Save Game Corruption

[jones]

Hear hear.. please tell us what causes this.

I keep forgetting to save for long periods so if this strikes again I'll be sad

[Mike Breitkreutz FIRAXIS]

Originally posted by SITS
BUMP

I realise that the forums have been down but it would be great if Mike can say what was wrong....

It's got something to do with settlers on transports. In your case, Japan's last settler was on a galley that was destroyed. This caused another unit on the transport to be killed twice and the game thought Japan had -1 units. The bug doesn't occur everytime this situation happens and is actually quite rare (though obviously not impossible ).

jones: Even if you forget to save, the game does an autosave at the beginning of each turn (unless you disable autosave). They're stored in the saves\Auto folder.

[morb]

I think I'm not alone when I say that I wish you guys would release a "hotfix" for this and maybe a few other show-stopping technical issues you've fixed since the final code. We can still look forward to in-game and gameplay issue fixes in the official patch.

is this do-able?

[Darkknight]

Before Nov. 16th hopefully

[SITS]

Originally posted by Mike Breitkreutz FIRAXIS


It's got something to do with settlers on transports. In your case, Japan's last settler was on a galley that was destroyed. This caused another unit on the transport to be killed twice and the game thought Japan had -1 units. The bug doesn't occur everytime this situation happens and is actually quite rare (though obviously not impossible ).

jones: Even if you forget to save, the game does an autosave at the beginning of each turn (unless you disable autosave). They're stored in the saves\Auto folder.

Cheers Mike!

[theemike]

So I take it that the games that have that problem are HOSED. Kinda sucks, I tried my last few Autosaves adn nothing, so I have to go WAY back... Not fun when you have a ton of units and cities... We need a hot fix ASAP, prefer something that can brign back the "dead" saves.

Mike

Originally posted by Mike Breitkreutz FIRAXIS


It's got something to do with settlers on transports. In your case, Japan's last settler was on a galley that was destroyed. This caused another unit on the transport to be killed twice and the game thought Japan had -1 units. The bug doesn't occur everytime this situation happens and is actually quite rare (though obviously not impossible ).

jones: Even if you forget to save, the game does an autosave at the beginning of each turn (unless you disable autosave). They're stored in the saves\Auto folder.

[Barnacle Bill]

I'm having a problem which is manifesting differently but I wonder if it is related. Playing with rules altered through the editor (didn't use the copy tool or the hacked editor, just the stock one). Playing on a huge map (altered via the editor to max possible size) with 16 Civs. Only one Civ has been eliminated, to my knowledge, but the Indians were down to a couple of cities last time I looked. In the year 1700, after ending my turn the program crashes with an "invalid page fault". I had saved just before ending the turn, and so I tried again a couple of times (rebooting the computer between tries in case the crash destabilized Windows) - same crash every time. I restored the autosave from the beginning of the same turn. This time, after I ended the turn the Greeks came calling to trade maps. After I exit the diplomacy screen, the same crash happens. That is repeatable, too.

[nvpbrown]

DataIO operation System Error: TILE

I just got a corrupted save game error, too. Saved and quit, and then when I loaded the save game, I got a pop-up dialog reading:

DataIO operation System Error: TILE

Click "OK" and another one comes up. At least 20 times, probably many more.

Large Earth Map, 8 civs, 1848AD. Attaching a zip file containing the bad save file and the autosave from that turn. I saved the game pretty much when the turn started, so the files should be nearly identical. The auto save loads OK. One interesting thing: when I zipped it up, the actual save compressed at 98% (per InfoZIP) but the autosave compressed at only 91%.

Although this thread doesn't seem to have a "TILE" error, I saw another thread with a similar error.

Mike B.: I happen to work in the driver group at NVIDIA, and would be happy to work with you guys on this slow scrolling issue (if someone isn't already). I haven't reproed myself (the game refuses to run with a debugger like SoftICE enabled). If you get this message and someone at Firaxis to work with me, please pm me.

Pat

[Mike Breitkreutz FIRAXIS]

Originally posted by Mike Breitkreutz FIRAXIS
If you still have the autosave from the turn before the problem appears, make a copy of that saved game. You will be able to continue playing from that turn without any problems once a fix is made available.

I have looked into this problem further and I have now updated the code so that, once the patch is available, you will also be able to load your corrupted saves -- but only if you are getting the DataIO CITY error.

[KrulltheConquer]

Thanks for working that out, but can you possibly tell us when the patch will be release??? Please pretty please.

[Gramphos]

I just want to tell all you waiting for the patch that Civ3CopyTool v0.73.5 and later can correct the corrupt files.

Do as follows:
1. Download and extract the tool. You may need to get VB5 runtimes and two OCX-controls
2. Run the tool with the option /sge to start the editor (faster then to start the CopyTool first)
3. Load the corrupt SAV and save it (in another name).

[smellymummy]

great work gramphos!

you put firaxis to shame

[Gramphos]

Originally posted by smellymummy
great work gramphos!

you put firaxis to shame

They could already fix it, but they had other things to fix as well. I don't blame them for not releasing a savegame fixer.

[WildStar]

Thanks Gramphos, you just saved me a lot of time

[Gramphos]

Originally posted by WildStar
Thanks Gramphos, you just saved me a lot of time

How can you save time while playing Civ? AFAIK the time just runs away. Yhe only way to save the time is to not play, so it that error made you unable to play the game the fix should have wasted your time.