SMAC keeps "freezing"

[PlutonianEmpire]

I was fighting a long war with multiple factions, and the game just.... stopped. as always. I do control+alt+delete, and it says that the game is running perfectly, but I don't see anything happening. So now i gotta force the game to shut down, and then restart the game.

And yes, I have the smac 4.0 update and the windows xp compatibility update. my system is a Dell Inspiron 8600 notebook computer/laptop ("widescreen" 1280x800), 60 gig hd, 256 meg ram, 1400 megahertz processor w/a speed of 1.37 gigahertz, Nvidia graphics card. I was playing on an earthmap that came with the return to earth scenario from networknode.

[Illuminatus]

Thread moved to AC-General/Help/Strategy.

Did you try waiting? Sometimes I need to wait for several minutes even with a computer more powerful than yours. It is one of the quirks SMAC(X) has.

[PlutonianEmpire]

I missed that. thanks

[PlutonianEmpire]

I try waiting. I'm not a paitent man. It usually takes only a few seconds of waiting before I start running into walls and pounding the computer (bad idea, I know ) with enough force to make even my evil sister cringe.

[PlutonianEmpire]

Okay. It happened again. this time I waited. Then went to bed. Then woke up 4 hours later. Still waiting.

Is that normal for it to take FOUR hours before I give up and force the game to close?

[Petek]

Four hours is sufficiently long to wait.

A couple of thoughts regarding your problem:

* Was the game in progress before you applied the patch/update? Or did you start it afterwards? The patch/update would only affect games that were started after they were applied.

* How large is the map? Games on really big maps will consume more memory as the game progresses. 256MBs of RAM isn't all that much these days. You might want to load up the game and then switch out of it to Task Manager and check your memory status.

[PlutonianEmpire]

It usually happens on very huge maps, so yeah, its the maps.

Many of my games progress in less than a day, mainly cuz I have the governors on and have them fight my battles for me, so each day brings a new game.

[PlutonianEmpire]

It's happened again, this time on a medium sized map, and didn't do anything for a few hours before I forced SMAC to quit. I did switch out of it to surf the internet while I waited though. Anyhoo, does this mean I need more ram now or something like that?

[Petek]

You should be able to check memory use by opening Task Manager. You then can check how much RAM is allocated to terran.exe. I justed loaded a SMAX game played on a 180x180 map. It used about 48MB of memory. In general, memory use should increase as the game progresses.

[PlutonianEmpire]

Ok, how do I do that?

[Petek]

Originally posted by PlutonianEmpire
Ok, how do I do that?

With the game running, press Ctrl+Alt+Delete to bring up Task Manager. The Performance tab shows overall memory use. In the Physical Memory area, look at the "Available" entry. If this is getting close to zero, that's a problem. The Processes tab should have an entry for terran.exe. The "Mem Usage" column. shows how much memory is being used by SMAC. Post screenies if you want a second opinion.

However, thinking about this some more, I wonder if the solution is simpler. I seem to recall similar "lockups" reported in the past. It turned out that some unit was waiting to be moved, but it didn't receive the focus (so you don't realize that it's waiting for an order). Next time this happens (or if you have a save file), press the "V" key. That tells SMAC to look for an unmoved unit. If the unmoved unit is in a base, the screen may focus on the base but not the unit. Then look in the base for a unit that still has movement.

I probably didn't explain this very well. Let me know if I need to clarify anything.

[PlutonianEmpire]

Okay, I tried pushing the 'v' key to no avail. so I looked at the task manager. It's using only 30 megabytes of memory. And the physical memory is doing good. It's nowhere near zero.

EDIT: I just thought of something. Is it possible that it's freezing because I have too many addon factions downloaded from the internet (ie, such as from network node and here), even though I'm not using most of them (because smac allows only 7 at a time)?

EDIT2: Also, it happens mainly when I'm at war/vendetta with someone.

[Petek]

Originally posted by PlutonianEmpire
EDIT: I just thought of something. Is it possible that it's freezing because I have too many addon factions downloaded from the internet (ie, such as from network node and here), even though I'm not using most of them (because smac allows only 7 at a time)?

EDIT2: Also, it happens mainly when I'm at war/vendetta with someone.

It might be related to the custom factions. If you would:

* Post a save file in which the freeze appears,

* Explain how to produce the freeze, and

* Also post the faction.txt files for any custom factions in the game,

then I'd be glad to see if the problem reproduces on my system.

[Phreddo]

I have been having the exact same problem, and nobody else seems to acknowledge this glitch.

It always seems to happen at or around year 2393 or so. It makes me crazy because I would much rather play SMAC/X than Civ4, but I CAN'T

grr

Oh, and I'm not using any custom anything, and it's all patched AFAIK

[Petek]

Please post a save file from right before the freeze and explain what actions take place right before the freeze happens. I'll be glad to take a look.

[Phreddo]

this is my last save. i'll post the other 2 previous auto-saves as well, if you want.

i know i was at war with a couple factions. can't remember doing anything in particular, as i tend to automate a lot.

i'll go in and try to go back a couple saves, and sometimes it lets me play a few turns, then it stops again.

I have an AMD-64 with 1 GB of RAM and stuff, and i've set the old voxel engine to 1 or whatever.

i have run into this same problem on multiple machines as well.

[Petek]

OK, I loaded up your game. I also got a lock-up by just letting the game proceed. I noticed that the map centered on the Relativity School base just before the freeze. Based on prior experience, that suggested that one of the units in this base was causing the problem.

The primary suspect was the Gaian interceptor (since interceptors are known to cause problems). I eliminated the interceptor (using the scenario editor), but the game still crashed.

I next eliminated the other units in the base one-by-one. It turns out that the problem is caused by the University spore launcher in the base. If I eliminate this unit (or even just move it somewhere), the game proceeds without a lockup (I played 4 or 5 more turns).

Wish I could say exactly why this happens. I've seen similar situations where some random unit causes problems. My best advice is to automate less and learn how to beat the AI earlier. Just start reading this forum and browse through old threads. Pretty soon you'll be winning on transcend by 2300 or earlier!

[Phreddo]

thanks for checking that.
the spore launcher would kinda explain why it seems to begin at such a consistent time. i can't even think of a way to stop producing spore launchers. that is, i can eliminate other vehicles from my design shop, but not the critters. i'll have to look into it.
thanks again!


stupid addictive, brilliant, broken game

[Petek]

Originally posted by Phreddo
i can't even think of a way to stop producing spore launchers.

Turn off the base governors. If you don't care to do that, you can override any governor that tries to build a spore launcher. You also could remove the spore launcher from your alphax.txt.

However, I don't think that the spore launcher units in general are causing this problem. Although I could be wrong, you'll probably find that other unit types cause this problem in other games.