Edited game lock-up, part 2: For Ed O'War and Dark Ryder

[Uncle Joe]

Thanks guys for the suggestions, but no, I created no new units. I DID modify the Roman Legionary, slightly, but that had no effect on the first game I edited.

I reloaded the crashed game from it's seed number and tried playing it "as is" with absolutely no modification. It still crashed!!!

I tried a new, editor generated game and tested it before modification. Worked fine. Went back and made the same kind of changes as before (more island, fewer large continents; relocated starting locations; shuffled resources around; modified the Roman Legionary). Game crashed!

By "crashed" I mean I received a Windows message, "this program has performed an illegal function and will be shut down...etc." I have to reboot when that happens.

I've given up on the editor, and in fact I'm ready to toss the whole game. But if anyone has ideas, I'll listen. Thanks!

 

[Ed O'War]

I'm sorry, I'm at a lost. I'm not a programmer, so I have no idea why the game would crash like that. The changes you mentioned sound far less drastic than many of the changes I've made in my scenario, without experiencing that type of crash.

I do occasionally get a message that says something like "Civ3 has caused an error in Civ3.exe", and when you click on 'OK' it exits Civ3 to the desktop, but I don't have to reboot after that.

I don't know what your computer specs are, but maybe you need more memory or a faster CPU. Also, not sure if this was brought up before, but did you install the latest patch?

Personally I think the game is a pretty good sequal for Civ, and I'm sorry to hear you're ready to ditch Civ3. But I understand; after all, if you can't use it, what good is it?

Hope this helps you out.

 

[Dark Ryder]

Two questions:

1) Have you installed the 1.16f patch?
2) If so, did you maybe grab the original hacked editor instead of the 1.16f version?

I'm not sure what happens if you mix-n-match game and editor versions, but I suspect it wouldn't be good.

Other than that, I'm not sure.

 

[s3d]

Hmm, if you _first_ started modded game and _after_ that modifyed something it may crush...

 

[Dark Sheer]

Originally posted by s3d
Hmm, if you _first_ started modded game and _after_ that modifyed something it may crush...

Nah, if you change your mod file after started a game it just make the old game unloadable.

I suspect the coordinate in the cpf file might be wrong in which some civs are moved on top of each other so resulted in the game crashing? Just a thought.

 

[Uncle Joe]

Well, looks like my next step (if I don't pitch it) is to write to Firaxis.

Anyway, I've got a PIII 860 with 190+ RAM. Surely that's enough to meet speed/memory requirements for THIS game. I hope.

I have the 1.16f patch installed, but I don't know anything about a hacked editor. Is there any way to ID it so's I'll know what I'm using?

Re: Dark Sheer's idea, the answer is: I'm not sure. I was able to replay the first game (the one I modified successfully) about three time, with changes each time, but I gave it a new file name each time, also, and played from start to finish within that mod. I never tried to make a mod, play it, and then do a mod and reload into the same saved game.

As for units on top of each other, don't all civs start with at least two units stacked together? As far as I know, that hasn't caused a crash for me -- but then again, I don't know if that's the case in the games I'm talking about.

Murphy was an optimist!

 

[Dark Ryder]

Firstly, I think Dark Sheer was referring to two civs starting on top of one another, not two units.

Second, you're making several changes at once between the version that works and the one that doesn't. Try breaking it down into individual changes and testing after each one. When I first started making mods, I kept hosing (that's the technical term ) my civ3mod.bic, but I was always making a dozen changes at once and didn't know what was causing it. When I went back and started testing after each change, it was easy to tell which one caused the problem, and from there it I could play around with that one and solve it without worrying about all the other changes.

 

[Uncle Joe]

OK, D.R., I'll try that tonight and let you know how it works. Thanks!