Crash to Desktop: Support and Debug

[Imminence]

Ironically it ran pre patch better on my system than now. I could play two huge terra games until about 2050 AD.

Now, with the patch applied (downloaded by gameoption), it starts to get several problems, once the bigger part of the map is uncovered.

1) I mouse over the terrain, the game stops, the towns, user interface, buildings, woods and everything else vanish from the map. I just see farmland improvements and roads, anything else is just the terrain itself. Sometimes it "comes back" after a minute or two. I mouse over the next tile and the procedure starts again and so on.
2) CTDs are worse, than anything I've experienced the last 15 years of my "gamer career". I see my desktop in a 800x600 resolution, 4 colour grafics and my video card (GeF 4.200 Ti with 128 MB) is obviously disabled, because I can't change resolution and colours back to normal. Only a reboot helps.
3) Like 1), but parts of the screen are just black. I can move the mouse, but the game stays like this for ever or CTD like in 2).

After all, these are the very same problems I had pre patch, before I updated even the last of my system drivers. And - despite the fact, that the game in it's early stages saves and loads really faster - I can't see anything "new", so I have my doubts, if and what the patch fixed at all.

BTW, before I installed the patch I un- and reinstalled the game and did not keep any pre patch saves.

I'm just getting tired of all that bs. I seriously ask, how they can dare to release something like that.

[Guy Saults]

This patch made both of my systems run worse. I echo Imminence's experience with the disabled NVidia (5200 and 5500) cards.

I think I will uninstall the patch.

I have 37 turns left; on the XP 2900 with the FX 5200 128 MB card, it just took over three minutes to load the file for year 1993 AD from the start menu. This is maybe 20% slower than the laod time for the XP 3000 with the FX 5500 256 MB video card.

[TheBorg]

I still have problems while playing CTD IV (tm) after installing the 1.08 and the 1.09 patches. Also, the patches introduced new bugs:

1. Setting "Graphics Level" to "High" activates "Low Resolution Textures" - this is wrong; setting "Graphics Level" to "Medium" or "Low" deactivates "Low Resolution Textures" - this is also wrong; resetting graphics settings to defaults sets "Graphics Level" to "High" and deactivates "Low Resolution Textures" - this is ok.

2. The city progress in the city labels is missing: the number of turns required to complete production and to expand was displayed in paranthesis in version 1.00, now I have to hover the mouse over the city to see this information, and, since this also displays other information, it's much harder to read.

3. I saved a game in year 2044. After installing the patch and loading the game, the year changed to 2036.

CTD was present in all versions (1.00, 1.08, 1.09): After year 1900 on huge maps the game crashes to desktop.

Things that help reduce the CTD frequency:

1. Increasing the Windows Page File size. Now I have 8GB of page file: 4GB on one hard drive, and 4GB on another. I know it doesn't make any sense, since the game can't use that much memory, at least not on a 32 bit machine, but, after starting with 1GB, I progressively increased it by 1 GB, and each increase allowed me to play about 20 turns without crashes, then the crashes started to occur again and I had to increase the size again.

This no longer worked after year 2000. Sometimes the game CTD multiple times per turn, so I had to quicksave once per minute. So I had to find other solutions.

2. Reducing the "Graphics Level" to "Medium" or "Low" also helped, but it still crashed after about 5 or 6 turns. Changing some settings in the .ini file like AllowScreenShots, D3D9Query and SyncInput also seemed to help. I had also set AutoSaveInterval = 1 but, since sometimes the game crashes multiple times per turn, it's not a solution.

3. Changing the Video Driver made the greatest difference. I have a MSI NXFX 5900XT (NVidia GeForce FX 5900 XT), 128 MB. First, I used the latest MSI NVidia driver: 77.72. It crashed like crazy, before crashing sometimes I had dark terrain (not black), graphics artifacts, the game was running slower and slower, and after crashing sometimes my system was unusable, because the resolution was changed to 640x480 4 bit (16 colors), and I had to reboot to return to normal resolution.

Then I downgraded my driver to version 66.81 MSI, and I was finally able to play a few hours without crashes. However, I have other software, like my TV Tuner software, that doesn't work properly with a version as old as this. So I tried the latest generic NVidia driver, 81.95. It started crashing every turn again with graphics settings on High.

Seems to me like a graphics engine problem. I hope it's fixed soon.

I think my system meets and exceeds the recommanded specs, I have WinXP SP2, all patches from Microsoft applied, DirectX 9.0c. P4 2.6 GHz HT, 1GB RAM, 27 GB free disk space, SONY DDU16211 16x/40x DVD Reader, 128M NVidia GeForce FX 5900 XT, with T&L, pixel and vertex shaders, Realtek AC97 Audio (what is a "DirectX 9.0c-compatible sound card" anyway?), all the drivers are up to date.

All other games, for example Age of Empires III, Project Entropia, run without any problems.

It's a great game, but buggy as hell. The bugs continue the proud legacy of Alpha Centauri, and CTD III (tm), that had the same problem: slow and/or crashing on large maps with many units.

This game is in top 20 and rising when searching "crash to desktop" on Google. As Johnny Bravo used to say, this won't end well.

[Guy Saults]

One word fits: Fiasco.

Who expects a software bug issue at this point in the evolution of computer games? I have not worried about incompatible hardware or crashes in years.

I am sure these folks will fix the problem. At least I am lucky that I can run the game on one of my machines.

[BleckLord]

I tried the game after patch (1.09). I'm still having CTD problems. Although one of the problems listed as fixed in the patch documentation was 'memory', I'm still seeing 800+MB combined virtual/RAM use.

I've had two types of crashes now:
1. instruction tries to access memory at location 0x00000000, and
2. the same CTD problem as before


I am now concerned that this problem will not be fixed at all. The game has been out for a month (during which Firaxis has supposedly been working round the clock) and there is still no solution.

Have the CTD problems surfaced in games started AFTER patching to 1.09? I just don't have the heart to start a new game just to find that its all for not.

[ckreiter]

I agree Blecklord. I don't believe they are going to fix anything.

I've installed latest and greatest for everything on my system (hard and software). I put on patch 1.09. I played about 10 turns before my first CTD.

I think I'm going to see if I can get my money back.

[Guy Saults]

I finally managed to play on my problem machine after the following adjustments. I --

-Disabled the FSB and AGP spread regulators in BIOS.

-Set my page file to 4096/4096.

-Downloaded the new NForce chipset driver release from the NVidia website.

-Left 1.09 installed.

The system is running much faster now, and no CTDs.

This is a lot of work for a game!

[Chernobyl2]

This reminds me of the days when you had to make a special boot disk to get a game to run because it needed so much of the core 512K ram. Its ridiculous for games to have so many hoops to jump through these days.
All patch 1.09 did for me is fix the problems with running the movies. the diplomats have white eyes sometimes, sometimes black, and sometimes no problems at all. Still have black holes in the terrain, and it crashes to BSOD more than ever now.

[DocMWood]

Seems odd that 2K isn't posting the patch on their site. Is this an official patch?

[nerfherder]

Still crashes, 1.09 breaks more thasn it fixes

I'm having CTD problems as well as REALLY poor performance. My system runs all the latest and greatest games - except this one. Performance is shockingly bad.

I installed patch 1.09 - now the movies don't work. This is ridiculous. My movies worked fine pre-patch, now they stutter and the sound screws up.

I tend to agree - it's time to get my money back.

I don't think it's kosher to criticize the developers for the bugginess of the game - I've never met a developer who's okm with releasing a crap product. However, I have met many marketing executives who are more concerned with making deadline than releasing something that works.

[Guy Saults]

Doc,

This is an official patch; however, the company is relying on the update function on the game's main menu to distribute the patch.

If you have multiple platforms you only have to download the patch once (25 MB). Once you download the patch it is a self-extracting executable in the game's "Patch" folder. Simply copy the file to your other platforms, and it works just like the patches in Civ III.

[Guy Saults]

FWIW,

This game runs fine on both systems until the save game file surpassess 500KB. Then, it still runs on my slower system but not on my faster.

The difference between the sytems is minimal: both systems are on chaintech Nforce2 7NJL6 boards with XP Home 2 fully updated;
the fast system has an XP 3000 with 1GB PC 3200 RAM and a GeForce FX 5500 256 MB video card;
the slow system has an XP2900 with 1GB PC2700 RAM and a GeForce FX5200 128MB video card.

[Hawk Firestorm]

P4 640 (hyperthreading enabled)
1 Gig Ram
Asus P5P800 Mobo latest bios
Win XP Pro SP2 ALL updates applied
Asus FX5200 81.95 Drivers (tried em all no joy)

Crashes to desktop utterly corrupting screen output to 4 bit depth, (not changeable), requiring reboot.

OR alternatively randomly reboots the machine.

Basically ya codes running someplace it shouldn't be. lol

Things start to go pear shaped moving around the map, often the menu 'frame' and all other frames such as where the cities etc are being rendered vanish just leaving blank terrain after which it's only a short time before things go belly up.

Installed patch makes no difference to stability at all.

Not very impressive.

[CivNonFreak]

Well, I didn't notice the patch until last night. I downloaded it, installed it and pulled up my Huge, 8 player, Inland Sea game and it was pretty near unplayable. And it had been playable before (year 2002) but starting to slow down and turns were running a bit long. However, it was playable pre-patch and post-patch it is slower to move around the map and agonizingly slow to select units, etc.

NOW, that said, I did not check the patch notes to see if pre-patch games were playable but I would guess a new game would be needed to test it out fully. So I will start one. I will also upgrade to latest Nvidia drivers for my 5200 GeForce (71.89 had been giving me rock solid performance with only one crash (at 2002-2003 turn) on any map over the last week or so. I did not check the stutter so it may still be there as well. If its a fix on new games, then I will be happy. If not, then not... and I'll go back to playing the pre-patch version after a reload.

Oh: NforceII-400
Athlon XP+2800
1 GB RAM
GeForce 5200 128 MB

[ckreiter]

Got a first tonight. Played about 2 hours with a CTD about every 15 minutes. The last one created a DR Watson error report and dump.

I've attached the text portion of the dump although I don't think there is a windows programmer who can read these things (I'm a mainframe sysprog and dump reading is part of the job).

If 2k support ever gets back to me, I'll see if they are interested in this and the user.dump file that it created.