[BTS Total Mod] Thomas' War

[HannibalBarka]

Hmm, I'm determined to fix this bug.
If anyone else is experiencing this it'll help a lot as then I'd have something to compare your save to so I guess I'll just have to wait till someone else posts.

played with the patch for about 12 hours. It crashes some times (once It made my PC restart completly , and couple times it just exited Civ), but the weird thing is that it is random: when I reload at the latest save and try to re-crach (and saving every turn to send the file) nothing happens !!!! Basically I had crashes that I can't show you
in the actual game I'm in the renaissance era and no problem so far
Great work Thomas

 

[Yngvi]

This is my first post; I signed up just to help this mod, which is great.

Before the patch, crashes were fewer, and they seemed to happen always when a leader was contacting me. The patch seems to be making more kinds of problems.

I played with the patch until the Renaissance; then the game started crashing. Twice right before wonder movies (Royal Tomb and National Epic), once when (if I remember right) I was about to access a screen, once for no apparent reason (in the pre-patch, that often meant a leader was contacting me.)

HannibalBarka is right; the crashes are random. When I reload, the same crash does not repeat (the movie plays, the leader contacts me, etc.)

I really don't think it's my computer, which is pretty high powered. In the regular game and the included mods I don't experience these problems.

Hope this helps.

 

[VimesUK]

Hmm. Indeed...

FWIW I d/l your saved game and played for about 30 turns with no problems at all

 

[coreybowman]

here is a gae with events that cause mafs. im at work so i cant look at the civs name but if you press to talk to the blue civ it will cause a maf and if you press the end turn now button it will cause a maf. i thought it was wierd because usually they arent repeatable.it patch to 3.1a

 

[VimesUK]

here is a gae with events that cause mafs. im at work so i cant look at the civs name but if you press to talk to the blue civ it will cause a maf and if you press the end turn now button it will cause a maf. i thought it was wierd because usually they arent repeatable.it patch to 3.1a

worked perfectly fine for me.

Talked to the blue civ - Shuttaran II ( from the Hurrian Empire) and all was well and then ended the turn and the only thing that happened was...

...both Warwick and Newcastle wanted to join the English empire.

So no errors or crashes for me

 

[tsentom1]

None of those saves MAF for me either, which is actually bad cause if it did I could just remove each thing I added to the game for the patch individually till I figured it out.

It's weird because some poeple don't MAF at all some people it's repeatable, some people it isn't.

I'm going to change somethings which could be a likely culprit then post an updated version of the patch (which wouldn't affect saves so you could install it and then play these saves to see if the problem comes up).

Mister Giggles brought up the possibility of Vista causing the problem. Anyone crashing using Vista? Also such things as CivGold, non default install directory, random things like that?

 

[VimesUK]

For me I'm using Vista 64 with 4GB of RAM. I have a E8500 CPU running at 4ghz. Not sure if those factors count towards the stability or not. It could mean that if there is an underlying problem it could be exacerbated by certain resources / software or other combinations on peoples machines..?

However mine is also a fresh install of Civ IV with Warlords and BTS and then patched to 3.17, ensuring that all previous traces of previous install had been removed.

 

[Mister Giggles]

<Rubs chin>

No, nothing like installing the game in a folder other than Programs, Tsentom.

Coreybowman,

What's your video card? Mine is an 8800GTS. Perhaps if we share the same family of card, perhaps it can be narrowed down to a driver/hardware incompatibility that Tsentom specific programming brings to the forefront...

Yngvi,

I ask you the same question of you...

 

[tsentom1]

Another thing, anyone here have Colonization? I use a bunch of Colonization assets since ver 3 and I still haven't ruled out that they aren't the culprit. Now if someone has it and it runs fine and Thomas' War doesn't then that can rule it out. Perhaps the Colonization assets cause problems on some machines.

Also, the movies aren't the cause but they could be adding to the existing things. Does playing with No Movies option turned on significantly change performance?

 

[Yngvi]

I am using Vista. My video card is an nvidia 9500 GT, 3 GB of Ram, Duo Core 2.33 GHz.

What is strange for me is that the movies worked fine until the patch, just like the info screens. It was only the leaders that crashed the game, and that not very often. After the patch, all three are causing crashes every 4 or 5 turns.

But before or after the patch, the crashes only began about the time of the Renaissance.

 

[tsentom1]

The movies are odd namely because I didn't change them at all. I added 3 new static movies but they shouldn't cause a problem let alone hinder the other movies.

Okay, I updated the patch

http://forums.civfanatics.com/downloads.php?do=file&id=11231

Trying a few things out. This won't affect save games of the last patch so if you had a save install this and load the save and see if it helps any.

 

[Mister Giggles]

I have tried the new patch. No change.

It did not matter if movies were disabled, as that removed only one cause of the crash; it crashes at three primary sources, the info screens (Civilopedia included), leaders, and obviously movies.

Yngvi,

Hmm. Your chipset is much different than mine (And much newer). The only thing we share is an Nvidia family video card and, obviously, Vista. Hrm.

The crashes are exactly the same, however.

 

[tsentom1]

I'm still working on the problem also on a few alternatives.

In the meantime I've heard from another tester that setting

; Dont show the game background during movies - may speed up movie playing
HideMovieBackground = 1

to 1 in the civ4config file does help, though don't expect it to fix the problem, but hey every little bit (and it actually hides the game background during movies, leaderheads, and info screens)

 

[Mister Giggles]

Mm, yes, every little bit helps indeed...

Though, this will sound odd...but I've seen the background disappear talking to leaders, despite that setting was set to default. Generally, I get away with it once, but a couple leaders later the game crashes.

 

[tsentom1]

I'm making static leaderheads and wonder movies as well for people who wanted them (was requested) and to help as an interim fix.

I find it odd that before the patch no one was really reporting these MAFs (or was that just because the game stalled before anyone got a chance to experience them?)

Sigh, you need the patch or the game stalls, but then the patch raises more problems... but not for everyone which is probably more frustrating and confusing.

 

[tsentom1]

Mm, yes, every little bit helps indeed...

Though, this will sound odd...but I've seen the background disappear talking to leaders, despite that setting was set to default. Generally, I get away with it once, but a couple leaders later the game crashes.

You wouldn't happen to remember which leaders? Those specific models could be a major cause of the problem.

 

[Mister Giggles]

In theory, all of them. It dies right before I see the actual leader.

 

[mrwhite89]

I just downloaded the mod for the first time - looks like a lot of fun!
But my comp says it does not know how to open the file (needs to know what program created it, etc.). Am I doing something wrong?

Any help would be great. Please excuse my ignorance if this has been addressed in a prior post. Searched this thread a little and didn't see any instructions.

 

[tsentom1]

I just downloaded the mod for the first time - looks like a lot of fun!
But my comp says it does not know how to open the file (needs to know what program created it, etc.). Am I doing something wrong?

Any help would be great. Please excuse my ignorance if this has been addressed in a prior post. Searched this thread a little and didn't see any instructions.

The file is compressed with a program called 7zip which can be downloaded free here. However a bunch of zip programs (I think WinRar is one) can extract 7zip files.

Then simply extract into your Beyond the Sword mods folder - whose default path is usually something like:


Program Files/Firaxis Games/Sid Meier's Civilization 4/Beyond the Sword/Mods/

 

[tsentom1]

Okay, I just made and uploaded Static Leaderhead and Static Wondermovie packs as an option for people to use:

Static Leaderheads

Static Wondermovies

They should help people who generally have problems with Civ's 3D leaderheads and wondermovies.

For people experiencing MAFS that shouldn't, they should also help you. I'm still working on solving the problem for real but more options can never hurt.