Patience for crashes running thin

gallagher118

Join Date 07/2005

Patience for crashes running thin

I just started a new job, and therefore can only find time here and there. (was happily un-employed for last year (extended vacation)). I've had a game going for over a week now, I TRY to play for around an hour here and there. But it's getting harder since almost every time i play I end up with a lockup, an out of memory, or just a crash to desktop. I used to soldier on, send in the exception data, but I'm getting disgusted.

I had thought getting the expansion was a no-brainer, but now I'm really not so sure. I'm beginning to think I'd be better off waiting 6 months or so after the release while you work out the bugs. (and don't add any more)

Seriously Stardock what the hell are you doing ? GC1 on OS2 I never once updated the game and was completely happy. GC1 on PC, again completely happy, and didn't even realize I could update it for around a year. (and then got another 6 months out it)

GC2 I've been playing solidly since it came out, but how many updates have there been and I'm still having basic stability problems ? The only reason I'm still playing is I like the game, and don't have the time to invest in something else.

Please get a handle on the problems, or I think even the fan-boys are going to start realizing their folly.

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Right here :
Debug Message: Save Game: About to save
Debug Message: Saving game C:\Documents and Settings\Glen Gallagher\My Documents\My Games\GalCiv2\QuickSave.sav
Debug Message: Num Sectors Across: 12
Debug Message: Saving: game mode is metaverse.
ASSERT ERROR in file .\Source\memman.cpp at line 1384.
ASSERT ERROR in file .\Source\memman.cpp at line 978.

Oh well. The new beta does seem stable.

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The newest beta runs fine. (played around 5 hours today with no problems) It's not my drivers. It was the BETA. As I said some of the previous versions ran fine on my PC, some didn't. That's why I am inclined to not believe a system problem.

MY POINT again, was that Stardock is not properly testing (or polishing) their software. I just don't understand why so many of you ignore the crappy job of testing/polishing/balancing that stardock has done.

Uhhh, the whole POINT of a beta is to see where it crashes, collect the data on the crashes, and release a non-buggy version as a full version. So I'm not completely following you with how you can possibly hope to blame Stardock's testing procedures when the builds that are giving you grief are builds that *will* have bugs and they are making available to the public that want to help them test them to iron out the bugs. If you were having this many problems with an official release build, I could see your point. As you're playing a beta, I have exactly 0% sympathy for you. I crashed maybe 2 times on release 1 and since they patched to 1.1 I have crashed exactly 0 times. I have run the beta exactly 0 times, see a correlation?

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I've seen several posts like this. It baffles me why anyone would get fired-up over bugs and crashes in a pre-release version of the game. If someone is having problems with the official release, that's a different story, but if pre-release bugs make you that angry, don't play the beta...duh!

BTW, I mentioned a problem with 1.2 earlier in this thread where the game occasionally hangs when quicksaving toward the very end. Turns out I'm getting an "out of memory" error. I just couldn't see the dialog box because I run the game full screen.

I believe there is a known problem where the game can consume all of the virtual memory when saving a lot with a gigantic universe. I quicksave almost every turn toward the end. So, I increased my virtual memory to the max and I'll see if that resolves the issue. Hopefully this is something that will be fixed in the next release.

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Did you upgrade to the latest official build of 1.2? They had some memory leaks with the first release of 1.2 that were fixed by a later official patch.

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My main point again was that at this time we shouldn't be having these sorts of software problems. I don't ever expect stability problems. Bugs are fine. Stability and memory issues should be top on thier list, and I don't get the impression that they are.

What is going on that they can't manage the memory usage this late in the games life ?

I probably shouldn't have posted at all, since it was beta. However, there have been a lot of stability problems overall with this game. I am mostly trying to get Stardock to slow down, and release a clean expansion.

As I have said, I used to be more forgiving. After this much time, my patience for these sorts of bugs is wearing thin. (even with a beta) I will not be buying the expansion until i see what ends up happening.

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What is going on that they can't manage the memory usage this late in the games life ?

A whole slew of new features/abilities that weren't coded into the original game AT ALL? I would tend to guess that would cause instability issues.

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Frogboy

Join Date 03/2001

+2415

Don't know what to tell you gallagher except that betas are prone to crashing.

If you really want to help, download from Stardock Central (in the free stuff area) Smart Exception. Then, when it crashes, send us the report it creates and that will tell us what line of code it crashed on.

But obviously, since the forum isn't littered with crash reports, you have to realize that it's not a widespread problem. It could be any number of things that others simply aren't doing or haven't run into.

But if you find crashing unacceptable in a beta, then don't download betas. We make no promises that betas won't blow up completely. Stick with 1.2 which, incidentally, was considered very stable by most people (in a poll of over 2,000 people -- on a support forum!) only 2% of users were having technical issues with 1.2 (and that could be any number of things).

It's never a good idea to extropolate ones personal experience into a generalization.

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There's lots of things you can do to make your system more robust for gaming.

Check out this artcicle.

Love this site, too bad it doesn't include GC2.

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Did you upgrade to the latest official build of 1.2? They had some memory leaks with the first release of 1.2 that were fixed by a later official patch.

Hey, thanks for that. Yes I was using an old build (dated 6/15). I downloaded and installed the latest one. I figured the version number would change on a new build...Stardock, please add another number to the version for that. It's not enough to only change the file name.

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Well, I think they changed it up to say "1.21" or something of that nature. Not 100% sure on that end. I find the best rule of thumb to determine if I'm running the latest build is to fire up stardock central prior to running the game each time, just in case. Just don't have 'show pre-release builds' checked or you'll end up patching into the betas.

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Not using Stardock Central. Don't see the need for it other than having ready access to live support. The forum seems to work well enough for that and I download the updates from the web site. Web site states version 1.2, should say 1.21.

Game seems to be running better with the latest update. I'm not getting lags and disk activity when closing the game down like I was before which is a good sign. Haven't made it to the end of my current game yet (where I was having problems before), but I think it's resolved now. Thanks again.

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Hey, glad I could help.

I see the need for Stardock Central in that I open it, and it pops up and tells me if there is a new non-beta build out. I guess I could click a few more times and just go through the web page, but I'm lazy.

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