GalCiv2 Problems - Heard of these before?

Before I get into the problems, I just want to say that GC2 looks like it's going to be flat out awesome (once it's stable

heh). Definitely better than GC1, and that's saying a lot.

However, I have had a few serious snags - I'm not sure if you're aware of them, and I haven't seen any posts relating to them for 4C.

I'll start off with basic system info before I go ahead with the problems..
AMD 64 (Socket 754, unsure of core designation) 3000+ (2.00GHz)
Radeon 9800 Pro 256bit/128mb, 8xAGP, FastWrites on (GDDR2, I believe)
1024mb PC3200
ABit motherboard (can't remember the model off hand - it's based off the K8T800 Pro chipset)
Win 2k SP4
GC2 v0.78[b].005
DirectX 9.0c
ATI Catalyst 5.08 drivers
--

Problem 1) When set to fullscreen mode, tabbing out and then back in causes the game to crash. "GALCIV2! 004131b3()"
Problem 2) A few random crashes related to memory access
Problem 3) Even though I may be the most powerful civilization, it doesn't show me there on the quarterly report. It also often comments that I have 0% of the galactic influence, though that is clearly not the case..
Problem 4) Rather often, the game acts extremely oddly. This normally occurs at the tech screen after a successful tech research, when you are prompted to choose a new tech. This CAN and does also happen any time (ie when I'm surfing across the map looking for something, in the government screen, pretty much anywhere), but primarily it happens as I first described. When it happens on the tech screen, none of the tech tree is displayed below the tech list, and there is no "done," button. However, the techs are listed in the top left box. If you hit the turn button, it's still clearly responding to messages as you can hear the associated click on audio. However, nothing else happens, and further attempts to hit the button result in no response. This problem occurs within 12 turns 99% of the time, and often with only a few turns between problems (requires you to exit game, load last auto-save, obviously this can be quite frustrating). If this occurs while say, checking out the map.. everything above the bottom 20% of the screen goes black and stays that way. Alt+F4 does still work here without an unresponsive application message, so it's not an actual crash as it is something really funky going on..

The above problem happened while in the ship design screen, as I went to cancel out. Again, top 80% black, bottom 20% is there. Below is the end of the debug.err file when it happened on that occassion.

Debug Message: TotalTech: 763432
*DEBUG ERROR: ***ForeignTreatiesWnd: Unknown edit field Foreign_Treaties_Lines_Window type: DrawingWindow ***
Debug Message: ForeignReportWnd: Cannot find OBJID Foreign_Report_Race_Button_11
Debug Message: ForeignReportWnd: Cannot find OBJID Foreign_Report_Race_Image_11
Debug Message: TotalTech: 763432
Debug Message: TotalTech: 763432
Debug Message: TotalTech: 763432
Debug Message: TotalTech: 763432
Debug Message: TotalTech: 763432
Debug Message: TotalTech: 763432
Debug Message: TotalTech: 763432
Debug Message: TotalTech: 763432
Debug Message: TotalTech: 763432
Debug Message: TotalTech: 763432
Debug Message: Yearly Status Dialog
Debug Message: Yearly Status Dialog 0a
Debug Message: Error. String Not Found. Table: AchievementWnd String Name: TradeGoodBuiltHeadline
Debug Message: TotalTech: 773169
Debug Message: TotalTech: 773169
Debug Message: TotalTech: 773169
Debug Message: TotalTech: 773169
Debug Message: TotalTech: 773169
Debug Message: Error. String Not Found. Table: AchievementWnd String Name: AchievementBuiltHeadline
ASSERT ERROR in file .\Source\Screens\ShipDesignScreen.cpp at line 2683.
ASSERT ERROR in file .\Source\Screens\ShipDesignScreen.cpp at line 2683.
ASSERT ERROR in file .\Source\Screens\ShipDesignScreen.cpp at line 2683.
ASSERT ERROR in file .\Source\Screens\ShipDesignScreen.cpp at line 2683.
Debug Message: TotalTech: 773169

If there's any other information you need, please let me know.

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ScottTykoski

Join Date 03/2001

+132

Hey John, Glad to hear you're enjoying it thus far. As for your bugs...

1.) Yeah, this one will be a problem until we're feature complete. As features get added they tend to break the alt-tab stability.

2.) We're stomping these out as we find them.

3.) This is on our list and should be fixed for the next beta.

4.) This...is definatly a weird one. Next time you get this could you email us a screenshot of what's going on. I've never seen or heard of this happening, but perhaps an image will help us hunt it down. Thanks for the feedback, and keep it comin!

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Aye, of course there were also a few other bugs - but I see a few people have posted about them already.

I did have a weird crash, a function in lib3d.dll. I forgot to jot down the details though, unfortunately.

As for the last and perhaps oddest bug - I updated to Catalyst 5.11 drivers, and it no longer happens. If you wanted, I could revert to 5.08. Might've just been a weird driver bug, it's probably easier to recommend that everyone installs their latest video card drivers than try to find whatever weirdness between GC2 and Catalyst 5.08 is going on.

I do have a screen shot of the phenomenon. If you want to take a look for kicks, just tell me where I should send it to.

Although, I do have a few new problems with the 5.11 drivers.. I was playing, and all of a sudden I just got random garbage on the screen. After I Alt-F4'd out (thankfully it wasn't a hardlock), I ran GCConfig. GCConfig did the same thing, random junk all over the screen. This all happened when something in lib3d bugged out. It's done this other times afterwards, but it's always been a hard lock on the subsequent ones (had to restart the PC).

I also got an error with GC2 not being able to flip the backbuffer to the frontbuffer, this only happened with the 5.11 drivers.

Ah well, I'm having fun so long as I'm not pulling my hair out with the crashes..

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