Civ 3 Conquests Unable to Allocate Draw Buffer, Terminating

[Sidhepriest]

Plain Civ 3 though runs fine. Windows XP SP3, ATI Mobility Radeon X300 video. DirectX 9.0C OK, reinstalled, all files check out, no files missing.

The error is a buffer overflow for sure: the more graphic activity, the sooner it happens. In older times it can take 10-20 turns before the error hits and the game crashes. In the industrial era, when the country is big, the error strikes almost every turn. Any ideas?

 

[Puppeteer]

Wow, I can't find a comprehensive support site for Civ3. Didn't Atari used to have one for Conquests? This sounds vaguely familiar, and I would go look for the official support database if it still exists.

Try start -> run and type in dxdiag . On the display tab there should be some buttons to test directdraw and direct3d. See if the tests pass. (For Civ3 directdraw is probably the only applicable one.)

If that works, try turning video acceleration down. I don't have XP anymore, so this is from memory. Right-click the desktop and choose properties. It's either in one of those tabs, or on the settings tab there is an advanced button with another set of tabs. Somewhere in those two sets of tabs is a slider for how much video acceleration. Try temporarily taking it all the way down and see if your problem persists. If that fixes it, try upping the level until it breaks again.

Another pat answer is to make sure your video drivers and Windows Updates are up to date.

 

[Sidhepriest]

The drivers are up-to-date, of course.
DDraw & D3D work. All other games have no problems. It's Civ3 Conquests specifically that's bugged.

 

[Puppeteer]

Did you try turning down acceleration?

If a clean install still has problems, and a clean install works on thousands of other computers, I could make a point that it's your laptop that's bugged. But truthfully I don't know the issue yet. Hence the troubleshooting steps.

 

[Sidhepriest]

Not yet, won't that make everything unbearably sluggish?

 

[Sidhepriest]

Surprisingly, it worked with acceleration off. Some effects missing, but at least it's gotten through the next turn. And then it crashed on the science screen, when browsing 1 screen back.

 

[Puppeteer]

And then it crashed on the science screen, when browsing 1 screen back.

Crashed with the same "Unable to Allocate Draw Buffer, Terminating" message or a different way?

Others have had this problem, and generally it seems to be a DirectX version issue, and the behavior change when adjusting acceleration points towards either DirectX or the video driver. You say you have 9.0c, triple-check that as 9.0a and 9.0b apparently didn't get along with Conquests, but vanilla civ was fine with DirectX 8. Here is a 9.0c update dated April 2011 (?!): http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=35

 

[Sidhepriest]

Crashed with no message.

 

[Puppeteer]

Crashed with no message.

That sounds like a different problem. Best guess is there is a corrupt graphics file. If I am right then the game will always crash when viewing the science screen for that age you tried to "back" to.

I'd try reinstalling DirectX from the link in my last post for the original problem.

Trying to reprodue the no-message science screen crash by viewing all science ages in different games is the next troublehooting step to see if that is going to be a problem.

 

[Sidhepriest]

DX 9.0C reinstalled, lasts a turn and crashes with the same message, "Unable to allocate draw buffers".

 

[Sidhepriest]

It didn't crash just with the science advisor, also in diplomacy screen, garbling the FLIC palette (weird colours).

 

[Sidhepriest]

OK, so first of all, Civ-3 is written with OpenGL, so all of those Directdraw/Direct3D/control panel acceleration toggles do nothing. Second, C3C did run, though in a weird way. It runs off a flash drive. And is stable. Off the HDD it crashes. Drive too fast for an old game? Big mystery.

 

[Cryptic_Snow]

I'm having the same issues. Did you ever get it solved?

 

[AnthonyBoscia]

Also having this error, as I know other people are having.

For me, the error only comes up with a single scenario, and all other Civ III scenarios and random maps work fine without this message.

The game loads properly, but any attempt to right click on units, access advisors or city screens will cause the "Unable to Allocate Draw Buffer, Terminating" message box with a crash.

Things I have tried already which have not fixed the problem yet:

-Complete uninstall of all Civ III components, followed by a new installation with patch.
-Reverted back to an earlier scenario .biq and completely redid all work since it started crashing. This worked for about a week before the error message came back. In addition, older versions of the scenario which previously worked fine now have the same crash.
-Redid all relevant text files for the scenario. Just like the biq, an edit of the Pediaicons text allowed the game to work for about a week, and then the crash was back.

Can anyone elaborate on what kind of error message "Unable to Allocate Draw Buffer" is? Is this a problem with specific Civ III files or folders, or is this a graphics error from the computer or graphics card? As noted, this only applies to one specific Civ III scenario.

The only other solution I can think of is to pull the old XP computer out of the closet, install the game on there, and see if the error repeats. Any other ideas? Thanks in advance.
-

 

[Cyc]

What scenario are you using? Have you tried any kind of memory diagnostics?

 

[AnthonyBoscia]

Hey Cyc.

The scenario is custom. What's disturbing is that the game has gone several times from functioning to crashing without making any changes to the biq, text, or graphics files.

Just ran the windows memory diagnostics and it found no errors.

 

[Cyc]

Did you change the lsans font?

copy & paste your LSANS.ttf file to LSANS.fot

 

[AnthonyBoscia]

Ok, changed the lsans font.

It still crashes when entering the civilopedia, although it did allow me to enter the city screen (which before was an instant crash). The buildings-large and -small icons were all missing as well, though.

I can always tell when the game will crash as the music is stuck from the get-go, too.

 

[Cyc]

I think I would accidently on purpose delete your scenario and rebuild it.

 

[AnthonyBoscia]

That's not going to happen.

So I went back to an even earlier biq and the game works fine. And when I first had this problem, I made a correction in the text file and it fixed it (for a while).

So it must be the text files(s). Which I've been through but obviously not carefully enough. I may have to reconstruct the Pediaicons from scratch, which will be a nightmare. But at least we know that it has to be either a text formatting error, or a unit or building graphic error.

Thanks for the help, Cyc.