civ4 to bts save file conversion?

popmax

Chieftain
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May 11, 2024
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Im so sory if this is a stupid question or if i posted this in the wrong thread. I fell in love with this game as a kid and i have a save that i was playing from back then, i have the issue of the 1mb save file (memmory alocation error) and i canot for the love of me how to fix the crashing. so i checked and the bts version has this fixed? so is there any way i can transfer the save to bts from the original game or not? Moderator Action: *SNIP* Discussion of piracy is not allowed at CFC - lymond I think then i bought the game on steam to hope it would fix something but that didnt help at all. if its not an ok question its ok just using this last resort before i give up and just go start a new save on civ 5. thank you for any tips or help
 
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Pinging resident genius @f1rpo but I don’t think it is possible.
 
Uhm, thanks. 🤪
I can't say that I know much about dealing with MAF errors. 1 MB sounds like a Huge map,18 civs, in the late game. Were you still able to load the save back in the day, or had you stopped playing because it kept crashing? I'm wondering if using the specific version you had at the time would help, but perhaps you've already tried that. Trying the latest BtS version was also a good idea, I think. I'm not sure if savegames have remained backwards-compatible all the way through from version 1.0 of the basegame to 3.19 of BtS, but I guess Firaxis have at least tried never to break savegames. And it sounds like you're getting the same error message with Steam BtS as with your older version (just the basegame, I assume); I'd expect it to crash earlier and without a proper error message if compatibility were the problem. Well, it couldn't hurt to zip the savegame and upload it as an attachment; unless that's somehow too personal. Possibly, removing some of the game's art assets could reduce the memory use enough to at least get it to load once.
If you search, e.g. site:civfanatics.com civ 4 "maf" on Google, there's a lot of discussion on the forums about working around those errors, a lot of things to try, most of them probably futile.

Edit: Re-reading your post, I suppose it doesn't necessarily crash already while loading; maybe only when moving the camera or ending the turn. In that case, removing some, say, less important cities and units through WorldBuilder might be an option. And you're not sure whether you've tried it with BtS. Well, I've run a quick test – no, BtS won't just load a basegame save. I should've expected that too; BtS made a lot of XML changes, and with Civ 4's non-annotated, stream-of-bytes savegame format, it would've been a big programming effort to maintain compatibility with the basegame. I could still try loading your save with my copy of the basegame.
 
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Uhm, thanks. 🤪
I can't say that I know much about dealing with MAF errors. 1 MB sounds like a Huge map,18 civs, in the late game. Were you still able to load the save back in the day, or had you stopped playing because it kept crashing? I'm wondering if using the specific version you had at the time would help, but perhaps you've already tried that. Trying the latest BtS version was also a good idea, I think. I'm not sure if savegames have remained backwards-compatible all the way through from version 1.0 of the basegame to 3.19 of BtS, but I guess Firaxis have at least tried never to break savegames. And it sounds like you're getting the same error message with Steam BtS as with your older version (just the basegame, I assume); I'd expect it to crash earlier and without a proper error message if compatibility were the problem. Well, it couldn't hurt to zip the savegame and upload it as an attachment; unless that's somehow too personal. Possibly, removing some of the game's art assets could reduce the memory use enough to at least get it to load once.
If you search, e.g. site:civfanatics.com civ 4 "maf" on Google, there's a lot of discussion on the forums about working around those errors, a lot of things to try, most of them probably futile.

Edit: Re-reading your post, I suppose it doesn't necessarily crash already while loading; maybe only when moving the camera or ending the turn. In that case, removing some, say, less important cities and units through WorldBuilder might be an option. And you're not sure whether you've tried it with BtS. Well, I've run a quick test – no, BtS won't just load a basegame save. I should've expected that too; BtS made a lot of XML changes, and with Civ 4's non-annotated, stream-of-bytes savegame format, it would've been a big programming effort to maintain compatibility with the basegame. I could still try loading your save with my copy of the basegame.
thank you for the reply i also tried the bts and no it wont load. and yes in the past it was crashing on save or on end turn. now i got the "non steam" version from gog that has the pach for 4mb saves and the 4gb ram usage already on it if i read the forums corectly...the save loads and theres no crashes. im saving on each turn just to make sure. i set all the setings to as low as possible and also the resolution to try and free some memory. i will go into war to finish the world as fast as possible maybe i can get some units killed and it will help the process. the problem is probably cuz i have 4 of each unit in each city and its too much... its a shame such a good game has this kind of problems. will start the next save on bts so hopefuly can go for longer. i will atach the save just for some extra info. thank you ...also please dont judge me this save is from when i was in 7th grade i just started gaming xD
 

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"Future Tech #135" 🫣
The savegame is giving me no problems though. I thought I might win by just cranking up the culture slider to 100%, but, after hitting end-turn a few dozen times, only one city has flipped and I still only own 50% of the world's land, 60% needed. I wonder if it mostly comes down to large-address awareness/ the 3GB switch, but I guess there's no need to explore that since it's working pretty well on your end now too – which I'm glad to hear.
 
"Future Tech #135" 🫣
The savegame is giving me no problems though. I thought I might win by just cranking up the culture slider to 100%, but, after hitting end-turn a few dozen times, only one city has flipped and I still only own 50% of the world's land, 60% needed. I wonder if it mostly comes down to large-address awareness/ the 3GB switch, but I guess there's no need to explore that since it's working pretty well on your end now too – which I'm glad to hear.
Yes i know its an old save i didnt know how to play optimaly back in the day. Its probably cuz my old game version didnt have the patch but this new version does. I managed to go 100 new rounds with no crashes so i hope i can finish it before it all goes to hell. Thanks again for the help. Oh also side note i already "won" i just wanted to eliminate everybody🙃. I wish civ 5 and 6 played better cuz they dont have this error but i just cant get used to all the things to manage. I think bts will be good enough and i wont play this large maps anymore😂
 
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