Game crashes after Firaxis Logo.

[Hippity/Hoppity]

I've tried editing the .ini, changing the name of the movies folder, installing several patches and mods, yet the game fails to start after showing the Firaxis Logo. Also enabled DirectPlay.

I am running Win11.

Any assistance would be appreciated.

[Trixie]

I had the same problem. I ended up installing some of the fan patches and that fixed it.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3174853233
Oh I didn't notice you seem to have already tried that. Sorry, I don't have any other advice.

[faxendicke]

I have the same problem on W10

[Alt-Daemon]

I can get past the firaxis logo after turning off the intro cinematic on the .ini file, but now every secret project video does the same crash.

[Induktio]

Looks like there has been many reports about crashes on the Steam version. Hard to say about the cause without further information, but if the game crashes when using Thinker Mod, you can check debug.txt for bug report information. Latest develop build also adds new options to adjust the video modes which might help here. At least it should make using custom resolutions better while enabling alt+enter shortcuts.

• Thinker Mod website[github.com]
  
• Release downloads[www.dropbox.com]
  
• Develop builds[www.dropbox.com]
  
• Discord link[discord.gg]

[Orange Tabby]

Induktio:
Do you have any suggestions on debugging hangs?

They seem to occur on custom designed units which have been automated (shift-A) and are about to fight.

It also seems like those same units may be popping up at random places across the map ... but I am less certain about this.

[Induktio]

Originally posted by Orange Tabby:

Do you have any suggestions on debugging hangs?

They seem to occur on custom designed units which have been automated (shift-A) and are about to fight.

Does this occur while using the mod or with original game? These kind of issues should not happen very often but I guess they are possible. There is no separate handler for these issues, as usual you would just have to post a savegame on bug reports from which the issue can be replicated. It also might be necessary for some crash bugs unless they happen regardless of the savegame.

[Orange Tabby]

This is with gog+thinker running under wine (9.3). It hangs with thinker but passes if I switch to terranx.

I was toggling between the 2 exes and noticed that the hang seems to change between 2 different places. Is there any other persistent state other than the auto save file?

I need to do a bit more debug before I pass it off to you ... unless you are bored or curious.

GitHub is where you would want the bug report?

Thanks!

[GA01]

I bought this today and had the same problem. I also have it on GOG and it also did not work but I checked their forums and one reply seems to work (menu opens but I have not checked gameplay). Here is the important part of the reply: "Looked around on the internet, as I did not get any firaxis logo, just a small window left in the screen which displayed nothing and back to windows 10 it was. So add DirectDraw=0 in the ini above ds3d=1 and change DisableOpeningMovie=0 to DisableOpeningMovie=1". All I had to do is disable opening movie and works.

[GA01]

Played a few turns it seems to work. I'm a happy camper.

[Induktio]

Originally posted by Orange Tabby:

This is with gog+thinker running under wine (9.3). It hangs with thinker but passes if I switch to terranx.

I was toggling between the 2 exes and noticed that the hang seems to change between 2 different places. Is there any other persistent state other than the auto save file?

I need to do a bit more debug before I pass it off to you ... unless you are bored or curious.

I have to say now the majority of testing is done on native Windows, so there might be issues on Wine that we don't know about. That being said, Wine should have some even more advanced debugging facilities than the crash handler already included in the mod. For example see this question about debugging[unix.stackexchange.com].

Program hangs, nothing happens

Start the program with winedbg instead of wine. When the program locks up switch to the winedbg terminal and press Ctrl+C. This will stop the program and let you debug the program as you would for a crash.

Ideally the issue should be reproducible on the default GOG/Steam installation with the official patch 2.0 + Thinker using the default config. You can also try the older terranx_mod.exe launcher if it affects anything here. If the issue is in any way dependent on other config options, it would be useful to mention them. Savegame should be also included as usual. Bug reports can be filed either on github issues or on the discord server.

[Hippity/Hoppity]

Hi everyone!

I could not get it to work with any mods, but the the XP compatibility patch actually fixed it for me. I can at least run vanilla SMAC with video support on Win 11. However, I couldn't it get any mods to work on it.

Here is the link: https://community.pcgamingwiki.com/files/file/477-sid-meiers-alpha-centauri-xp-compatibility-patch/

[Orange Tabby]

I have been getting up to speed with winedbg. I have it running through winedbg and I can get the process ids but I haven't managed to successfully attach to the thinker process yet. I need to track down the error codes and figure out what I screwed up;) It's going to take me a few days.

I have never been a fan of this style of debugging. I always found a few well places fprintfs to be sufficient.

Thanks.

[Orange Tabby]

Induktio:
I made some progress. The crash seems to be a NULL ptr ... no surprise there.
I grabbed your github repo and setup the xcompile environment and was able to turn on debug.

It looks like it gets stuck in a loop calling mod_enemy_move() which falls through and calls enemy_move(). Then there is a debug msg from terranx about ARTY.

mod_enemy_move 28 26 Plasma Impact Artillery
mod_enemy_move return 11 <-- this is the final fall thru return
**** Enemy doing ARTY... 224 19 0

The above just repeats.

The setting of manage_player_units in the ini doesn't seem to change anything.

FYI...

[Induktio]

Originally posted by Orange Tabby:

Induktio:
I made some progress. The crash seems to be a NULL ptr ... no surprise there.
I grabbed your github repo and setup the xcompile environment and was able to turn on debug.

It looks like it gets stuck in a loop calling mod_enemy_move() which falls through and calls enemy_move(). Then there is a debug msg from terranx about ARTY.

There has been some artillery related bugs in the game, so it's certainly possible. It could even be related to AI-owned Spore Launchers. Not possible to say which location is crashing based on that information. Can you post a savegame with this issue on bug reports if it's easily repeatable?

Option manage_player_units affects only formers and colony pods automated by the player so it's not relevant here.

[Orange Tabby]

Issue #66.

I didn't get a chance to do much new debugging this week.