Boy, how it crashes!

[Securion]

Instead of creating a new thread...

All of a sudden my game have started to crasch after Air power. I think its becouse my artillery tries to attack air units?
How do i correct this problem? Right now its impossible to finish a game becouse of this.
It started after i reinstalled the game.
P4, TNT 16mb, 256 mb ram and 60gb HD with XP Pro.

[Alex]

Right now I'm downloading the latest drivers (Detonator 28.32, from Nvidia site) for my video card (Viper v770, TNT chipset). I hope this can fix the problem. Another shot: I could try to install the original drivers for my card (I am now using Det. 12.41) and see what happens. But, for the moment, I prefer to go forward instead of backwards...

Oh, there is another thing I can do: reinstall the game without applying the patch (v 4.0), play a couple of games with vanilla SMAC and, if nothing goes wrong, I could install the patch. But let's try this driver thing first. Who knows, maybe my FIFA 2002 performance improves too...

[BustaMike]

This may be a really stupid suggestion, but I've found that normally with computers the easy stupid thing is 99% of the time the thing that is wrong. I used to have a similar problem with SMAC. The game would crash for no reason all the time while the rest of my computer seemed to be fine. The problem was actually a bad RAM chip in my computer. Replaced the chip and the problem was solved.

There is a program available now called MemTest that is freeware and will check your RAM for defects. It's pretty handy if you buy the cheap ass stuff like me. This way if it is bad I know before hand and can return it before that 30 days is up.

BTW, I'm using a Viper v770 Ultra also . It's a good little card and I think it's funny that you can overclock with just the software it comes with.

[Fitz]

Question #1 to ask in regards to SMAC/X crashes: Do you have a wheel mouse? If yes, questions #2: Do you remember to disable it before you start the game?

Also, I highly recommend disabling pretty much all the auto startup programs from the system information tool (Win98). If you have an icon in your tray other than volume control, you're probably running the risk of a crash.

[Alex]

Fitz: no, I do not use a wheelmouse. And I also disabled everything that was running, leaving only "Explorer" and "Systray".

Mike: thanks for your suggestion. I'll try MemTest.

I'm inclined to think that the crashes are related to a video problem. Driver? I don't know, I have yet to install the driver I downloaded.

Now let's update the most thrilling compatibility story you ever heard! :

- After I installed the game once more, I played some turns without the patch. It crashed.
- I then installed the patch and tried to play again. Again, it crashed.
- "Let's do this step by step", I thought. Then I changed the value in the line "ForceOldVoxelAlgorithm" (in "alphacentauri.ini")from 0 (zero) to 1. Tried to play once more, it crashed.

As I said before, the crashes are wildly varied. One of the last crashes gave me the message "Terran.exe did not get along with sound.dll" or something like this. Then I thought: hmm, a sound problem. But when I tried again, it just crashed leaving me with a blank screen (and a bar made of little vertical traces on the upper side of the screen, which definitely indicates video problems). I'll try the driver thing later.

I know that some of you are probably thinking: "why in the hell this guy don't just reinstall windows and put an end to all this thing?" Well, I just thought that it would be interesting to discuss this with ilustrious and intelligent persons. Plus, it distracts me. Maybe this thread can be of some use to newbies who are finding their way through the thick xenofungus for the first time...

[Securion]

Intelligence and DOS based Windows sounds like a contradiction to me.

[Googlie]

Of course with Win XP after a crash you now get the pop-up window "Do you wish to report this to Microsoft/"

A fat lot of good that would do - but OTOH, maybe we should. If MS get spammed with enough crash-reporting e-mails they might just get huffy with Firaxis and something just might get done about the interceptor crash, north pole freeze, etc.

(Dream on, eh?)

G.

[Phil_de_geezer]

I had a strange problem with Unreal Tournament - one week it worked the next it didn't (i'd made no system changes AFAIK). It just crashed on startup so i went through the windows troubleshooting thing but that didn't work. Then i tried setting my audioplayback hardware acceleration to none and it worked! If you're stuck for any better ideas then you could try this.

A friend of mine also had strange problems with sound on SMAC - if you disable the sound file by changing the extension it worked (albeit without sound).

Just some ideas - i'm certainly no expert and generally only fix problems by pure luck!

[Fitz]

Yknow, that sound dll error message sounds familiar with me. Have you gone to the Firaxis website and from there to the EA support page for SMAC/X? IIRC, one of the FAQs is about the sound.dll message.