Can't load saves

[Smitty3]

I suddenly can't load saves from the game I was playing last night - it opens civ4 and goes through the loading process, but then says "BTS has stopped working" and crashes to desktop. I've tried all three of my manual saves and all five autosave slots, and they all do this. The only save that works from that game is the 4000BC autosave. Saves for other games work fine.

I'm playing BTS 3.19 with BAT 2.1. Vista x64, Service Pack 2. My video driver is a year old but I haven't been able to find anything newer for that specific card. I've attached my dxdiag and most recent save file.

I'd like to recover the saves, but I'm mostly concerned with preventing this from happening again. This is the only time it's happened so far, but I've only recently started playing civ4 again, so maybe it will be a common occurrence if I don't change anything. I really have no clue what could have caused it, though. If anyone knows what causes this, I'd appreciate any help I can get.


View attachment DxDiag.txt

View attachment Babylonia 3.CivBeyondSwordSave

 

[GrayInvisible]

I have the exact same problem, so if there is a solution I'd be very happy.

 

[Lord Shadow]

A friend is having the same problem. We were playing a multiplayer game, and last time we tried to resume it, his game crashed when joining the loaded game. Both of us got to the staging room just fine, but he got a Windows crash ("Civ4 BTS has to close" and all that) during the loading after pressing the Launch button.

It's really odd, since we were able to join the same game just fine a number of times in the past. But now, for some reason, his game just crashes, whether he hosts or I do. I strongly doubt he modified anything since last time we played (just a couple of days ago).

 

[Lord Shadow]

It just happened again, and we lost another MP game. I can load the saves just fine, but there's something wrong on his side.

I believe he's using WinXP SP2 32bit, which should be pretty solid, and his hardware is well above the system requirements (If I remember correctly, he has 2 GB of RAM, an E6600 processor and a GeForce 8800GTS). Any ideas?

 

[ori]

@Smitty3: Welcome to CFC

is this just happening with the modified game?

@others: are you using mods?

 

[Lord Shadow]

Should've mentioned it earlier. BTS version 3.19, we're both using the latest version of Varietas Delectat, and he used to be able to load the MP game just fine. He just suddenly started getting crashes, at one point.

 

[ori]

does this only happen with the VD mod - or also the unmodded game?

 

[Lord Shadow]

We haven't tried playing without the mod since the appearance of the crashes, but I don't think it's related. We had been using the same version all along, even when we didn't have any problems.

 

[ori]

well - VD adds tons of stuff and its hard to just say its unrelated especially since it might be save size related which I am sure is much larger in VD than in the core game...

That said: is there an error message when it fails to load the save?

 

[Lord Shadow]

I think it's unrelated because we had been playing VD just fine for a while before he started crashing. I don't think save sizes are the culprit either, as they didn't exceed 362 KB (saved in 1810 AD). The last savegame we had to abandon was merely 152 KB (game date: 200 AD).

As for the error, it's just a standard Windows "<program> has screwed up and has to close" kind of crash.

 

[ori]

difficult to troubleshoot - I fear I won't be able to help rescue these specific saves (In an unmodded game I'd just ask you to post such a save and see if I can open it or find out whats the problem - but I do not have VD installed on my machine).
However for future cases: I'd recommend setting the autosave interval to 1 and increasing the number of autosaves to a much larger number (If you hard drive space allows this) - I tend to just set it to the max number of turns in the mods I use - just in case a save gets corrupted for whatever reason.
You can set these in the civilizationIV.ini

 

[Lord Shadow]

Problem is we don't know when exactly the savegames stop working for my friend (or whether it was something that affected saves randomly or one in particular and all subsequent ones), so the amount/frequency of autosaves might not help at all.

For instance, by the time we realized the 1810 AD save made him crash, it seemed several earlier saves did too, up to 1600 AD! Knowing you've to replay 210 turns (Epic speed) is quite the mood killer. Especially if you know the bug could kick in again anytime.

 

[ori]

I agree - I'd recommend posting this problem also in the VD mod thread - maybe someone there has an idea.
Also: could you post the exact error message that happens when it refuses to load the save? it should be logged in the windows event manager.

 

[Dunkah]

Same problem here.

Using the Bat Mod on Windows 7. Have not tried to run it without the Mod.

 

[ori]

please post this in the BAT/BUG mod subforum - they do extensive .dll work and its well possible some of their stuff breaks saves.

 

[Jit]

In case this provides a hint for anyone to troubleshoot, I've been getting
lots of identical problems for years, loading games. Here in the Himalayas
with very poor power supply and a similarly poor quality UPS, its not
uncommon to get a power cut without the chance to shut down civ. The saved games
that have not been shut down properly rarely load at all, and when they do,
often they run in any of a number of faulty ways; e.g. screen only shows the map
w/cities, or lots of areas w/black squares, or text all screwed up, etc. So,
I've always suspected that the shutdown function affected the usability of saved
games. Hope this info helps someone somewhere. cheers

 

[Fabio GP addict]

Hi all,
I had some problems loading saved files too! :-(

I have been playing BTS, patch 3.19, with BAT mod and Blue Marble with my dear Windows XP.
in 3 games played BTS, I could not load my games 3 times! :-( Civ crashes, I can't load both my saves and autosaves.
but in the last Ragnar game, I can load Autosave (1670 AD), but not Autosave 1690 AD...I don't know why!?

When i played with Vanilla without mods, I never had such matters.

thx for helping me!

 

[Dunkah]

It seems to me that if I play smaller games I can finish them without a problem. Stic to standard size maps.

 

[ori]

if these are modded games you might want to ask in the threads related to those mods.
if certain sizes crash it might be a memory problem (in that you do not have sufficient memory on your machine) that causes this.