well, crap. I had high hopes that this was causing both the constant failure of game initiation AND the less frequent in-game CTDs... haha, no.
Ok, so I'm running (well, trying to) the game at variously 1280x1024, or 1024x768, both in-game (through prefs.ini) AND by changing my desktop. I've tried fullscreen AND windowed (through both prefs.ini AND changing target command). I've tried skip intro or not. I've re-downloaded and re-installed the latest Invidia drivers. I've, of course, downloaded both game updates, including the magical one that helps my fairly nice video card destroy itself through overwork. And finally, I've tried upping my page files to 4GBs. And I've hopefully tried every combination of all the variables above...
The fact remains that GCII has only ever properly initialized three times, CTD all three of those times for reasons unknown after working perfectly for an hour or so; has initialized fully only to CTD while trying to go to the main galaxy screen many times; but has otherwise totally failed to open and always "caused a problem and needs to close" (AppName: galciv2.exe AppVer: 1.0.0.1 ModName: unknown ModVer: 0.0.0.0 Offset: 0012a8e8 Code: 0x0000005 Flags: 0x00000000 Record: 0x0000000000000000 Address: 0x000000000012a8e8), sometimes after going to a black screen, sometimes without even blinking.
I am extremely tired of trying to make this high-maintenance game work (or open), and am about ready to turn off the computer and start dreaming of the MOOIV release. The most maddening part is that the game has worked great a few times and I can tell it's a fantastic game. Why would you program it to make sure it "takes advantage" of 110% of video resources, no matter how great those resources are? That seems like a dumb approach that just asks for trouble. That said, I don't regret my purchase, but I'm also upset that I haven't received a response to my initial request for help for four days now (VZE-631177). I completely understand that the devs are extremely busy and tired trying to make everyone happy and to provide prompt game updates, but for the most part it seems these updates are geared towards inane-bulls**t updates regarding very very minor bugs (my apologies to those who are going crazy because their ship designs aren't re-loaded with 100% accuracy, or whatever else. At least you got to actually spend time worrying about that crap in the first place).
Anyway, not trying to offend anybody, but I'm just frustrated by the slow response, the same error message appearing 8,000 times, and, most of all, the complete inconsistency of the problems/solutions I've had to attempt.
If anyone has any advice they can give me, beyond "are you sure you're running 32-bit?", I would really really appreciate it.... for know, I'll try this latest build version and see what happens...
