Wierd Crashes

[mrcharisma316]

i never had crashes myself titll the last week now its happened frequently at sea

[Skurvyskull]

Apparently it must have been a problem with the Radeon Video Card, as that is the one major difference in our computers. Same MB, Same brand and series CPU (though hers is a little earlier in the series), same RAM, pretty much everything except the case and Videocard. Kinda funny story, is that I bought from a guy that worked for me, and was almost identical to the computer I had built.

Anyway, apparently, the Radeon cards, at least in the series I have (X800), use OpenGL by defailt for the API, and the game needs it to use DirectX. You can force it to do so, here is the relevant part from the chat log.

Originally Posted by Live Chat

JAMES: The issue you reported may be due to an incompatibility with OpenGL and your video card driver. Enabling Pirates Online to use DirectX 9 should resolve the problem. To specify Pirates Online to use DirectX 9 you will need to edit the "game_options.txt" file located in the PiratesOnline directory if you have ever saved settings in the Options Panel.

1) Go to Start | Programs | Accessories | Windows Explorer.
2) Navigate to C:\Program Files\Disney\Disney Online\PiratesOnline.
3) Double click on game_options.txt.
4) Make sure "state" has "working" on the line directly below it. If you see "attempted_working" change it to "working."
5) Under "api", please change the text from "default" to "pandadx9".
6) Save the file then launch the game.

If you don't have this file on your computer, you will need to create one in the PiratesOnline directory.
1) Go to Start | Run.
2) Type "Notepad" in the Open input box then click OK.
3) Add the following text precisely as you see it below:
state
working
api
pandadx9
4) Click File | Save As
5) Name the file "game_options.txt"
6) Save the file to C:Program Files\Disney\Disney Online\PiratesOnline then launch the game.
Note: you will have to update this portion of the file after every time you save changes to the game Options Panel until we finalize and release a fix to the underlying problem. These settings changes will instruct Pirates Online to only use DirectX 9 as the graphic API.
After trying the suggestion above, please submit a new bug report and come back into Live Chat so that we may investigate further.

Hope this is able to help someone else.

[Maverik770]

Thanx a lot for posting that information on the forums Skurvyskull! My girlfriend and I we're experiencing literally the exact same problem. We both have Amd processors (hers a little older than mine), same ram and different Radeon video cards, she has the x550. Her game would crash every single time she would load into the sea areas and my game has yet to crash at all. We tried contacting support and never heard anything back, so we're very glad you did.

We applied this fix to her computer just as described and it worked perfectly! Her game runs as smooth as mine now. I knew it had to be something related to the gfx card. Thanx a lot again for posting this information, I'd imagine a lot of people are having this same issue and this fix should really be sticky'd somewhere... unless it is and I missed it, hehe.