Problem opening saved games

[laasa]

Hello,
I’m new here and this is my first visit to a site related to my favourite game: Civilization and its derivatives.
Lately I have a problem playing de CTP2 game: After saving the game after some 150-200 (it varies from game to game) turns it cannot be opened again. When I try to open the saved game, CTP2 closes and I receive a message saying “ctp2.exe has generated errors and will be closed. You will have to start the program again”. I tried to open it on a computer running Windows 2000 and XP on two completely different computers and the result is the same.
I tried to relate the problem with some graphics due to some discover on the game (the entrance on the Renaissance Age, or the discover of the railroad), but it was inconclusive. Some times the problem occurs some turns after that.
I tried too to not save the game and play many turns away. I played till the Modern Age and saved a game around turn 330. I was lucky: I was able to reopen the saved game again and thought that I could live with the previous problem. Wrong! Still on Modern Age, around turn 400, 420 (before and after discovered the Megalev), I saved several versions of the game just in case. Well I was not able to open anyone of the 4 I saved and loose all my efforts, back to turn 330 :-(
So, can anyone help me? What is the problem here? Does this happened to more people?
Many thanks in advance,
Best regards,
Luis

P.S. I use the original game of CTP2.

[J Bytheway]

I've not heard of this particular problem, as far as I can recall, but you might consider playing the latest playtest version put out by the source code project, where some bugs of this nature have been fixed.

[Fromafar]

What are the values of MaxPlayers and NumPlayers in your userprofile.txt? With the original game there is a problem with loading save games if these are too large.

If you attach a problem save game to this thread, we may be able to tell you more.

[laasa]

Hello,
Thanks for the replies. I was not able to reply here soon, so please forgive me for that.
How can I download the source code project version? How do I install it? Is it necessary to uninstall CTP2?
The MaxPlayers=0 and NumPlayers=9. Is this normal? I must say that I don’t know any tricks on the game: I only play and use the original CD.
Thanks again,
Luis

[Fromafar]

The values are OK. The known save game problems should not start until you have about 29 civilisations in the game.
Did you apply the official Activision patch?

For the playtest version, follow this link.

[laasa]

Hi,
Yes, I applied the official Activision patch.
I don’t really understand what is happening. For many turns the saved game reloads ok, but around turn 200 it does not.
What really happen is: order to reload; it reads; start to show the tool bars and menus; the main loading bar goes till the very end; on the precision moment when it is about to show the game map with all the things, it blinks, turns the screen black, gets out of the game program and a window appears saying “ctp2.exe has generated errors and will be closed”.
As I said, I tried to save and reload after many turns (around turn 330) and it works normally. After that it saves and reloads correctly till around turn 400 when the same problem occurs again.
I must say I was convinced that this must have to be related to the graphics, but I use 2 complete different computers and the problem is the same. So, I really need help.
Best regards,
Luis