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Brad's known issue list

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Brad's known issue list

A look in the sausage factory..

from GalCiv2 Forums

Ever buy games where the developer pretends a given problem with their game doesn't exist?

Wish they'd just admit to a problem and fix it? Well here's our list of problems that we've encountered and some of them are going to sound pretty obscure but if they affect you, better to know.  We plan to address these by release:

Item #1: Windows 2000 on Non-English versions.  There is texture corruption on non-English versions of Windows 2000.  It works fine on Windows XP and Windows 98 all languages, just Windows 2000.  We expect to have this updated by release.  If anyone here has a non-english version of Windows 2000 as their main machine let us know.

Item #2: The video tutorials stutter. Click the "view full screen" option. This option isn't in the retail release but is in the digital release and subsequent updates.

Item #3: If you're running in 16-bit color, you need to switch to 32-bit color in some cases or the game will simply fail to launch (or launch with an error and die).

Item #4: On Some nVidia cards, if the game isn't running on your primary monitor, the mouse cursor may get flakey.

Item #5: It takes a LONNNG time to get back into the game after alt-tabbing away. This has to do with a trick we used to keep memory use down. The game isn't crashed but it can take awhile to get back. If you're going to be switchign around, run the game in a window (see the video options screen).

Item #4: TNT and Geforce 1/2 users (technically not supported but they do work) will not get lighting on planets.

Item #5: On Windows 98, if the system has less than 20% resources left, there may be problems with late game performance (frame rate).

Item #6: If you are using an older nVidia card and running your system in 16bit color, the game may not launch. You will need to set your desktop color depth to 32bit. Nothing we can do on this, some older cards don't support DirectX 9 video depth switching.

Item #7. You need to be running your system at 1024x768 or better. That means 1280x600 won't work both X and Y needs to be equal or better.  1600x1200 is fine. 1280x1024 is fine.  4000x3000 is fine.  This should only affect certain older laptops.

Item #8. Certain CRT older (non PnP) monitors may need to tweak the brightest and contrast settings of the game to their liking. The defaults were set to PNP CRT / LCD norms.

Item #9. You can run the game in a window from the options are or by running the game from a command prompt galciv2 w

Item #10. You can turn on cheat mode by running the game with a "cheat" parameter (i.e. galciv2 cheat)

Item #11. We have not tested the game on non-Indo European languages yet.  That means we don't know how it runs in Mandarin, Hebrew, or other languages.  We plan to look at those OSes in the future but our access to those kinds of systems is limited. It might work fine, we just haven't been able to try it.

Item #12. One of the weapons thumbnails in the ship design screen is missing if you run at a very high resolution on certian versions of ATI video drivers.  We have fixed this internally already.  Most people will likely never see it anyway since it is a very very high tech (we were able to find it through cheat codes).

That's all for now.  We'll keep updating this.  Hopefully we haven't scared anyone off.  We have found from our non-game software that the best policy is to treat customers as partners. 

Most of these issues won't affect anyone (they certainly didn't come up during the beta and there were thousands of people in that).  But they will likely affect someone and we want to make sure they're taken care of.

 

 

64,474 views 126 replies
Reply #101 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Hi i'm having the same problem as # 97. I can't see the 3D planets, only circles. And the space ships are visually basic and ugly. I use a GeForce FX5600 on Windows XP.

Please advise
Reply #102 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Hi i'm having the same problem as # 97. I can't see the 3D planets, only circles. And the space ships are visually basic and ugly. I use a GeForce FX5600 on Windows XP.

Please advise
Offworld Trading Company
Reply #103 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
sorry for spamming, it wasn't on purpose. I thought the submit command didn't react...

I apologize
Reply #104 from GalCiv2 Forums Top

First of all, congratulations for an excellent game...

I've been developping systems for almost 20 years now and I can understand the problems related to multiple systems configuration. That being said, my road to making the game stable on my system was a strange one and I would like to share my personnal experience about it...

I got it all, crashes, blue screens, drop to the desktop, lockups etc... this game brought me back years in the past when I had to customize the TSRs in order to squeeze every bytes of RAM in order to play MoM... *sigh* I feel suddenly old knowing that most of the people reading this haven't seen those types of 'quests for optimizations'... Anyhow, I divert...

My machine is a P4 3Ghz, 1 Gb of RAM, ATI 9600, latest drivers, well ventilated rig. Hell, I even went as far as installing thermal probes with external displays in order to double check that the heat was dissipating properly...

Yet, even after multiple defrags the game was not staying up more than 20 minutes in average even after upgrading to 1.0X saturday morning. Then I updated the BIOS, still, it would continue to crash... I persevered, reading the debug file after each crashes with the hope of finding the missing clue... I reloaded my saved games tirelessly and played for another 20 minutes then back to hunting what could be the cause of it. You see, as a developper myself, I know that a bug will make it crash under the same circumstances over and over again, yet that's not what I'm seeing... Maybe a rogue pointer I was saying to myself after having rebooted at least 30 times late Saturday night and going thru the paces of the game, and some ship creation, and more turns I suddenly realized that I had been playing for the last 2 hours without a glitch I had made no updates to my machine for half a day and rebooted countless times and now it was stable ??? Well... it is now ! I filed that one under 'MS-strange-operating-system-that-seem-to-settle-itself-now-and-then' and called it a day...

Since then, I've played all day Sunday and most of Monday night and apart from occasional 'influence floods', everything runs flawlessly... Stardock, although my employer may wonder why I don't seem to get enough sleep anymore because of GC2...

It could still be a rogue pointer but until it shows its ugly face again, you have gained another loyal and satisfied customer.

As a final note, I am having troubles accessing this site with Firefox... Registration problems initially but it diseappeared using Explorer...

Keep up the good work and thank you again !
Reply #105 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
In the X patch i'm finding that my mouse stops working after an hour or so whilst playing the game - only solution I have found is to reboot the PC (via the keyboard). Not narrowed it down but it has happened in the last two games. Previous patches i've played all the way through with no issue.

It could be that my mouse is on its way out or a USB issue (moved it now to a different USB port) but just a headsup if others are getting this?

Tals
Reply #106 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I didn't see this reported - sorry if its a duplicate...

I built a military starbase and upgraded the daylights out of it, meaning my ships in the radius should have multiple layers of offense and defense applied to them.

Unfortunately, they seem to have neither, as the military starbase options seemed to stop workinig after the latest patch....

On the plus side, I have to change my current game strategy to compensate, so at least I'm being forced into something new...
Reply #107 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Item #4: On Some nVidia cards, if the game isn't running on your primary monitor, the mouse cursor may get flakey.

I didn't see anyone else mention this. However I get flakey mouse and I have only 1 monitor. I can play the game for about an hour and suddenly the mouse cursor will lock on a place but I'm still moving the mouse around (buttons will high light). Sometimes the cursor unlocks and I can continue, usually it's just locked and stays that way even if I alt tab out into Windows. Even in Windows the cursor just stays in 1 place. Rebooting the system will get things back to normal but that seems extreme to play a game.

I'm using a Geforce 6800 w/256, latest Nvidia drivers, Windows XP Pro SP2.

Except for this, nothing's been annoying and overall I'm enjoying the game, but I'd still like a fix for this.

Edit: NM found info in the other known issues thread, so I'll try that out. Must read more first, then post. sigh
Reply #108 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I didn't see anyone else mention this. However I get flakey mouse and I have only 1 monitor. I can play the game for about an hour and suddenly the mouse cursor will lock on a place but I'm still moving the mouse around (buttons will high light). Sometimes the cursor unlocks and I can continue, usually it's just locked and stays that way even if I alt tab out into Windows. Even in Windows the cursor just stays in 1 place. Rebooting the system will get things back to normal but that seems extreme to play a game.


Yes I get exactly this issue and have only one monitor and a Nividia 6600GT. Seems to have only started since the X release

Tals
Reply #109 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
The game is still crashing at my notebook. The crash occurs always at the end of a turn. On some occasions the screen went white, you can only see the options like "Menu". My GCII version is 1.0x.010. My notebook is a Dell Inspiron 5150
3.06 GHz Intel Mobile
512 MB RAM
GeForce FX Go 5200 64MB RAM (ForceWare 83.90)
Reply #110 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
BTW planet lights rarely if ever show up. In 3 games i've only seen them twice, both times on alien planets.
Reply #111 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Think i've already posted this somewhere or other in a botched attempt to write this here...so apologies...

Hey, i clocked up a few issues and i thought i'd better report 'em. Not too fussed as is a fantastic game, but it would be good to get them sorted

By the way my hardware/software config is.... geforce pcie 6800 Ultra, Athlon AMD 64 3500+, windows xp, european special edition copy of the game (nice case by the way!) and no drivers older than september, most (including the graphics card) a great deal younger.

1) can't use the game with the software mouse as it tends to get stuck, rendering the cursor invisible and forcing a system restart. Hardware mouse seems to work fine...which is funny cos now i'm using the stardock gal civ desktop customisation its the only time i see my hardware mouse!!

2) have to use a large screen resolution...although i know your allready aware of that one

3) during my second game, several of my fleets of ships were unable to attack enemy vessels, despite the fact that they were unarmed transports lingering around my homeworld on the brink of war!! doh!

4) i'm not entirely sure on this one, i might be wrong.... one of my major strategies involves the reinforcement of my core planets using production/reaserch/economy starbase enhancements. In the game i played where my ships refused to attack, damn them, i had a dedicated research planet, maxed out with omega research, tech capital, and loads of fully upgraded tech buildings. I built one support starbase in that system and that majorly increased my research ability, knocking a lot of time from research periods. I then built another 9 fully decked out starbases in that system, which unfortunately appeared to have no effect what so ever... whereas presumably with 1000% bonuses (or round about that amount) i should have had a massive manufacturing/ economic/ and particularly research... hotspot... help me!!!!!

Anyway, sorry for writing a great big essay on your forum!!

Cheers dudes!
Reply #112 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Here's a repost of a piece of a comment I made elsewhere:

Last (for this comment) but certainly not least is the save bug. It's one hundred percent reproducible on my system, and that bites. As in, the game works just fine so long as you don't reload. But if you do it doesn't rebuild the map correctly and graphical anomalies appear in certain areas. If the graphical anomaly is within explored space your game will crash as soon as you load it; if it's outside of your explored space it'll crash as soon as it's exposed by one of your ships. This leads people to believe that it happens "variably", but it doesn't; it's the same graphical bug, they just expose it at different times from save to save (e.g., after one reload they send a scout straight for it and crash in a few turns, after another reload they don't send the scout in that direction and only expose it 50 or 100 turns later, crashing again). It's not graphics that're the problem here, but that the savegame feature doesn't work correctly and that upon reloading it builds a bad map - resulting in a graphical glitch which can't be displayed, followed by a memory error and a crash.

That took me most of today to figure out. It could be that it's Win2000-specific. If you want to know if you have the same problem, do this:

- enable cheats. Do this by changing the command line to: "C:\Program Files\games\strategy\galactic civilizations 2\GalCiv2.exe" cheat

- start a new game. You don't have to do anything, just start the game.

- now save the game, then reload it. You don't have to exit the game, just load from your save.

- now press CTRL+U. This is the cheat for exposing the entire map, which will also expose any graphical glitches on said map. If you have the savegame problem your game will crash straight to the desktop. Note that if the game appears to freeze it isn't actually frozen, it's just that the CTRL+U command takes a long, long time to process even on fast systems. Also note that the problem isn't with CTRL+U, since you can use this command effectively when you start a new game, and from any point on, so long as you don't reload. It's the save that's broken, not the command.

Max
Reply #113 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
For some reason the minimap always has an arc across the top that interferes with viewing it properly.
Reply #114 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
A curious bug from out of game...I think this may be somewhat unique...

I can't access the Saved Games and Preferences folder for some strange reason. I can load and save games fine in game, but when I try to access the folder they're in out of game, I can't find it in my documents anywhere. Tried a number of things - looking through Stardock Central (no option for that kind fo thing), showing hidden folders (still nothing)...it just does not seem to appear. What's going on here? Is it somehow in someplace different? If so, how would I be able to find it?
Reply #115 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Hi i'm having the same problem as # 97 and #101.

It seems that game doesnt not suport Nvidia graphic cards. I tried the game on Geforce 4 MMX agpX4 and Geforce 4 MMX agpX8 and on better Geforce 5900 FX. On all cards the textures in the game (planets and ships) doesnt not exist !!???

Plz help!

tnx

P.S. This game is great even without textures .

Reply #116 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Just thought I mention my problems too as it might/not help.

Anyway, I've been getting more crashes on my laptop with 1.0X. Admittely, this only happens if I play for an extended period of times ie > 3 hours or so. This is ignoring all the tiny graphical glictes in the UI - minimap, graphs etc

There still seem to be some kind of overheating problem, and/or maybe memory leaks that comes with playing over a long period of time. Once, it crashes to the desktop, I can then start another game (after the desktop clears up) for another 2 or 3 hours so it isn't to big a problem for me.

I have noticed (although it is still a guess), that if you re-load the game often, then these glitches happen more - either through memory leaks or not loading properly as mentioned by someone else above. Loading up the various screen lots of time also have the same effect atlthough to a lesser extent.

Hope these get solves as fixing these is more important than the upgrade addition at the moment.
Reply #117 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I seem to be having similar problems to others on this list. I am only posting in the hopes that if it is clear that multiple people are having the same problems, those problems are neither isolated nor insignificant.

1) Bryancole's Military Starbase problem - I'm having the same issue. Military starbases do not seem to offer any bonuses to ships in their area of effect. Yes, this applies to ships with weapons and defense systems (I'm not expecting constructors to suddenly have offensive capabilities). And yes, this applies whether the ships are in space or orbiting (i.e., "in") the planet. When I check the "Details" screen on my planets with starbases nearby, the production capacity increase of my economics bases shows up, but there is nothing indicating any advantage from military starbases. And when I check on the ships themselves, their weapon and defense ratings are just the base ratings.

2) The savegame problem reported by others. Here's how I note the savegame problem: every time (and I do mean every time - I tried this as an experiment and it crashed 10 out of 10 times) I load a game while another game was in progress (i.e., "let's try that planetary invasion again") it's a CTD. I have only noted this after the latest version (the March 7 or whenever it was) of the game. But if I start up the game and then attempt to load a save game, it loads just fine.
Reply #118 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
The issue with PQ is kind of a big one. If you pick the +PQ% ethical choices, you don't get any extra tiles. If you pick the +PQ racial quality you seem to get the tiles, and you seem to get the +10 morale for high-PQ as well as the raised pop cap regardless. But if you colonize a class-11 planet and get a +50% PQ ethical choice, you get a class-16 planet with only 11 tiles. That defeats the purpose of choosing evil. Why would you want to? A class-11 holds plenty of people, and you already got the morale bonus.
Reply #119 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I conquered the Yor's and suddenly I noticed all my colonies went to 0 or close to 0 on military, research and social production. I still have the same amount of population, spending, %social and everything. What happened? All the production queue's say "never". I dont notice any enemy ships orbiting my planets (perhaps that issue is unique to MOO2)

Why did this happen? What do I do?
Reply #120 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Most likely you spent money on the invasion and it put you in debt greater than -500bc.
Reply #121 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Some issues I have had during my few hours of game play.

Game Errata

=Typo=
- Underwater Cities Event - The neutral and evil options have the same bonuses listed.

=Bug=
- When one clicks on the Social event "goto" option for ship produced the window opens up to nothing but spinning space.

=Oversights=
- The Planet list stays on top of some windows when they are opened.
- For the minor races espionage is a stated option in the text but it appears not to be possible.
- I can't see to get rid of old colony ships without killing people.
Reply #122 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Zero G Sports Arena says it has a 55% bonus to moral, Virtual Reality centers only have a 40% moral bonus, even though VR centers are a more advanced tech. Doesn't make sense to research, and upgrade my Zero G arena to a VR center when a VR center gives me a smaller bonus.

I'm playing the latest version of the game, and I noticed this during the campaign. I'm not sure if it's isolated to the campaign or if it's a persistant error.
Reply #124 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
The Mind Control 'wonder' doesn't seem to work. According to description, it should make planet defects almost instant.

In my game, I was playing a smaller map with low # of planets, being the Yor Collective and placed inbetween the Terrans and Drengi. Eventually, my culture overtook their entire borders, and the Drengi capital revolted to my side. Their other two planets were near revolt too, so when I saw the 'Mind Control' building, I said great, lets build this on their capital. I finished it, nothing happened. After a while a group of Terran planets around a star closest to my systems, also came up with the revolt warning. Still, despite having Mind Control, nothing happen. I ended up winning the game 100 or so turns later, but never did get those planets, despite putting up additional cultural colonies around them
Reply #125 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I hate the save game bug. I see it every time too. I only got 4 turns into my current game before needing to quit for a while (had to play taxi). I really don't want the wasted turn this early. I would just restart but i got one fantastic homeworld. I have not experienced the reload crash bug though, and I am running a below specs machine*.

The other problem is the plant view screen regarding weeks to completion for projects. It does not match the info on the planet list pop-up. The pop-up is usually correct and the plant window is off by one. EX: first turn current game, 50% taxes, 100% capacity, 100% social, focused: produced 30 hammers. Planet screen showed initial factory done in 1 week, pop-up showed 2. An initial factory costs 50 hammers (afaict), so it should take 2 turns. The planet display is hinkey.

*I am not too concerned with graphical glitches I have experienced. I feel fortunate to be able to run the game on my machine. It's a Compaq with intel graphic controller, little older than I would care for, but I own it (like my car, lol). I made all the graphic turn-offs I could and it's been doing ok. I have noticed a single problem that might not be system related. Star base radius of effect. I have a very hard time getting this circle to show up (only once been sucessfull). It would only show from a specific zoom level and angle. The bottom on the radius was at 4 tiles diagonally so i could not even see the whole radius. (I missed planet placement by 1 Pc. crap). I counted it out, so now I won't have to worry about it (8 tiles direct, 5 tiles diagonally). Mentioned it because I read somewhere another complaint about it, didn't know if my specifics would help. Perhaps i will monkey around with "nebulae" setting and see if I can improve it's appearance. I also have inconsistent appearance of FOW (either grey or black, depending on view placement) but figured that certainy, is PC related.