MP Troubles SMAC / SMACX

WhiteElephants · May 7, 2001, 19:37

I been having trouble for a while with switching between my turns of SMACX and SMAC. If I play the turns of one or the other I can play the turn, zip it, send it, and load another turn without trouble. When I go between the two formats I often (but not always) get garbled screen color in pastel hues (purples, pinks, yellows) and can't see what's going on when I load in the turn, which inevitably results in a reload.

My question is: Does anyone else have this trouble? Is there a fix?

I haven't found any direct correlations between which set of turns I play first and which ones I play last, and my remedy thus far has been to log off my ISP, restart the computer, play the turns, log back on my ISP, and then send them. Needless to say, it's rather annoying.

And yes, I have all the patches. Thanks ahead of time.

Misotu · May 7, 2001, 20:06

Oh well, I know this probably isn't what you're looking for but I often have video problems with PBEM turns as well. I don't get your pastel hues problem, but I *do* get a menu-draw problem which means that many of the screens are unusable.

Only reason why I mention it is because both sound like video card problems, and I get those *in spades*.

Found your post interesting, because I have noticed that it's worse sometimes than others. Sometimes I can play many PBEM turns without a problem, others only a couple. And I *bet* that it's to do with switching between SMAC PBEM turns and SMAX PBEM turns, though I haven't checked it yet. So thanks, this might help me to avoid it in the future.

Unfortunately, I have found no solution other than regular reboots

What I can tell you is that changing my video card does produce different results (either better or worse) but that I have not found the perfect environment for eliminating these problems.

Still ... White Elephants, you are not alone

Googlie · May 7, 2001, 20:32

Sounds like too simple a solution, but have you tried changing the prteferences and inserting the couple of lines into the .ini file that are suggested by Firaxis in the readme.file?

I had frequent crash problems which were (largely) solved - at least the frequency drastically decreased - when I did this.

G.

WhiteElephants · May 7, 2001, 20:46

Thanks all, I'll check that read me file and see what it says, though I haven't had any terran.exe crashes.

Garth Vader · May 8, 2001, 18:24

I have had the same kinds of menu crash problems as Misotu mentioned. I noticed that if I play mp3's during/inbetween turns I will get regular crashes. Once I stopped doing that I haven't had a problem since.

big_canuk · May 11, 2001, 10:49

I get the menu draw problems too. It seems to happen only if the boys play AOK in between my smac(x) games. Although, on reading the above posts, it may be because of playing both smac and smax. I was planning on a new video card. Looks like that may not solve the problem.

Xerxes2 · May 11, 2001, 13:45

I always go completely out after each game end. Never have problems that way.

Darius · May 11, 2001, 15:26

If you finish a turn in one PBEM, how do you start another without completely exiting the game?

WhiteElephants · May 11, 2001, 15:55

I don't know how you play a turn and not exit. Never happens to me.

I was wondering about RAM. I only have 64k, but I imagine with all of us having similar problems at least one of us probably has more.

I'm curious what you all mean by menu draw problems? Is it actually an error that appears on the screen?

I don't have any kind of video card either, only what came with it.

Misotu · May 12, 2001, 20:50

I have 128 MB of RAM. The menu-draw problem occurs in varying degrees of severity. What happens is that, although the game appears normal when it loads, many of the "menu" screens don't display correctly.

At its most severe, this would mean in the F4 screen, for example, you would not be able to scroll down and the columns would not display correctly. The research options screen will have only text, no pictures, or nothing at all, just empty boxes. And so on. Datalinks will display as a series of partially complete and empty boxes, so you can't use the tech tree. Biggest problem is that, when you come to end the turn and save, the boxes are all empty and simply hitting return (in the hope of creating some sort of save you can search for) produces no effect.

Sometimes the problem is less severe and it's possible to limp through a turn. Mostly for me, though, the turn is simply unplayable.

If I try to change from one menu screen directly to another - for example, an infiltrator screen directly to the F4 screen, which can be done - then often I get a buffer size exceeded error message and the game crashes.

As a general case, when I exit the game after the worst occurrences, my PC display settings have been bombed and things like the colour settings and screen size have to be re-entered through the control panel.

It's a bummer, trust me