Game crashes all the time after new update.
 

I've never had a problem like this in all the years I've played this game but now I get crashes all the time after the last update. Can't understand why. Anyone else have this problem?

Re: Game crashes all the time after new update.
 

I have had no problems - have you tried a reinstall?

Re: Game crashes all the time after new update.
 

The "last update" was issued nearly a year ago and been DL'd 1000's of times. If it were a universal issue we would have heard about it before now so lets start at the basics

what OS are you using and where do you have the game installed?

Re: Game crashes all the time after new update.
 

I use the CD version. It's on my C drive not in program files and I use windows 7. The crashes always happen when the AI is conducting it's turn. I have played this game for years on many different computers including this one and nothing like this has ever happened. I tried reinstalling and re-patching and still crashes.

Re: Game crashes all the time after new update.
 

Haven't played this game in 2 years. I used to be able to play just fine in full screen mode and now it's full of problems. I can't scroll worth a damn in windowed mode. It's not an option playing that way for me. If the mouse just moves a little off the edge the scrolling stops. To frustrating getting around the map. Looks like the crashing may be from playing in full screen now. Not good. I used to enjoy this game. Too frustrating now.

Re: Game crashes all the time after new update.
 

OK lets try to deal with one issue at a time.

First off, we don't support full screen mode any longer. Some OS/ computer combinations will run it, others will not. Like you I used to be able to run tests of the game in FS mode then MS made some "improvement" to Win10 and now I cannot run full screen but it's not an issue for either of us as the only reason we kept it in the game was for players of older computers and OS. Desktop-windowed mode is the recommended way to run the game and it's what both Andy and I as the developers use on a daily basis......and have since it was introduced to the game. FS mode is a legacy from the DOS days

SO....the real issue is getting you set up mouse-scrolling correctly in windowed mode for your machine so you can use it without it being frustrating ( because it WILL run the game without being a problem ) and for that, I need to ask specific questions.

Start GameOptions and click on the Misc tab....

1/What value is the Map Scroll Sensitivity Zone set to?

2/What number is set up as the Scroll Speed?

NOTE TO OTHER PLAYERS.......If this is a problem you had that you resolved please feel free to jump into the conversation


First lets try a coarse adjustment. Set each of those to 100 then restart the game in Windowed - Desktop Mode and tell me if that makes things better, or worse for you....then we'll go to the next step. I am confident that we WILL be able to get this setup so it works properly for you on your machine.

Those setting I asked you to try are higher than normal but on my machine it gives a slow deliberate scroll rate...but no too slow... with lots of room at the edges of the screen to initiate it.

Re: Game crashes all the time after new update.
 

The sensitivity was 16 and the speed was 25. I set them to 100 and it scrolled fine but every time I tried to use the buttons on the control panel I lost my spot on the map because it scrolled away to the right as i moved to use the buttons.

Re: Game crashes all the time after new update.
 

OK........ we're making progress....I wanted to make coarse adjustments to see where we were and it looks like we found a good spot for scroll rate now we need to fine tune the sensitivity zone.

Try 25 for the the sensitivity zone and let me know if it makes it better or worse than what you had and if worse....what makes it worse

Re: Game crashes all the time after new update.
 

In which case, you probably have the mouse scroll sensitivity zone a little bit too large, and it is starting to scroll as you are over the right hand buttons?.

In the misc tab, set the map scroll sensitivity zone to a smaller number - try 5 pixels (I use 10). That one controls how near to the window edge your mouse pointer is before it starts scrolling.

Re: Game crashes all the time after new update.
 

Yes, I lowered it and it works fine. Thanks, I always used full screen in the past and so i'm used to the way it was before but this is doable. I hope the crashes stop now. Do you think that playing it in full screen was causing the crashes? I haven't tested it out long enough in windowed to be sure yet.

Re: Game crashes all the time after new update.
 

Good news indeed.... I wanted to boost those two numbers up high to start then work back to something that worked for you. I figured the sensitivity would be out of line but it was a starting point


They should. My game does not crash and neither does Andy's but I cannot even get FS to run so IDK if it crashes......but as I said FS has not been recommended by us for years. I wanted to get rid of FS altogether once windowed mode was perfected but we decided it was best to leave it in for older machines

Re: Game crashes all the time after new update.
 

Windows 7 uses the 256 colour palette that the full-screen game also uses for its "aero" effects. That is why we introduced the batch file that nukes the windows 7 aero (explorer) in order to allow full-screen play. It works for some windows 7 machines, but it may not be fully stable, or survive future graphic card driver updates, since 256 colour mode is "obsolete" in Microsoft's game plan.

Windowed mode uses the regular windows 32 bit palette, and so it plays properly with other windows applications. You can switch tasks without windows "losing" the 256 colour palette and scrambling it when you return. In windows 7, there is no need to nuke windows explorer, and sometimes having to restart it on exit from the game if the batch file fails to start it.

Full-screen mode is no longer supported - its only there because of the DOS heritage of the game. That mode may work for some folk's combinations of operating system and graphics card, but if so then that is just sheer luck.

Re: Game crashes all the time after new update.
 

I see...I'm not exactly a newbee to this game but I am when it comes to this forum and the online community for this game. I haven't followed much of the developments. I play on and off and check the updates from time to time, that's about it. Thanks again for the help.

Re: Game crashes all the time after new update.
 

Hi there,
I have been experimenting with Borderless Gaming to keep the look of a full screen. Nostalgia....

https://github.com/Codeusa

So far so good, works a treat for me!
Cheers,
Gelainey

Re: Game crashes all the time after new update.
 

Yes I forgot about that.....you may like the way it works and it's featured in a Sticky at the top of the main forum. I have experimented with it and it works well

look for

Sticky: All the benefits of Windowed & Fullscreen mode combined

Re: Game crashes all the time after new update.
 

Hmmm...just had a crash while playing in windowed mode. It wasn't as bad as when I was playing full screen but still...

Re: Game crashes all the time after new update.
 

What exactly do you mean by "a crash"?.

What were you doing at the time?.

Re: Game crashes all the time after new update.
 

.......and what had you been doing before running the game ? It should not be an issue BUT....was the game run right after start up or after it had been on awhile and you had other things running at the same time?

Don

Re: Game crashes all the time after new update.
 

I had nothing else running. The game shut down and went to desktop. The computer had been on a while but no other programs were open.

Re: Game crashes all the time after new update.
 

Strange. I've never had that happen but somethings tickling the back of my brain that someone else had that happen in the past and I think it was related to anti virus running but that's not clear to me.....just a hunch...

Has anyone else had this happen or recall anyone who did ??

Re: Game crashes all the time after new update.
 

What is stranger is that I played a good 20 turns in that session and there are no saves from it. Not even an auto save. Everything I did was lost.

Re: Game crashes all the time after new update.
 

That is not how the game operates at all - there will be an auto-save in slot 0 for the turn just played.

It sounds like perhaps an anti-virus programme is running the game in a "safe" mode, and not allowing saves to disk. My Avast AV shows a red outline round the programme's window if it is doing that.

If you try a normal save - does it appear in the saved games folder as expected?. An actual pair of files (.CMT and .DAT) in the folder - not what the game shows on uts load page.

Re: Game crashes all the time after new update.
 

It was saving them normally before but just not in that particular session that crashed. I've since added the game to the allowed programs list to see if that helps.

Re: Game crashes all the time after new update.
 

It's not my anti-virus. Turned it off and played the game to test it and the game shut down again. I've had this same anti virus program for years and it never caused this game to crash in the past either.

Re: Game crashes all the time after new update.
 

Well.......you have said you have re-installed and the path is the one we recommend but your game does what nobody else has reported it does. We've eliminated the anti-virus. You are using Windows 7 and windows 7 like to put files in places we cannot anticipate which MIGHT explain the missing autosaves and win7 is why we had to move the game out of program files....but you tell us it is out of program files and into the main C: folder......

So right now, I'm stumped but I'm hoping someone else has had, and solved, a similar issue and can offer a suggestion .....things like this have happened in the past and we've always found a way to correct them but it might take some time but that said I'm running out of ideas to suggest except for " delete the game and re-install" again simply because nobody else is reporting what you are reporting ( that I know of....... )

Re: Game crashes all the time after new update.
 

Did I patch it correctly? First I installed it from the CD then I added the patches in this order: v5.0, v9.0b, v10.01

Re: Game crashes all the time after new update.
 

Wait a minute...it still could be the anti virus. I thought I turned it off but it still ran something in the background that I couldn't turn off. I'll try to figure out what this is doing and how to turn it off.

Re: Game crashes all the time after new update.
 

Well...there are a couple things related to my anti virus program that run in the background that it won't let me shut off. I even tried msconfig.exe and tried to disable them but they keep showing up after restarting my computer. I still doubt it's my anti virus program though since It never caused a problem with this game in the past and the crashes started just after installing the last update.

Re: Game crashes all the time after new update.
 

That should be OK, if you ensured that all the patches and the game were installed to exactly the same place.

One thing to try is to do a windows check disk for lost clusters. If a file in the game structure was affected by bad clusters then it could be your problem. Also, if you have the time it may be worth testing for bad sectors as well - run that test overnight as it takes a long time.

Re: Game crashes all the time after new update.
 

Are you talking about the disk cleanup tool or the disk defragmenter tool? I run both of those once a week already.

Re: Game crashes all the time after new update.
 

ChckDsk - it looks for lost clusters, and has an option to do a surface test (for bad disk sectors). But since you seem to do disk maintenance - probably not necessary.

Re: Game crashes all the time after new update.
 

Did the chkdsk anyway but it only found one bad cluster in a file totally unrelated to this game. I'm still waiting to hear back from the tech support for my anti virus to see if they can find if it's interrupting any programs but so far they found nothing wrong. I played for a good 2 hours last night and it didn't crash though. I just save often just in case.

Re: Game crashes all the time after new update.
 

The auto save should be saved each time you end a turn. The fact it was not doing so (no file present) seems to suggest that there is an anti-virus running the game in "sandbox" mode, or something similar.

Now, if the auto-save is being made to the proper slot, and your saves are appearing in the save games folder as well, then it could be that your anti-virus has learned to trust the game after an initial run in a sand-box mode.

I turned off my avast anti-virus "sandbox" feature since I develop programs, and it treats each recompiled EXE as a brand new program to be suspicious of. It then puts a red border round the game window and is irritating about saves etc. until you had run it the once.

Re: Game crashes all the time after new update.
 

I understand that. That weird save problem only happened once but the crashes still happened many times. I still haven't found any evidence that my anti virus caused any problem. I'm just saving frequently out of paranoia now. :) Been playing with no problems lately.

Re: Game crashes all the time after new update.
 

Even though I have found no evidence that my anti-virus was causing any problems with the game that is the most logical explanation so far. The crashing seems to have stopped on it's own. I have had no problems all week.