you’re playing on or started your save slot with. As far as I’m concerned, long term play on a save slot is just completely broken. It’s unreasonable to expect anyone to play knowing that every time they save the game it may crash and lose all of their work since the previous save. Half the time you don’t even know what all you did or where you went since the last save. After so much time and so many reports, the devs should at least respond to us, other than to just say they’re aware of it. It’s clearly a resource issue and pretty easily replicated.

Just to reiterate, it will never occur on games where skilled players try to escape quickly. It will only happen in longer games, where players are scavenging more of the map, apparently pushing the limits of the games’ resources. I’ve escaped dozens of times, mostly in 6 to 10 days with no problems, but I would like to actually play the game as it is intended and do some real building. That’s effectively impossible with this current problem, unless a person is willing to endure lots of crashes and having to frequently repeat the work they’ve done. Chopping trees, building, and sailing around the map is tedious enough without having to redo it.

Again, I understand the multiplayer problems have been a priority, but from what I can tell this problem is starting to affect them too, now that some of them have played far enough into the game that it triggers the crashes. Either way, this really needs to get properly addressed.

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