Age of Mythology Plays Perfectly, But Crashes 10 - 25 minutes into the game

Hardware: MacBook Pro M1 Pro 16GB RAM
Software: MacOS Ventura 13.2
Parallels software being run: Windows 11 for ARM
Program being attempted to run: Age of Mythology Extended Edition (Found on Steam)

Hello, I am writing to hopefully get some insight or help on some steps that I can take that I have not already done to troubleshoot this issue. I am hopeful that I can resolve this because of how perfectly the game runs prior to crashing.

The game runs perfectly up until it crashes anywhere between 10 minutes to 25 minutes into any give game on both singleplayer and multiplayer.The game crashes right to desktop with no error code. Event viewer does not show any new application crash events even though I have been troubleshooting and testing the game for over a week and a half now. However there are two crash events showing from over a week ago, here are the events:

Code:

Faulting application name: aomx.exe, version: 0.1.2.4, time stamp: 0x5f0dde5a
Faulting module name: KERNELBASE.dll, version: 10.0.22621.1105, time stamp: 0x04f0a07e
Exception code: 0xc000041d
Fault offset: 0x002e4d80
Faulting process id: 0x0x16B0
Faulting application start time: 0x0x1D931D3AAA3E549
Faulting application path: C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Age of Mythology\aomx.exe
Faulting module path: C:\Windows\System32\KERNELBASE.dll
Report Id: a088ee51-ceae-497e-9688-7a80b1207bf4
Faulting package full name:
Faulting package-relative application ID: 

Code:

Faulting application name: aomx.exe, version: 0.1.2.4, time stamp: 0x5f0dde5a
Faulting module name: KERNELBASE.dll, version: 10.0.22621.1105, time stamp: 0x04f0a07e
Exception code: 0x0000087a
Fault offset: 0x002e4d80
Faulting process id: 0x0x16B0
Faulting application start time: 0x0x1D931D3AAA3E549
Faulting application path: C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Age of Mythology\aomx.exe
Faulting module path: C:\Windows\System32\KERNELBASE.dll
Report Id: 018a7ac5-e689-4b20-9f1d-8782de319885
Faulting package full name:
Faulting package-relative application ID: 

However no new crash events in event viewer since then despite having several crashes a day since.
Here are the troubleshooting steps I've taken thus far:

1. Restarting windows
2. Restarting MacOS and windows
3. Uninstalling steam and the game, and re installing both
4. Doing a clean re-boot to rule out background applications
5. Updating windows
6. verifying integrity of game files through steam
7. Running a compatibility mode troubleshooter
8. Running the game in compatibility mode
9. Running the game in safe emulation mode in compatibility mode settings for windows on ARM
10. Running the game with cache disabled
11. Running the game with hybrid execution mode
12. Running the game with "Additional lightweight emulation protections"
    
13. Running the game with "strict self modifying code support"
14. Uninstalling parallels and re-installing parallels
15. Running the game as an administrator
16. Running the game on a third party display
17. Adjusting the core count and ram allocated to parallels, then running the game through each of those settings.

I have parallels configured for games only.

Thank you for reading this, and I appreciate any of your time dedicated to this. I have tried my best to provide all available information to hopefully save you the time of having to ask if I have tried x or tried y. If there is anything else I can try, please let me know. Even if you have insight as to why it might not be possible to fix this issue, I would appreciate that as well, thank you.

 

I am writing this update as I was suggested by parallels to try disabling cloud synchronization on steam (Steam Settings > Cloud > uncheck "Enable Steam Cloud Synchronization for applications which support it") however it did not resolve the issue. My technical report ID is: 417685696

Will update if I try anything new, and if any of it worked.

 

Hello Nicholas! Did you manage to resolve your issue? I have the exact same problem with the same game and I want it to run normally. Right now I'm going to try to disable the Steam Cloud Sync and hope that solves my issue. But if you tried something else and worked, please share it with me!

 

Hi there. I've been having the same issue for quite some time now and have not yet found any amount of tinkering that stops it from crashing. Exact same symptoms as OP (although I haven't checked for any error logs). would love to hear any suggestions.

 

Hey FernandoH3, sorry for the late response. I was never able to fix this issue, and my support ticket says "In Engineering" as its status. I believe the last time I checked to see if this issue was solved by a parallels update was parallels 19.1, but it was not solved in that version. My subscription to parallels has since expired, and I cannot justify renewing the subscription so I won't be able to test on any future parallels versions. If someone has tested this on a new parallels version though, and it works fine, then please let me know so I can renew the subscription.

Thanks,

Nick

 

Hi all,
I have exactly the same issue as above.
Would love to find a fix but can't think of anything to try further to Nick.
Issue still persists as of last night...

 

Hey Alex,

I have done more troubleshooting since I have made this post, and have still been unsuccessful, but I have learned more about the issue. I will share what I have learned, hopefully this might spark some ideas from you or someone else reading this thread.

So there are two issues that you might encounter when trying to play AOM on parallels desktop for macOS.

1. The first, is the game will crash immediately when you try to run it. This is likely due to a mismatch between your resolution in the VM and the resolution of the game. This can be fixed by manually editing your settings file.
   • To fix this:
     • Go to -> C: Drive/Program Files (x86)/Steam/steamapps/common/Age of Mythology/Users/Default.prf
     • Find these two lines:
     1. "<resolution>1920</resolution>"
     2. "<resolutiony>1080</resolutiony>"

     ​
     • Change the resolution to match your VM resolution
     • Save and exit the document
     • Your game should now start normally without crashing.
2. The other issue is the issue I mentioned in my first comment, where the game will crash after approximately 20 minutes of perfect gameplay. I have found this issue to be caused by what I believe to be some sort of memory leak. If you go into the game log files by going here:

• C: Drive/Program Files (x86)/Steam/steamapps/common/Age of Mythology/Logs
• Then clicking on one of the folders (most recent for most recent crash), then opening the "startup.txt" file, you will find an error at the very bottom of the log file with an error code that reads:
  • "14:30:06 - EXCEPTION CAUGHT: Access Violation at 0x6AD7ADD0 in 0x0056EDF0 at base address 0x6AC50000. Invalid operation: read at 0x85"
• Or something to that effect. Looking this up, I have found that this error is usually due to the program trying to access a part of the RAM that it isn't allowed to. I think this could be due to a couple of things. It could be due simply to the fact that the RAM that the VM has isn't actually real RAM (if I am understanding that correctly), but is a file that parallels opens on macOS to block off the designated portion of the RAM, and perhaps there is something wonky going on with the way AOM is storying and recalling information in the memory. This is kind of all above my head so I am kind of grasping at straws here.
  • To try and fix this, I have tried the following options:
    • Running AOM in compatibility mode for windows 7.
    • Running Steam and AOM as administrator
    • Attempting to add AOM to the Data Execution Prevention list (windows won't allow you to).
    • Running AOM with different ARM emulation settings combinations
    • Adjusting the RAM allocated to the VM
    • Changing the virtual memory paging file size in windows 11 and trying different combinations.
    • Lowering the resolution in AOM
    • Forcing AOM to run with DirectX10 by adding +forceD3D10 to one of the game files
    • Forcing AOM to run with DirectX9 by adding +forceD3D9 to one of the game files (it only opens up to a black screen when using this option)
  • I will eventually try running with dynamic music disabled as I read that in the past here was a memory leak issue that had to do with sound that perhaps has returned for our use case. If I don't edit this comment, you can assume that I either haven't tried it yet, or it did not fix the behaviour.

​

In the end, nothing I did changed the behaviour (crashing after ~20 minutes of gameplay) in any discernible way.

 

Can't edit comments, but I tried disabling dynamic music by adding +disableDynamicMusic as well as completely turning off all sounds in the settings menu and this did not end up fixing the issue :/