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Bad saved games


Twitch
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This is not cool. I now have two saved games where, after it's done loading, will run for a few seconds than freeze, looping whatever music it happened to be playing.

I tried to reproduce the problem to no avial. At least in the short term. It seems to me that whenever i play for some extended time, then do a full save, quit, and then try to load that game again, I suddenly have a saved game that won't load.

But it's only seems to do so after a while of playing (maybe after a few hours).

I really love this game and aam trying to get into it but this is really hindering the process.

help...

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quote:

Originally posted by Twitch:

I now have two saved games where, after it's done loading, will run for a few seconds than freeze

You might want to try defragging the HD. I had the same problem with the older version of BCM, I now keep a regular regiment of defragging and I havn't had that problem in a long time.

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Same problem here with Campain =( I play till I get the artifact, full save, I shut down my computer for the day, however when I try to go back it won't load.. and I've defraged my system a few times already

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quote:

after it's done loading, will run for a few seconds than freeze, looping whatever music it happened to be playing.

Looking for the cheat commands in another thread I ran across an entry in the faq for a command line command -x0 that stops certain music processing.

quote:

Q. SOMETIMES THE GAME HANGS WHEN RESTORING A SAVED GAME

A. There are reports that this could happen if you have an SB Live! card. Try adding the -x0 command line parameter to the

BCM shortcut and see if that helps. This disables all distance attenuated sound processing and has no affect on the sounds

themselves since BCM does not support A3D or EAX.

Can't hurt.

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It is not a saved game problem. I have found that if you make a copy of your saved game, then uninstall the game, reinstall the game, and put the saves back into the save dir they will start working again. That is the only work around I have found so far. I can run the game for days with no problems untill I close the game down. I have had the same problem with both BCM and BCMG.

[ 04-23-2003, 02:02 AM: Message edited by: KreKol ]

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I've noticed this before, but I've always been able to come back and load the game, granted I haven't played a long time and done a whole bunch of things. I've noticed on my machine that you can't full save the game and immediately load it again, you have to wait a little while for it to load right if you just exited to the main menu. I noticed this when I died, and then went to the main menu and immediately restored my game, the game loaded correctly, but a screen popped up saying I was still dead. So maybe try waiting about 20-30 seconds for everything to "clear" and try loading again? It works for me when I have probelms similar to what you're describing, but it might not be the same thing. Good luck!

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For some strange reason the waiting worked for me. Except it wasn't a matter of seconds, it was more like a few minutes.

Strange, now my games work (for now), but now the game runs jerky.

While this "wait in the menu" trick seems to be a effective work-around, it is in my opinion, no replacement for a fix for the problem.

But I have a Battlecruiser to command.

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Twitch - I am seeing somewhat the same problem but before I annoy Derek with it I want more research/details.

Firstly your profile info is incomplete - what make is your video card.

- how long have you been having the problem?

- What resolution are you running BCM at?

- I don't want to assume this but is this in relation to BCM or BCMG?

I need to know more!

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quote:

Originally posted by Twitch:

For some strange reason the waiting worked for me.

It's a swap file issue. When you play the game for a long time, you end up with a larger swap file on the game. If you exit the game because you were killed and then load a saved game, remnants of your swap file are left over. Waiting for a little while may help to clear parts of it, but to fully clear it you probably have to log off windows and log back in again.

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Here are the list of things that affect saved games.

Also note that saved games are (a) large (B) compressed and packed into one file.

Given the above

  1. Not waiting for the save game operation to completely write out the file. In this instance, just stare at your HDD list
  2. Music playback during saves can sometimes cause the saving to be slow. Hence the SB Live! issue
  3. Using cheats, the Playmod tool etc etc, may, at some point, corrupt the saved game if use ludicrous options
  4. Using a previously incorrect version of a game. i.e. if the VCF indicates that previous saved games are incompatible, thats exactly what it means.
  5. Using quick save too often, as this fragments the save game itself (this feature is going to be removed at some point. I forgot to do it in BCMG).
  6. Insufficient memory
  7. Badly fragment HDD leads to longer times for save/restore operation

Also, sometimes the saved game has loaded, but the game refuses to continue. This would have nothing to do with the saved game, but rather the video subsystem may fail to re-init (it needs to do that each time it starts the game) after previously being shutdown. Hence the reason to get reliable video drivers and/or reduce your acceleration down on notch if you have this problem.

[ 04-23-2003, 08:17 AM: Message edited by: Supreme Cmdr ]

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quote:

Originally posted by Supreme Cmdr:

Also, sometimes the saved game has loaded, but the game refuses to continue. This would have nothing to do with the saved game, but rather the video subsystem may fail to re-init (it needs to do that each time it starts the game) after previously being shutdown. Hence the reason to get reliable video drivers and/or reduce your acceleration down on notch if you have this problem.

Ok after the SC said this I did a bit of hunting on this issue. Like most of you I have a Geforce 4 card(a ti4200) using the 43.51 drivers and direct X 9 installed and I was able to replicate this problem but I also think I found a fix

So if you would like to try this and let me know.

Right Click your background and select PROPERTIES

Display properties go to SETTINGS and click ADVANCED.

Click the TROUBLSHOOTING tab and move the HARDWARE ACCELERTION SLIDER one place to the left.

{Restart PC if requested}

This solved the issue for me but let me know how you get on.

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quote:

Originally posted by Emmett.hendrick:

[QB]

Right Click your background and select PROPERTIES

Display properties go to SETTINGS and click ADVANCED.

Click the TROUBLSHOOTING tab and move the HARDWARE ACCELERTION SLIDER one place to the left.QB]

I was having some issues with my Radeon 9100 & Privateer and this same thing fixed all those problems. I guess a lot of games have these same issues with Video Drivers.

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quote:

Originally posted by Emmett.hendrick:

Ok after the SC said this I did a bit of hunting on this issue. Like most of you I have a Geforce 4 card(a ti4200) using the 43.51 drivers and direct X 9 installed and I was able to replicate this problem but I also think I found a fix

I'm fairly sure it's a driver issue, same video card but using 43.45 and no problems with saved games and no tweaks required.

Which reminds me, I need to seriously update my profile.

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  • 2 weeks later...
Guest Private Cyberoket

quote:

Originally posted by Supreme Cmdr:

Here are the list of things that affect saved games.

  1. Insufficient memory


Can I ask how much is sufficient memory to run this game?

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Decreasing hardware acceleration will always mean a loss of peformance. I have another solution. Start new game, then save it to another slot. Quit game, then restore your desired one. Next time you start BCM just restore this 'fresh' one, no need to sng again. Dumb? Maybe. But it's effective, and that's all I care about.

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quote:

Originally posted by Private Cyberoket:

Can I ask how much is sufficient memory to run this game?

Even though the game states that it runs well with 128Megs of RAM, here's what I found; I started off with 128Megs of RAM and once I started playing for a while, the computer started going back & forth with the swap file and the game slowed down to a crawl(it's a MASSIVE galaxy). Once I upgraded to 512Megs of RAM, which is pretty cheap these days, the game would run ROCK SOLID. Interestingly, I found that if I run the game in a 1024X768 Window (My desktop is at 1162X864), I don't have the problems with slowdowns after several hours of play that I used to have before. If the game did started to slow down, I would have to save, reboot & restart to get rid of the problems.

However, running the Game in a Window is not officially supported so use at your own risk.

P.S. I'm running the Game in a Window as I write this.

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Hey, Mihau's solution worked! I just had a save fail on me (this is the second one, ended up deleting the first one) and I tried everything:

- Upgraded to the bleeding edge video, sound, via, and directx drivers - no change.

- Lowered the vid acceleration down one, move the audio acceleration all the way down, used the -x0 option and shutdown anti-aliasing ALL at the same time - no change.

- Tried all the above AND turned of the music and sound effects in the game, turned the resolution down to 640x480 16bit everything and ALL graphic extras off - no change.

- Defragged - no change.

- Tried AlephZero's idea of waiting at the title screen for awhile (didn't think it would work but I ran out of ideas) - no change.

Undid all of the above and started a new game, saved and exited, went back to my original game and... it worked.

Not that I'm complaining, I got my game back and now I can go back to systematically wiping out everything Gammulan in the Gammulan quadrant, but... ?

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quote:

Originally posted by fenixfireblade:

Undid all of the above and started a new game, saved and exited, went back to my original game and... it worked.

Sometimes when you exit a game, remnants of that game remain in the swap file and if you try restoring a previously saved game or something like that WITHOUT restarting, you end up with an error because the new game conflicts with what's in the Swap file.

Keep in mind this is a HUGE game and so it uses A LOT of memory, you might want to try upgrading your memory from 256 to 512, once I upgraded to 512Megs (from 128), I've had no problems AT ALL, and I usually run it on my 800Mhz machine!

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