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Engine.exe has stopped working

Stowaway

Landlubber
I am encountering serious bugs and ctds when playing this game. I have read through the technical help forums and already made some fixes, but it seems as soon as I fix one problem I encounter another. I have not been able to get far at all in the game because of these problems. The current ctd I am getting is saying that engine.exe has stopped working. Is there any workaround for this without listing my specs?


I have played a lot of computer games throughout the years and I gotta say that CoAS has been my worst experiance ever in terms of bugs, ctds, and broken missions. The potential for a great game is here but this game is currently unstable for most who play it. If there is no fix for the problem above then I am shelving the game and hoping the modders can do something with it.
 
The game runs solid as a rock for me at home. However on my less capable laptop I have had engine.exe problems. The first thing I did was turn my graphics down a little. Then I tasked off all superfluous running apps/programs - including all protection, firewall, Adaware/malware and antivirus programs as well as defender. Last I obligated the max amount of virtual memory I could (in this case 2500). After doing all that I get maybe one engine.exe crash every two to three hours of constant play which I think is acceptable. If you've done all that and its still not working, I'd guess you have either some compatibility or low specification issues. Hope this is a little helpful. :shrug

V/R AS
 
Specs would be a good place to start, turning off as MK said al programs you don't need including antivirus etc will help too, cleaning your computer ie, disk clean up, defrag etc etc will all help free up system resources.

I would say try a no cd patch if one exsists since that might help but i doubt it will cure the problem, it just might reduce the tenancy for the game to crash. What version of the game are you running 1.3? If not then patch the game to the latest patch.

I'm going to ask because its key to a game working and how well it works, what are your system specs?
 
Most engine.exe related crashes are due to specs :yes

(Of course if you edit game files you may also get them ;))
 
Thanks for the help mates. I googled engine.exe errors and found a few sites that recommended solutions. One major thing that I did was to scan and cleanup my computer registry using the free tools that some of the sites offered. Another thing that I did was to go to: control panel, system, and advanced system settings, which will bring up the system properties menu. I clicked advanced, under performance I clicked settings and under data execution prevention I clicked: turn on DEP for all programs except those I select. The program you need to add is the start.exe in your Age of Pirates 2 directory. It will show up as engine in the DEP menu.

Anyway one of the above methods must have helped and the game has not had a crash since!!!


Now that the game is stable I am realising that CoAS is ok, but it could really benefit from some mods that improve naval combat, quests, and add more flavor. If CoAS could be modded similarly to the PoTC builds, then this game would have great potential.
 
Thanks for posting the info about DEP Stowaway, I keep forgetting about that as a possible solution!
 
Now that the game is stable I am realising that CoAS is ok, but it could really benefit from some mods that improve naval combat, quests, and add more flavor. If CoAS could be modded similarly to the PoTC builds, then this game would have great potential.

Thats great news and glad you are starting to like COAS, now i'm trying to improve the navel aspects of the game. At the moment i have put the more stressfull one on hold and started doing the real time battle light version which you can read all about and download the beta version there more testers there are the better. So far it seems to be going well, at the moment i'm resetting the ships waterline so the ships sit better in the water, the mod that includes the most recent changes hasn't been released that will be done when all the ships have been done. But anyway its best if you read about it in this topic Here Like i said it would be nice to get more testing done on this.
 
I am having the same damn problem and i tried everything these forums stated and it still does not work i can't even play it once ever since the game came out. I also went to Playlogic like the manual stated to go to and they do not have tech support for it at all, I also wrote an email to see how i can get my money back and send them the dvd back to them but i have not heard a thing from them at all and that was months ago!!!!!!
It is like Playlogic is not taking any responsibility for there screw ups!!!!!!!
 
I am having the same damn problem and i tried everything these forums stated and it still does not work i can't even play it once ever since the game came out. I also went to Playlogic like the manual stated to go to and they do not have tech support for it at all, I also wrote an email to see how i can get my money back and send them the dvd back to them but i have not heard a thing from them at all and that was months ago!!!!!!
It is like Playlogic is not taking any responsibility for there screw ups!!!!!!!

What type of problems are you having? Crashes, game not starting, etc? When my game would crash windows would give me an error report stating what the problem was. The main things that helped me was tweaking the config.exe and adding CoAS to the DEP.
 
A had exactly the same problems and my game stoopped working after some time. So I unistalled it. Now I think I could try what is recommended here. :modding

EDIT: I doesn't work for me what is suggested above. But if you have still problems with lauching the game, maybe I would have a solution for you. :shrug
 
I think I finally found the solution for me. (playing the GoF Mod 2.09) I could play the game without any trouble unless a big naval fight starts out. (Five or more ships involved. Then there was a 100% chance it would crash after a while at a specific point (engine stopped working).
It was easy for me to repeat this fatal error. So I saved 3 sec before the crash appeared, and then I tested everything what was mentioned in the forum. I searched for hours the net and tried anything I could think of.

In the end what made my game stable (I am using win7) I turned on for the start.exe (right click -> properties)

the compatibility mode windows xp(SP3),
deactivate visual design,
deactivate desktop design
and what i think was the most import only use 256 colors.

Maybe there were some other changes i did before involved. But what made the difference is what i did last.

Hoping it is clear what I was talking about. (translating from german) Maybe it will help somebody.
Believe me, I can understand your pain with these engine errors. Good Luck!
 
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I don't get it. There's no way in hell my specs aren't up to par with the game.
I have...
CPU: Intel i5 750 @ 2,67GHz
RAM: 16GB
GPU: nVidia GeForce GTX 960
HDD: Kingston 120 GB SSD
Hell, I run brand new games on this and I've even managed to play though Mass Effect: Andromeda (before I had 16GB RAM, I had only 6 back then). It was stuttering and freezing from time to time, but I finished the game. Yet a game made in 2009 keeps crashing. Makes no sense at all.
 
If brand new games are running well on your system it doesn´t automaticly mean that older games have to run well too. It also doesn´t only depend on the hardware that you use, it also has to do with your OS. Many people have compatibility problems with Windows 10 or 8. This game is running very good on Windows 7 or Vista with 64 bit. Your hardware konfiguration is looking good so far.
 
If brand new games are running well on your system it doesn´t automaticly mean that older games have to run well too. It also doesn´t only depend on the hardware that you use, it also has to do with your OS. Many people have compatibility problems with Windows 10 or 8. This game is running very good on Windows 7 or Vista with 64 bit. Your hardware konfiguration is looking good so far.
I tried setting it to run in Win 7 compatibility mode. No crashes so far *knocks on a peg leg* =)
 
You will still have unvoidable rare crashes from time to time if you use quicksave but that has to do with the game and not with your system.
 
Just wanted to chime in with my own experience. Playing (again) on a new (for this game) computer running windows 7 64bit. Nvidia GTX 750 Ti. My issue sounded exactly like Farvi's post a few messages above. None of the changes he suggested worked for me, however. Changing the resolution to 800x600 instead of 1280x1024 and setting full screen instead of window seems to have solved the (persistent) crashes in my case.
 
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