Missing sail-to options

[LHookins]

I've got an odd glitch where the only sail-to options I have when leaving town are to the fort and my companion ship. I was at Basse-Terre. I sailed north a bit but when I passed the lighthouse I didn't get the option to moor. I went to the World Map briefly and when I returned I could moor at the lighthouse, but still no new sail-to options

I tried several things that didn't work. Loading older saves didn't help. Going to the World Map didn't help. Exiting the game didn't help. I finally fixed the problem by rebooting my computer.

A couple of things I didn't try... I didn't exit and reload Steam, and I didn't try swapping ships. My companion was the Meifeng, and that may be part of the problem. For some reason, the sails are at 99/100 and while I can repair them, they go right back quickly. I may sell that thing; I don't care for it much anyway and I've already got a normal Xebec which is better, if a bit slower.

This has happened twice so far. But if I get the sail-to option when leaving port, I don't lose it until I try to leave a port again.

Now, occasionally in previous games I was missing a sail-to option for the lighthouse, but going back to the dock and back to my ship fixed it.

So, advice: You get a weird game glitch, try rebooting your computer.

I've seen evidence that the game caches data the first time it's run, and that data seems to persist even after you exit the game. Rebooting would clear the cache, and maybe exiting Steam would as well. For example, you notice that it takes longer to load some things the first time you play, but not after they've loaded once? The sail-to problem might be corrupt cached data.

It might just be my poor aging computer's hard drive cache, but I haven't seen problems with any other programs.

Anyone else get similar problems?

Hook

[Raga]

Never happened to me. There were some situations but they were related to main plot (scripted on purpose).

[LHookins]

Once it glitches, it stays that way. Loading another profile didn't help, even after exiting the game. Exiting and reloading Steam didn't help.

Next: sell the Meifeng.

After that: go back to a previous save about the time I picked up my Xebec at Martinique and get the Poleacre too. Keep the Meifeng around a while to see if it happens again.

Oh, and thanks to everyone for the advice that any ships left at Curacao would disappear.

Hook

[LHookins]

Well, 600 hours into the game and it is officially screwed.

When I couldn't sell the Meifeng, I started a new game. Did well until the rum smuggling quest. I never got the sail-to option for Lamentin Bay, but when I was close enough to moor there (without the anchor option so I couldn't), the Ghost suddenly appeared in the sail-to option... along with the Lamentin Bay sail-to option and mooring icon. I got the rum, had truly lousy winds, moored at the Bay, then tried to sail around the north end of the island. I was fairly close to Le Francois when I got a sail-to option for the main town. It was almost 5 AM by this time.

From the town, I didn't have the option to sail-to Le Francois.

I've got enough save points that I might try again, but I'm not optimistic at this point. I found out that rebooting didn't always help.

Short of reinstalling the game, I'm done. This is unplayable.

Anyone got any ideas? I deleted the options file for profiles with problems, no joy. Is there another file that might have some corruption that I could try to delete? I looked around and couldn't find anything.

Any help is appreciated.

Hook

[alex6672010]

This problem could appear because of OS compatibility problems. Try opening engine.exe and playing around with compatibility option.

[LHookins]

Think about this, Alex. I've got 600 hours in the game so far, without problems. If I were a new player, your advice would be correct, and it's what I would tell someone just starting out who was having problems.

There's a problem here, might be hardware or software. It's unlikely the game and OS have suddenly become incompatible. My best guess is either a corrupt file somewhere or a nasty hardware problem that will require a new computer soon. I'd rather explore the cheaper option first.

Anyone know how to verify the installation? Or the proper steps to go through to uninstall the game and reinstall it? Preferably someone who has done it themselves, or has a link to the information.

Thanks.

[LHookins]

I googled how to verify the cache. Problem remains.

[LHookins]

I googled deleting and reinstalling a game as well. I'll have to wait until after midnight to avoid bandwidth restrictions, but I'll do that in a few hours.

Update tomorrow.

[Shenji]

You should try the compatibility solution, if you still not. Sometimes the OS an other unrelated softwares can do weird things to themselves thus make certain software acting weird too, especially when almost everything can secretly modify themselves and other things in your computer while you the administrator never have a chance to notice it. Yesterday I totally lost internet connection for half an hour while on some important thing, just one second before everything was in order. Then I finally found out the IPV4 protocol was mysteriously disappeared...
5 years ago I called this action of malware, now it's called auto updating for YOUR convenience, the hell with it only.

[LHookins]

I've got Windows updates turned off. But you're right, things happen behind your back.

[Raga]

If sail to option just disappears on every save it seems that sail to script just stopped working (game function in code got corrupted) I would try to validate game files from steam or deleting local content and reinstalling the game.

[LHookins]

The sail-to option only shows the local fort when I'm leaving the docks. It will show other ships in the area, like my companion. Sometimes it works, but when it stops working, it doesn't start back up until after a reboot, but it may quit working right away even then.

Validating the game files didn't help, although there were a few files that had been corrupted. I slept through the unlimited bandwidth window last night, but I intend to try reinstalling the game tonight.

[LHookins]

Turns out a new download wasn't necessary. I had a complete backup of the game files from long before the problem. I realized this after I'd deleted the local game files through Steam, but Steam found the restored backup and verified the cache. Originally there were 7 files that had to be fixed, and I know what 5 of them were: 4 I'd changed intentionally and the default options file in the main folder, which had corruption from when I changed the "glow". I remember getting similar problems with PotC.

I had problems with one other program that I didn't mention: my antivirus thought it wasn't activated, and activating it properly didn't change anything. I've updated it and it works now. You may understand why I didn't mention this before.

I've got the game restored, but newer save games still had the problem. I've reverted to an old save game before the Dutch Gambit, which I wasn't enjoying that much.

Two possible problems: I have been restarting the game after a game crash (which happens all too often), and the problem started after I was save scrumming the storekeeper to get the destination I wanted and was hitting the buttons really fast at the time. The game just crashed again (engine.exe) and I did a checkdisk and rebooted, which I'll probably have to do from now on.

Further updates as events warrant. If this doesn't work, I'm reinstalling PotC.

Hook

[Raga]

You could just permanentny break a script - and I can assure you that script status is not kept in save games. When you save in the middle of the script you break the game.

[LHookins]

I know about script status. Like using quicksave in the middle of a dialog breaks the dialog. Some people use this as a cheat. I don't do stuff like that.

It's possible that some script was trying to run and I interrupted it with the save. But I'm sure I've saved on the dock before a passenger got to me to finish the passenger delivery quest and it didn't break anything; next load the passenger talked to me. Haven't failed a passenger that way yet. There could be any number of things going on like that, that we don't know about. I'll keep an eye out for it, thanks.

Keep in mind that I've got considerable experience with Storm engine scripts from PotC.

Still, I do appreciate your input. Eventually someone's going to say something... anything... that triggers something in my mind and I'll hopefully figure this out. There's something I don't know yet, or something I'm not seeing yet, and almost anything can make me look in the right place, no matter how indirectly. Besides, it makes me think. :) Any input can be useful.

Hitting keys too fast doesn't allow everything to initialize properly, and I suspect that's part of what is happening.

I got a glitch last game, but right after it I got a CTD with ntdll.dll, so the basic instability of the whole system, my hardware and their software, probably caused that, and the ntdll crash was going to happen shortly anyway. I get a lot of ntdll crashes both in this game and others... oddities with the SSD I suspect.

Hook

[LHookins]

I may have found the correct voodoo to make the game work. I haven't had the glitch the last several times I've played. Maybe the problem has worked its way out of the system.

I do not play a game again after a crash without rebooting. I'm starting the game from the Steam console rather than a desktop icon, this seems to help. I'm not hitting keys as fast as before, making sure to leave at least a half second on most things, a full second or more if it seems like something may need to be loaded, although I will scroll through dialog options at normal speed.

Besides my virus program getting messed up, I had a corrupted graphics file after a save. Luckily enough I was able to load it anyway, despite the warning, and only the lower 20% had a problem. I had another copy of the file and pasted a good version over the bad part of that file, with only minimal work needing to be redone.

At the time, it was my only copy of the mostly completed map with region boundaries. I moved it off the C: drive and left a link, and made a copy of the file. Right now, the only thing on my desktop that's not a link is the recycle bin.

Looks like my SSD C: drive may be dying, or it might be a RAM problem. Time to shop for a new computer.

Hook