X-COM: Enemy Unknown Crash

[Godzilla Blitz]

I'm playing X-COM: The Enemy Unknown (Collector's Edition) and the game keeps crashing at the same spot in early July of the first year while in the worldview screen. I haven't had any problems in forty or so hours of play before this, but now I just can't get past this one point.

 

Does anyone have any ideas as to what might be causing the problem? I'm guessing the problem must be something I've done with my game file--something I've researched in the wrong order, or something bizarre like that--as the computer has run the game fine up to now.

 

Any help would be gratefully appreciated, as the world's fate is hanging in the balance.

[5parrowhawk]

Could you give us some idea of what system you're using? Version of Windows, video and sound cards, CPU etc? Also, what have you recently done in the Geoscape view? That might help.

[Guest [email protected]]

If you saved your game in more than one spot, try loading an older saved game. Did you save your game while trying to intercept a UFO? If you save while having an interception minimized, the saved game will crash. Also, right after you reload the game, try changing your research to something else or cancelling it altogether until you get past the crash point.

 

 

-Micah

[Godzilla Blitz]

Thanks for the replies and help!

 

To try to give you some more info:

 

I reinstalled the game, and then brought back in the saved games, but the problem still occurs, so I am pretty sure that it is something I've done with my particular saved game that is causing the problem. For what it might be worth, I've got the game running on a P3 867mhz, using Windows ME (yuck), 512mb RAM, video card disabled to run the game.

 

I have three usable saved games from right around the same time (June 26th, July2nd, June 19th). All three of them are crashing on July 3rd, but once the June 19th game made it through to the middle of July before crashing. A much older saved game runs fine all the way through to August, so there appears to be something wrong with the latest saved game files.

 

I have been trying to modify things in the saved game file like research and stuff, but so far no luck. I haven't tried cancelling the research altogether, but that's a good idea. I'm on a different computer right now, but will try some more stuff this evening.

 

I may have saved a game with an intercept screen minimized, as I save often and wasn't aware of that problem, but this game crashes in the Geoscape with nothing going on. If I saved a game with the intercept screen minimized, does the game crash right away, or just get corrupted and crash later?

 

Thanks again for taking the time to help. I am writing an "after-action report" for a group of people on another board, so there are a couple of dozen people hoping that I can get this fixed.

 

By the way, in case you're interested in some X-COM reading: the latest report is here. It might be worthwhile to use the links in the first post to go back to the earlier posts for everything to make sense. I'm pretty new to the game, so I make some interesting mistakes in the first attempt. We're currently in the middle of my second attempt (X-COM II: The Earth's Revenge)

[gangsta]

I'm playing X-COM: The Enemy Unknown (Collector's Edition) and the game keeps crashing at the same spot in early July of the first year while in the worldview screen. I haven't had any problems in forty or so hours of play before this, but now I just can't get past this one point.

 

Does anyone have any ideas as to what might be causing the problem? I'm guessing the problem must be something I've done with my game file--something I've researched in the wrong order, or something bizarre like that--as the computer has run the game fine up to now.

 

Any help would be gratefully appreciated, as the world's fate is hanging in the balance.

The game does that. You have to save often. In fact I think there should be a midmonth save point too because the game will crash because the event seems to be pregenerated by some days and when you get there crash. This is probably just some bad programming in the game because that happened in the Amiga version of X-com too.

[Guest [email protected]]

I have experienced crashed several (game) days after after the minimized intercept save. I forgot to mention that there are actually a few steps to overcoming the save game crash (if this is being caused by a corrupt saved game, regardless of how it happened) Load the game that can run through to August. Save it in a blank spot. Quit the game, open explorer and delete all the files in the corrupted save directories. Restart the game, load the save you just made, and start saving over the old spots again. Whatever actually causes this error seems to stay within the files of the save directory, even if you save over it with the game at a different point. Maybe this will work for you.

 

I'm in the process of browsing your after-action reports. It looks good so far.

 

-Micah

[email protected]

www.xcomufo.com

[Mark0]

this kind of error happens to me in while defending my base

at the same spot ,when iu end turn 17, it crash's

if i load it from start and save over the corrupted, still does same.

[Godzilla Blitz]

Thanks again everyone for the great ideas!

 

I tried nuking the research, and doing everything I could think of differently, but the game still crashes. I will try manually deleting the corrupted directories and saving over some of them with a good game to see if that helps get me any further.

 

One thing that I noticed today with the corrupted game is that the XCOM activity charts, UFO activity charts, etc., are all messed up with the corrupted save file. I wonder if switching out the .dat file that is responsible for the info in those graphs would work, or hacking the .dat file.

[Guest stewart]

When you reinstalled did you erase what was there before of install over top?

[Guest wackyd]

I've been having this problem too. I get to a point and it starts crashing. I'm to the point where I might just buy the playstation version of the game! But it's a little but more expensive!

[Guest Bacon Bits]

One thing I have figured out (at least with mine) on the crashes that seemed to always occur at the same time... I figured out that whenever I complete research on a medic of any alien type (I did trial and error with different aliens to prove this) the game crashes before I see the research complete diolouge. anyone else notice that? (I have re-installed clean several times and this continues to occur)

[Guest [email protected]]

Yep, I've gotten a few emails in which people say their game crashed repeatedly until they cancel the medic research. The other possible cause (for wackyd) would be a corrupted saved game file, which happens to everybody at some point. Try reloading an older saved game.