Vista crash?

[ninebullets]

Hello everyone,

I've recently begun playing SMAC again on Vista (I've only ever played it before on Windows 98). When I used to play it on '98 in the later part of most games there came a point where the game would crash between turns. I could usually reload and stop this from happening by changing one of my unit's order, thus preventing the crash from happening. In fact, I remember one time the crash was caused by an allied unit moving through their territory and after countless efforts I discovered the only way to prevent this crash was by sending an air unit in to declare vendetta upon and destroy their unit!

Anyways, this crash has occured again on Vista now, albeit a bit different... now changing my units' orders doesn't prevent the crash. Has anyone else had this problem and does anyone know how to fix it?

 

[Sid]

I'm still finishing off my first game on Vista. Haven't seen this problem, but I'll keep it in mind. I take it this is Alpha Centauri (SMAC), rather than Alien Crossfire (SMAX)?

Unrelated, possibly relevant: 2-3 years ago, when I played SMAX on an Apple Mac, it always used to crash the first time an Interceptor aircraft attacked an intruder automatically.

 

[GooglyBoogly]

Welcome to CivFanatics ninebullets!


It looks like you may be experiencing the interceptor-crash bug
I had the same problem on my rig, and had to disable the mousewheel as suggested in a later post.

You should also be sure that you are running the latest version of SMAC/X and the compatability update.

 

[ninebullets]

Alright, so I ended up avoiding the crash I mentioned earlier by reloading an auto-save from 2 turns ago and changing my units' courses to deflect the allied unit's course. This worked except now every other turn a different unit causes the game to crash and I just can't keep reloading and changing my game (there's no fun in playing a game simply to keep the game from crashing!).

I actually remember that interceptor crash from when I used to play this game except this is with ground units and it repeats.

Since my last post I've tried to update my version of SMAC but I think I only made it worse. I've just been playing SMAC from the files I copied directly from my old version, and despite a black screen glitch everytime I ran the program, it worked fine up until now. So I went and downloaded the SMAC 4.0 patch but after that the program wouldn't run at all (CPU NOT SUPPORTED) and downloading the XP compatability patch didn't help either.

Any suggestions or have I just patched myself out of playing SMAC on Vista?

(And yes I am playing SMAC, not SMAX. My version of SMAX was lost somewhere in computer moves and I can't find it anywhere now. I don't mind too much, I hated all the SMAX factions... the only things I miss are obviously the techs/secret projects and the ability to make maps larger than "huge")

 

[ninebullets]

UPDATE: I've started following the instructions here
http://www.vistax64.com/vista-games...id-meiers-alpha-centauri-run-under-vista.html

I get really confused around the part where it says "create a new Application
Fix in the Compatibility Administrator". I guess I just don't understand this program and how to use it.

In the mean time, I'm actually playing the game off my external hard drive that I used to copy the files from my old computer on. I would obviously like to be able to finish the game I already started though, I was just getting back into it. And I'm sure in the later stages of the game I start on the external there will be crashes too.