Direct X Surface Unavailable

[Tomsawyer]

Ok this is no minor bug. I cant even get into the game. If I attempt to watch the opening movie I get the DirectX Surface Error. If I bypass it I can get the choose a game a panel but its blacked out, all I see is text. If I randomly click around I can somtimes get to the next set of panels but no further. Since I just built this new toy, an AMD XP2100 with 2 sticks of twinmos pc3200, 2 60gb drives, ti4200 video, all connected to an epox 8rda+ nforce2 board overclocked and tweaked to the max I was thinking perhaps it was something in my settings.

So I grabbed a 8gb drive I had lying around and installed windows xp onto it, along with the bare minium drivers to get it going. Still got the surface error which by now was irking me to the max.

Used Daemon tools and created 2 bin files (FOR MY OWN USE) and put the game onto the fresh xp drive. SAME ERROR.

Now I have heard that a patch is in the works, but if that patch takes as long as the game itself did, with all the so called beta testing done, all I would have for a months for my money is a nice shiny box and a rather intresting book to read.

Returned, I will get it out of the bargin bin in a few months.

[CharlesBHoff]

I found than solution to my DIRECT X SURFACE ERROR I change the graphic setting in opion to medium from hight. I donot know it will work for other.. I think all games company could set they graphic setting to low and it the person want than highter graphic setting he can set it himself.

[yeem]

I literally just got the error on my turn 294 (I'm playing for the 5X's win).

I restarted the computer then tried the game again. On the opening screen when I click on "Load Game" the error rears its ugly head. I am a cronic game saver so pulled out all but the last few saves and opened up MOO3 again and it now seems to work just fine.

I'm not sure who mentioned the too-many-saved-games thing, but good call and thanks for the info!

Yeem

[anoncynic]

Tip I picked up from IGMoO:
If you get the Direct X Surface Error (or the confused pixels) after alt-tabbing out of the game, then pressing ctrl+alt+esc will probably fix it.....or at least it has for me.