Save Game Instability

[Munkeh]

Hi.

I'm running the dos version, and have noticed problems saving during missions.

 

My first game went a couple of months in without trouble, but upon trying to load mid-mission, was presented with a blank black screen with the cursor stuck in the topleft corner. No map, not even the stats/buttons/toolbar thingy along the bottom.

 

Now I know xcom can be flakey at the best of times, but I don't recall this ever happening on the windows CE version.

 

Any fixes?

[[NKF]]

That means it's stalling between the Battlescape and Geoscape section. You never see the blank screen with the cursor because that's a dos console. The CE version would either just skip it or crash right back to the desktop if it encountered the same thing.

 

What mods are you using, if any? Also do you still have the savegame? It might help to zip it up and post it here. Someone here might be able to give it a diagnosis.

 

Something similar used to happen when there were corrupted map blocks, and you'd have to press a key and it would display "Can't fit Y Axis" a few times before starting the mission. You'd then get a hall-of-mirrors map section where there aren't any graphics to refresh, so it recycle whatever was on the screen at the time. This might not be the same problem, but have you tried pressing any of the keys?

 

- NKF

[Munkeh]

Actually I have a couple of savegames.

After the first occurance I restarted the game from the beginning and got the same thing. Not consistantly, just here and there. But once it strikes, it sticks.

 

Just running xcomutil btw, nothing else.

Ooh, I also used ClarkWehrEnterprises editor to chage soldier appearance (something irks me about having a trooper with an Indian name and bright blonde hair, for example), but that's it.

 

http://www.mediafire.com/?mbmxhyfpmjb

 

There's the first occurance.

 

Key presses don't help.

And I've tried running the various .exe's directly (not through dosbox), still no difference.

Edited May 22, 2008 by Munkeh

[Munkeh]

Crap.....that's the wrong save! Ignore please!

 

 

........

 

 

*sigh*

I don't think there's a face-palm big enough......

 

Here a save that IS from the tac-map. Not the first occurance though, probably 2nd or 3rd. Same problem though.

 

http://www.mediafire.com/?0yxn2bbyt3i

[Timiditas]

Crap.....that's the wrong save! Ignore please!

 

 

........

 

 

*sigh*

I don't think there's a face-palm big enough......

 

Here a save that IS from the tac-map. Not the first occurance though, probably 2nd or 3rd. Same problem though.

 

http://www.mediafire.com/?0yxn2bbyt3i

 

Same problem here. Running XCom v1.2 in DosBox 0.73, no modifications or uses of xcomutil

Savegames attached. These saves were created DURING a battlescape mission, not at the start.

Saveslot 10 still loads fine.

Saveslot 9 was created some minutes later.

Upon loading this, I see a black screen with the MOUSE cursor stuck top left and the battlescape music playing. Hitting any keys does nothing.

GAME_9.zip

GAME_10.zip

[[NKF]]

What map type is this happening in?

 

The game might be trying to place several of the affected modules, so you might try hitting some keys several times. It might even be a dialogue asking for a y/n response, so try pressing N a few times.

 

Or worse, the game has exited, but the screen hasn't been cleared of its previous contents.

 

I recall when I ran the game natively under dos, if it had crashed but it was not apparent, you could try typing in some console commands to see if that was the case.

 

The command Mode 80 doesn't work under dosbox, but I used to type that in to set the screen back to the 80x25 character display to see if the game had crashed. Or, since you are in dosbox, if you get that black screen with the mouse cursor stuck in the corner, type in exit and hit enter and see if it shuts down the dosbox console.

 

- NKF

[Timiditas]

It's an arctic map at northpole, normal assault mission on a landed medium scout with Mutons in it.

I tried your suggestions.

Typing console commands blindly and hitting enter does nothing ("exit" neither).

Tried hitting Y and N very often and kept it held also to trigger key repeat. Nothing.

I also tried to blindly move the mouse and click where the weapons slots are supposed to be in the initial equipment screen to hear a placement sound. Nothing either.

Looks as if the game is just frozen.

 

Once I had a problem with saving instead loading. As soon as I hit return after typing the name of the slot, the game 'froze' and continued only after pressing return again. Found out later that this was caused by a totally jammed harddisk with ZERO(!) bytes of free space which occured during gameplay because I converted a video file into an uncompressed video stream in the background

 

I can assure you tho, that both of above attached savegames are not affected by that. They were created without background tasks and enough free space left.

 

Normally I would ignore this and just go back to the last savegame since we are all used to these quirks, XCom has. But this exact error is happening somewhat frequently to me and I have not found a description of this error yet in the net.

As a sidenote, it only occurs when saving in battlescape and it doesn't seem to be tied to a specific tileset. Happened on countryside crashsites also.

Edited March 16, 2010 by Timiditas