Crashes on Yard level

[Groxx]

Well, the game has worked perfectly up until I started a round on the Yard level. It's 1.42, bought via Steam, and there's no Blackbox.txt in the folder anywhere.

Video card is an ATI X800 Pro, 256MB, with up-to-date ATI drivers (6..

I've tried all three rendering modes, and all three crashed. 0 and 2 within a couple minutes, and 1 in ~15, but that may have been a fluke. On default, it almost always crashed while I was creating more squads (ie, 4 times in a row). Same as 0. On 1, my troops were just going from one place to another; no combat, no orders, no rockets even selected, nothing. But that's happened on default as well.

My first time in that level, I noticed the research box. So, of course, I guided an engineer over to nab it. 10 minutes after doing so, the game crashed for the first time, and that level has never worked right since (I haven't tried other levels, but I can if it'd help).

If there's any more information you want/need, I'm sure I can scrape it up somehow. I can even copy the error report that MS claims to successfully submit (even when I disconnect it from the internet).

[Groxx]

Okay... an update of sorts:
I deleted everything.
Re-downloaded.
Re-ran.

It's not freezing any more... but again, on the Yard level, stuff starts going wrong. After a certain point, quite a ways in, I can't create any more units. It started doing this before it started freezing, so I'm a bit concerned. If I had to guess, I'd say that I'd easily have made 200+ squads on that level alone. Is there a limitation somewhere I don't know about?

I'll post again if it starts freezing.

[NeoThermic]

Okay... an update of sorts:
I deleted everything.
Re-downloaded.
Re-ran.

It's not freezing any more... but again, on the Yard level, stuff starts going wrong. After a certain point, quite a ways in, I can't create any more units. It started doing this before it started freezing, so I'm a bit concerned. If I had to guess, I'd say that I'd easily have made 200+ squads on that level alone. Is there a limitation somewhere I don't know about?

I'll post again if it starts freezing.

Glad the re-install worked. As for the creation limit, yes, it's an undocumented quirk of Darwinia. Just quit out and re-launch it and the problem is gone.

NeoThermic

[xander]

undocumented quirk of Darwinia

"Undocumented" should probably be written "time-saving," and "quirk" should be written "feature." You see, the game prevents you from creating more units, so that you are forced to get up every once in a while to go out into that big room with the blue ceiling and the unswept floor. ;)

xander

[trickfred]

undocumented quirk of Darwinia

"Undocumented" should probably be written "time-saving," and "quirk" should be written "feature." You see, the game prevents you from creating more units, so that you are forced to get up every once in a while to go out into that big room with the blue ceiling and the unswept floor.

xander

...Cold Stone Creameries??

[xander]

undocumented quirk of Darwinia

"Undocumented" should probably be written "time-saving," and "quirk" should be written "feature." You see, the game prevents you from creating more units, so that you are forced to get up every once in a while to go out into that big room with the blue ceiling and the unswept floor. ;)

xander

...Cold Stone Creameries??

Something like that...

xander

[Groxx]

Woo... long time no internet connection on this computer... (college started)

Anyway, a while after posting that the reinstall seemed to fix it, it started crashing on Yard again. And as to the "undocumented quirk", I've made many more units as tests on that bonus-ish level, in large part to test if it would crash.
Nothing. It ran perfectly, and I'd probably made 500 or so.

it looks like this is something related to the Yard level itself. Any news on an update for this game? It may inadvertently fix it, if nothing seems to be causing it.

[broadcloak]

I've started having crashes on Yard as well (I finally got the game working after upgrading my video card).

The first few levels ran fine, and Yard ran okay for the hour or two I was playing it each day, then I got to a point where I had about 15 Armour units floating around, and I had destroyed a couple of the ants hibernation things. I left the game there, now whenever I try and go back to it, I get about five seconds of camera movement and it just freezes on me, complete with repetitive sound, no way to get out of it or shut Darwinia down without totally shutting the computer down. I've tried the "Renderlandscapemode = 1" thing, no joy.

[xander]

I've started having crashes on Yard as well (I finally got the game working after upgrading my video card).

The first few levels ran fine, and Yard ran okay for the hour or two I was playing it each day, then I got to a point where I had about 15 Armour units floating around, and I had destroyed a couple of the ants hibernation things. I left the game there, now whenever I try and go back to it, I get about five seconds of camera movement and it just freezes on me, complete with repetitive sound, no way to get out of it or shut Darwinia down without totally shutting the computer down. I've tried the "Renderlandscapemode = 1" thing, no joy.

That sounds a lot like a bug from the release version of Darwinia, in which ant hills would sometimes have negative numbers of ants present. But I thought that bug had been fixed. What version of Darwinia are you using? If you open up your user/ directory, and move mission_yard_[somethingoranother].txt to some other location, and start Yard, does that reset the level? and can you play it from that point on? Could you post that file on the boards? Just copy it and paste it into a post, using [code] tags.

xander

[broadcloak]

Ah, nail on the head time, I thought I was running the latest patch, but it turns out I wasn't, so I've patched it up and touch wood anyway, it seems to be working again. Cheers for the help.