If you have Windows 2000 or XP you can try this UNOFFICIAL test exe. I will be updating this link periodically until we get the official update out. I'm using an newer version of the DirectX SDK on my computer than the one that Brad uses to create the offical builds, and the version I'm using is not supported on Win 98/ME.
Before extracting the contents of the zip file to your GalCiv2 install folder, backup your GalCiv2.exe and Lib3D.dll and your save games, just in case.
http://sd.stardock.com/carielf/gc2/GalCiv2MemTestWinXP13.zip
If you get an error about missing D3DX9_28.dll, here is a link to that file in a zip, which can be extracted to your GalCiv2 directory:
http://sd.stardock.com/carielf/d3dx928.zip
This test file is meant to
1) fix crash when loading save games
2) reduce save/load times (may only be slight difference)
3) make it less likely to crash while saving.
4) This version attempts to abort saving rather than just crashing when it runs out of memory while saving. However, it is still possible to max out your memory so badly that the game will crash even if you're not saving.
5) You may get a few missing strings because I'm not including any data files with the exe.
6) If anyone has been having the bug where the Metaverse submit dialog does not pop up at the end of a game, please let me know if you have that problem with this build, as I may have fixed this problem.
7) I took out some unused debugging code that may have caused slowdowns.
8) Fixed a random crash when you or the AI would colonize a planet whose surface had not been initialized.
9) Build 10 has the changes to the combat reverted back to the old system.
10) We also fixed a bug in the planet surface code caused by a timing issue; if you colonized the planet before it was initialized, it would fail to create the initial colony and then crash.
11) I fixed a few bugs in our resource manager.
12) Reverted the code that calculated the total number of stars (based on the number of sectors) to the version in 1.0X2. This will also affect the number of planets. This should save a lot of memory and increase performance.
In task manager on the process tab, select View and then Select Columns. Add the column Virtual Memory Size. That way, you can see how much RAM GC2 is using and how much Virtual Memory.
I think that the latest change (less stars and planets) will be enough for an update to 1.1, but we did find other areas where we can decrease memory and/or increase performance that we can try to get into 1.2.
Please report here with results on if your problems were solved, if there are new bugs, etc. If you've been playing with simpler ship designs, turning down the stars, etc, feel free to turn everything up again to abuse the test exe.
