Saved games crash...Help!

D

djk97

Chieftain
Joined
May 17, 2003
Messages
5
Location
Ohio, USA
My saved games (manual and auto) are crashing! I have been running regular Civ III with the 1.29f patch on two machines: a 750 MHz machine with Windows 98, and a brand new 3 GHz machine with Windows XP. I have the same problem on both machines, so it doesn't seem to be machine or operating sysem related.

I can sometimes run a saved game through several steps, and then "poof", it will crash with no error messages. And when I reload the same saved game and re-run it, it will always crash at the same exact place in the same step, usually when units are being moved or when a city produces a new unit or improvement. I am led to believe that the error is not totally random and seems to be related to how the game is saved from prior usage. Perhaps the saved games are being corrupted somehow?

Has anyone else experienced a similar poblem? I tried the usual things such as rebooting, defragmenting, running chkdsk, scanning for viruses, and reinstalling Civ III (after a complete removal). Not being able to read the .SAV file directly, it's hard to check the file for errors.

Any suggestions would be very appreciated.

djk
 
If you still have any of the savegames, please post a few here or email them to me, and I'll see if I can find anything wrong/bad. :)
 
Isak,

Thanks so much for your reply. My email is djk_97_@mindspring_.com (remove the underscores first). Send me a quick email, and I'll respond with some attached saved games. I appreciate your help!

djk
 
Thanks, got the games and have tested a bit. I think you have 2 separate problems, actually.

I didn't have any problems loading the savegames - they worked fine every time (tried 15-20 times). In your email you said that the filesize of the manually saved games are different (~500 kb on XP, ~5000-6000 kb on Win98). That makes me think maybe the two systems are not running the same version of Civ3. I think patch 1.29f compresses savegames automatically, while some of the earlier versions did not - I will have to look through the old readme's to find the specifics, but in any case, that could be the problem, and it could also be the reason why you sometimes can't load savegames (if they're being transferred between the two systems).

The other problem, infrequent crashes, could be related to a memory overflow - specifically something to do with the extreme amount of units (4,000 +) in this game. I loaded the 2025 savegame and pressed 'end turn', and after a few build orders, the game crashed. Then I reloaded and manually set all cities to produce wealth, which allowed me to get to the next 2 turns, but then the game crashed again (possibly because the AI civs were building units too, and the game reached it's maximum.).

Another possible cause, is the fact that you're running with a 5,000 gold deficit each turn, and at the time of the 2025 savegame, you have only 500 gold in the bank. I don't know what the game does about that - maybe nothing, but if continued for a while, I guess it could cause a crash.

Of course, if the crash problems have existed since the early stages of the game, then I'll have to look somewhere else. :)
 
Isak,

Thanks a million for your time and effort.

Actually, I am running the 1.29f version on both machines, but I only load saved games on my XP system that had been save on that system (and the same goes for Win 98). I don't understand why the saved games are not compressed on my Win 98 machine as well. Oh well, I guess my empire building is just too ambitious. The crashes did not start until I reached the Industrial Era. By that time, I guess Rome had grown beyond her resources to survive!

I'll study the issues you've raised and see if a solution is feasible.

Thanks again!

djk
 
Ok, no problem :)

- just to be sure, try reinstalling just the patch on the Win98 machine - just go to add/remove programs in the control panel and remove all Civ3 patches (if there are more than one), then reinstall 1.29f.

Let me know what you find out.
 
Isak,

I've tried all of your suggestions, and some others, but nothing seems to get me around this problem. I think I'm gonna throw this game on the shelf and forget about it. Thanks again for all your help. Take care.

djk97
 
Glad to see I'm not the only foolish buggar who's empire has exceeded the games paramaters. It suck's not to be able to finish a game just when things really start going your way though.:confused: :confused:
 
I know I'm reviving an old thread, but i needed to start one like this anyway.
i'm having the EXACT same problem as djk97, and like he said, it appears to be totally random. Usually when the units are moving or a new one is created, the screen will blink and poof- there's the desktop. But unlike djk97, all my saves are well within memory parameters- i play on cheiftain level and never have huge armies or treasuries. Does anyone know what causes this? I really don't want to give up on this game but i cant just start a new game every day.
 
If you can send me a savegame, I'll take a look and see if there are any similarities between the two games.

I know that the game will crash if there are 4096 units in it, so if you're in the vicinity of that, it is most likely what's causing your problem. You can check how many units there are, with Gramphos C3MT tool, but I'll do it for you, if you don't have that.

I'll be away for a few days (until wednesday) so don't expect a fast response, however. :)
 
Uhhh. I don't see any way to add attachments to the CFC emails, and I'm not sure how to post a download here. Sorry.
But I do know there was nowhere near 4000 units in any of my saves. For me, 200 is a big army..... :cry:
Also, this problem only began recently. I played the game for almost 2 years with no problems. now suddenly every saved game crashes. :confused:
 
I thought I had left my email in the posts above - sorry.

Just send the games to isak_@_privat.dk (without the underscores) and I'll take a look at them. :)
 
I have been playing the game also for 2 years and the same problem began to happen to me a week or 2 ago: the game will crash at one point, and when I load back a couple turns and get to that point again it will crash again. I saved 1 turn before the crash, and when I try to load that game it will crash 20-30% into the load.
This is the second game that started to do this: crash once it reached a specific point.
The game has nowhere close to 4k Units combined.

I tried to diagnose the problem and I found out when I ran drwtsn32 that the game crashed due to: “Exception number: c0000005 (access violation)”

But what dose that mean I have no clue. Any body?

For other people who have the same problem, run drwtsn32.exe it will tell you what caused the crash. I’m running W2K Pro, but I think this program is on all Windows OS system.
 
I don’t know how to solve the problem, but what I know is that “drwtsn32.exe” is a program that gives details on a crashed program. It contains ALL the technical mumbo jumbo (endless lines of code), all the programs that were open at the time, and most importantly what caused the crash. The report goes from top(oldest crash recorded) to bottom( most recent, so when you open up the drwtsn32 go all the way to the bottom and come up. When you get to the date and time it will tell you why your c3 crashed. In my case it is an access violation. But I have no idea what that means.

My system was overdue for spring-cleaning, so when the first time the game started to crash I thought it was a hardware conflict so I formatted the HD and reinstalled W2k. I installed All Bios, and all support software for hardware, firewall and Virus protection and SP4 from MS. I tried to load the saved game, but nothing, crash on load. I started a new game and the same thing began to happen around the same age, 500Ad.

I wonder if the SP4 has something to do with this. I’m going to reformat and start another game later this week, with out installing the SP4. If this starts all over again I’m going to give up and wait till Oct 28 for the new expansion.

I’m running a AMD XP 1800, Matrox marvel g450 eTV 32mb, with all UP TO DATE drivers and bios.
 
@WWWeasel: I tested your two savegames (i assumed they were from you :) ) and the first one didn't load, due to a missing file - i assume that it's a modded game, possibly a GOTM game, is that correct?

The other one crashed hard after loading, with an exception error. I didn't have time to try and figure out why, as I had to leave for work, but I'll test on when I get home. Just thought I'd give you a status :)
 
I have the same problem with save games and crashing; i thought it was a particularly bad cd so i went out and bought another cd; it happens the same way on the same files. So i can't finish a game. This happens on regular game generated maps and on gotm maps. I hate this. I spent all this money on a product that doesnt work. I'm pissed off at Firaxis.:mad: :mad: :mad:
Stop putting out products that dont work:rocket: :rocket: :ar15: :ar15:
 
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