Games crashes a few hours in

from GalCiv2 Forums
Ever since I upgraded to the latest patch, the game crashes at certain random points (well semi-random - see below) when I hit the turn button. It is a hard crash to Windows with the "report error" prompt. I've tried three games with different galaxy sizes in case it was a memory problem although I have 2 gigs.

Once it crashes reloading the game from the last auto-save or the previous one doesn't help. I have it saving every 2 turns and if I go to the last auto-save it crashes in 2 turns and the previous one crashes in 4 turns like clockwork. It is semi-random since in each game there was nothing in common about the point where this happened. I have not seen a specific pattern and each game crashed at different progress levels. The first one was quite late in the game. The second was about 1/3 of the way through the game and the latest was quite early. It does seem to be getting earlier but I assume that that is luck.

I have all the latest drivers and Windows patches (running XP) and like I mentioned this is only happening after the upgrade. Before that DA was running perfectly.

Help would be appreciated since the game is now unplayable.

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Reply #1 from GalCiv2 Forums Top

Well, without any technical info, like the debug.err when the game has crashed and the associated smart exception report, the devs can't help you.

 

Reply #2 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
And besides that - since this games likes ram, and Windows generally can only allocate 2GB to an application (unless you manually set it up differently), it is wise to save your game often so you can revert to a recently saved game.

I always save 2 files at the same time - i.e. 'Game1' and 'Copy of Game1'.

And I save at every significant point in the game, sometimes (especially during a war) several times during the same turn.



If your problem is an actual bug in the game it won't change anything. And in that case you need to have Smart Exception running and send the report to SD support.
But if it is simply because you have used your memory allocation, you might consider other steps to allow Windows to allocate more memory for GalCiv2 (which will let you get further along in the game, but may not solve the problem entirely).
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Reply #3 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I always save 2 files at the same time - i.e. 'Game1' and 'Copy of Game1'.

I do two saves just before I hit the turn button *every* time. Ctrl-L and Ctrl-S make it no trouble. After the game's been running a long time, it fills up all the memory. Doing a save can result in a "save aborted, not enough memory" error. Gotta have the backup save when that happens because the game wipes out the first save. I've had this problem since day 1. DA does it too. Maybe it's just me, but I still have the problem on my new machine with 2GB of RAM. I just restart the game and load the backup save until the next time it runs out of memory.

I also archive some of my saves. I had a game go wonky on me just recently. It crashed to desktop when I hit the turn button every time. I went back to one of my archived saves and it's been fine. Although, I did lose a chunk of my game, but I made it back up.

Reply #4 from GalCiv2 Forums Top

It crashed to desktop when I hit the turn button every time.

Have you send it to the devs? I think they are always interested in reproducable crash

Reply #5 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I have all the latest drivers and Windows patches (running XP) and like I mentioned this is only happening after the upgrade. Before that DA was running perfectly.

Help would be appreciated since the game is now unplayable.


If you're not intending to beta test the potentially flaky newest builds, it's best to stick with the final releases, that last of which was 1.61. To get back to that you can just turn off the 'show prerelease versions' option in SDC and reinstall.



If you do mean to beta test the new patches, you should send your DA debug.err, crash logs from SmartException (install it from SDC's free section and run it before the game), and any saved games that you can reproduce the crash from to [email protected].
Reply #6 from GalCiv2 Forums Top

If you have auto-save files that crash every time, please zip them and send them with your debug.err file to [email protected].  That way, we can look at the saved games and have a better idea of what caused the crash.

Thanks.

Reply #7 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Will do. I think that I kept all three games so I'll send all three.
Reply #8 from GalCiv2 Forums Top


It crashed to desktop when I hit the turn button every time.

Have you send it to the devs? I think they are always interested in reproducable crash


Well, I'm kind of lazy that way. I rarely file bug reports and never do beta testing. However, I sure don't seem to be lazy when it comes to complaining about what I don't like. Maybe I should be more involved. In any case, I figure there are enough people out there willing to do that stuff. That was the first time that's ever happened to me in the myriad of games I've played. I discounted it as a glitch and wrote it off.

Reply #9 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I wanted to send the saves but realized that I had overwritten the ones I wanted to send. So started a new game. Got a lot further than previously but eventually it happened again. I have it so that if you hit "turn", it always crashes before all the auto-stuff completes. Nice and repeatable (I'm a programmer myself). Now the problem is that I can't find the file to send. I've found my DL saves but nothing new. Where are the files?
Reply #10 from GalCiv2 Forums Top

My Documents\My Games\GC2DarkAvatar.  If they're campaign games, they'll be in the Dark Avatar or Dread Lords Campaign subfolders.

Beta 3 is up now so please try your games with it before sending in anything.