Introversion

Just downloaded Darwinia from the Humble Bundle.

The intro video loads with no trouble, but when the world loads, Darwinia crashes as soon as you click an area to enter. (Currently, only "Garden" is accessible.)

I then get a black screen, with the error message "Darwinia has stopped working: A problem caused the program to stop working correctly..." Only option is a "Close Program" button.

I don't see any other mention of this error in these forums.

Any suggestions?

Dell Latitude E6420, 8GB RAM, i7 processor, Windows 7 Professional Edition w/ SP1, Intel HD Graphics 3000 card. Windows Update has been run recently.

I'm guessing that since it's a six-year-old game, Darwinia doesn't like some modern components of my system, but I don't know what to look for.

Thanks for any tips!

--Hal

In preferences.txt, there is a line:
RenderLandscapeMode = <0, 1, or 2>

IIRC it's 2 by default. Just change it to one of the other two settings and you should be fine

Thanks for the tip, but there is no "RenderLandscapeMode" line in my preferences.txt file. There is a "RenderLandscapeDetail" line, but it's already at 0. I think I'd already changed this mode from the preferences menu from within Darwinia. I changed everything to the lowest setting because the lag was so terrible.

I've tried running the program as Administrator, and that didn't help.

I've tried running in XP Compatibility mode, and that didn't help.

Any other suggestions?

Try installing the latest graphic driver from Intel?

It used to be that the default was to not include the RenderLandscapeMode line in preferences.txt (if for no other reason than it did not exist in earlier versions of the game). Try simply adding that line to preferences.txt, and let it be 0, 1, or 2. 0 or 1 should work.

xander

As subject says.

I added this line to the preferences.txt, and it did not help.

The graphics card driver was already up-to-date.

Any more suggestions?

The kicker is that it runs absolutely fine on my six-year-old MacBook (which I am going to have to return to the equipment pool soon), but not on my brand-new Dell with significantly higher specs...

Post the entire contents of both preferences.txt and blackbox.txt in [code] tags.

Not familiar with [CODE] tags on this forum. Can you point me to description of format?

I don't see a "blackbox.txt" file in my Darwinia folder, and a file search does not reveal one.

Thanks.

preferences.txt:



Again, I can't find a "blackbox.txt" file anywhere on my hard drive.

--Hal

Have you tried all 3 settings for RenderLandscapeMode? (to be honest I have no idea how to help anymore, so this will probably be the last post from me... )

Tried all 3. No change. I'm thinking it's something beyond preference settings.

Thanks for your help, NeatNit!

Any advice from anyone else?

At this point, I'm really glad I hadn't paid full price...

--Hal

I guess that setting it windowed wouldn't make it better, but if you didn't tried it...

If possible, decrease resolution.

And try adding following:

Are you able to access other levels properly and use level editor?

You said that it works on your Mac properly. Is that same Humble Bundle version?

Hi, Tom.

I'd already tried changing screen resolution to the lowest possible. It didn't help.

I tried adding the lines you suggested to the preferences file, and it didn't help.

The version on my Mac was from three or four years ago-- I paid full price for the Mac version.

I've seen on some forums that some games incorrectly detect VRAM on gpu. That might be one of problems in some cases, but I dont know is there any command line for overriding vram limit in game. If anyone knows....?

Try to play demo version where you have launchpad map. It should be a bit older version, but if this does not work, then there is a problem with graphic card.

http://www.introversion.co.uk/darwinia/ ... -demo2.exe

If there are still problems... not sure would linux version work though.