Hello,

unfortunately, I have this annoying problem. Some time ago the game started to freeze my complete computer. Now, every few turns this happens. To reactivate the computer i have to press reset of turn it off and then on.

I have Windows XP SP3 with latest patches installed and the drivers are more or less up to date as well.

First I thought, that the installed .NET 4 might be not 100% compatible and therefore I de-installed it and just to be sure it's working correctly I did a repair-installation of the .NET 3.5 SP1. Well, I didn't help at all. Unfortunately I do not have any log-files or tracebacks for you, because the whole Windows freezes (no atl-tab, alt-esc, ctrl-alt-del working any more).

Any clue how I can prevent this?

Turning off the background music seems to reduce the frequency of the freezes.
Is there a debug-mode or something like that, that would help pinpointing the problem?

Cheers,
Thomas

Hey htgoetz, welcome to the forums, although i'm sorry the game is causing you problems like this. I've not heard of this particular problem before.

First off, the currently released version of the game requires .Net 3.5 SP1. The next version of the game will require .Net 4, but we still don't have an estimate as to when that's coming out. .Net 4 builds on existing versions though, so it basically includes 3.5 SP1, so it really shouldn't cause problems.

It's interesting that you think the problem may be sound-related though. Mike (The Developer) has talked about Supremacy having command lines before to stop the music playing, but I don't know if this has been implemented or is part of a planned update because i've never tried it. Give it a try though. Try commands like adding the -nomusic tag to the .exe and see if that works.

One other thing is to try updating your audio drivers. My old computer (Which was also XP SP3) didn't like it when I upgraded the audio drivers though - whenever I tried it, my computer lost the ability to make sounds, so if you encounter the same problem just roll back the drivers.

And one final idea is to try downloading the game again, just on the off-chance that your copy of the game might have some corrupted audio files.

Could you also have a look in your Supremacy folder and see if you can find two files for me. There *may* be two .txt files - Error.txt and ServerError.txt. One (Or both) of these files may be generated by the game whenever it encounters an error or crashes. The files are automatically deleted when you load up the game next though, so you *might* have to look for them after you've rebooted from a crash i'm afraid. But if you can find these files, they may provide some info on the causes.

The next version of Supremacy is going to have better error reporting. I believe Mike has actually already added the new error reporting system to our developer release of the game. Unfortunately that won't help you, but hopefully it will help with future problems. I'll give Mike a nudge about you though and see if he has any ideas.

Thanks for the quick replay, Matress_of_evil.
I have a Auzentech X-Fi Forte sound card, which is basically a creative labs card. I have the latest driver installed -- there are only very few updates to that driver.
I'll check if the "-nomusic" will help.

The error.txt file exists, but it is empty and the ServerError.txt does not even exist, but i have restarted the game after the last freeze and therefore i will have to look for them after the next freeze.

I'll post here if i have more information.

It just happened again!. But unfortunately there are no trace messages in the directory. The error file is empty and the ServerError.txt does not exist. I think, that the computer freezes before the program even has the opportunity to writes those files. It's not a normal traceback or something alike, it seems more something like a Blue Screen or endless loop which is blocking windows completely.
Btw, I have a ATI HD 5970, could it be that the AMD graphics driver is the problem? Or even the dual-GPU card might be a problem. I will diable this features and try again.

Don't worry about not being able to find ServerError.txt; the game only creates the crash report file that is relevant to each individual crash - if the crash is related to the game server, then it generates ServerError.txt. If the crash is more general in nature, then Error.txt is created. If an error involving both occurs, then both files will be created lol. As I don't know the cause of your problems, I had to ask you to look for both on the off chance that either one may be generated.

Since Error.txt is empty, that means the error is either caused by something that the error reports do not recognise, or it's being caused by something external. So chances are you haven't got corrupted files. But this also points to a driver issue of some kind or some other issue.

My current computer has an Nvidia GTX 480, but my old computer had a Radeon HD 3850 and Supremacy ran fine on it. That was only a single-card set up though. I don't know if the game has been tested on a dual-card set up before, but at the same time I doubt Mike would forget to program in dual-card functionality. Try updating the drivers and see if that helps. You could even try something more radical and switch to the alternative Omega drivers, but I wouldn't recommend that unless you're a more advanced user. Make sure you use a driver wiper if you do it to ensure you have a clean install. And I don't even know if Omega support dual-card setups, so doing so would be entirely at your own risk.

I've contacted Mike, but he hasn't yet responded. He's recently moved to a new flat and job though, and last I heard he was still awaiting his laptop to be delivered and his internet to be connected, so it could be a while before he's able to respond.

Well, this freezing of the computer is still happening. I played with the options in the graphics driver, but it doesn't help to get rid of this problem. I had the Unhandled Exception once or twice as well.
I cannot connect the freeze to any specific action. It even happens when i start the game and load my save game and then leave the computer alone, doing nothing at all. I expect it's the graphics driver or, more likely, the graphics interface of .NET. With other games i do not have this kind of problems, but almost all of them are not .NET based.

Other bugs in the game:
when you are making treaties with other minor races there is a bug: If you proposed membership AND propose it immediatly again the following round, then they become memeber, but they don't appear in my list of systems. They remain white on the map and i cannot select them for management at all.

Just a quick question, how much RAM does your PC have? When you report a bug like this it would help if you also mentioned the other specs of your PC (HDD space, CPU speed etc).

Usually, Windows freeze when they run out of RAM and games are really good at eating it up, especially when they are still in development and the developers (Mike) haven't optimized the code yet.

Regarding dual GPU cards, at least in my Nvidia card (230M) I can choose or turn off the cores as I please, so perhaps using only one would be an interesting test.

Well, the specs:
Intel Core I7 975 CPU
6 GB Ram (3GB free with Win XP)
Mainboard is Gigabyte X58A-UD7 Bios F8B
Graphic card is Sapphire HD 5970 with 2GB Ram
Sound is Auzentech Forte 7.1 which is used in 5.1 configuration
I have more than 10 TB of total disk space, mostly Western Digital drives, where the Windows partition has some 260 GB free and the partition where the game is installed has more than 700 GB free.
Winows XP SP3 with latest patches and drivers are latest non-beta as well. I have deinstalled the .NET 4 client stuff in the hope, that the 3.5 SP1 works better without it, but no improvement.

NO overclocking or something like that.
Ram has been checked with memetest86 V4.0 and was reported ok.

Can I provide any other Information which could help?

I'm really sorry this bug is still afflicting you. The information you've provided should be useful to Mike (The developer) in tracing the cause.

...But Mike isn't available at the moment. He's in the process of moving home and doesn't have internet access. In fact, he hasn't even received my original PM about your problem yet, so doesn't yet know about it. Whilst I know the game well, I know nothing about programming and unfortunately can't decipher the error messages.

I've just had one very quick thought though; does the game ever ask you to perform an update? As soon as you load the game, quickly go to the game menu and then click on the "Updater" tab. Turn the updater off. Then close the game as quickly as you can. Then reload the game and see if the error then occurs.

No updates have been released, but sometimes the game thinks an update is available and then gets confused when it can't find it. Some people even get stuck in an infinite download and update loop. Also try downloading This File and put it in your main Supremacy folder. When it asks whether to overwrite the existing file, say yes. That file fixes the infinite update loop problem, so even if it doesn't fix your problem, it might fix a future one lol.

Let me know if it helps at all, and sorry I can't be of more help.

Thanks, I'll try this file.
The game asked once, when I first started it, for an update. I have deactivated the updater now and I'll let you know if it helps.

Hello,

the updater-fix seems to help with the freeze. I didn't have a freeze since I deactivated the updater and replaced the file.

I have got another problem now: At one time I couldn't load a save file. When I tried, I ended up in the main-menu of the game. Unfortunately, I don't have that save-file any more. When it happens the next time I will post the save-file here.

I just had an exception and I will attach the trace-files and all other files which might have useful information for you.

Regards

Hi, i had it again that i cannot load a save file. I'll attach it to this post. I hope you can find out the cause of this problem.
When I try to load that save-file, the game just returns to the main menu.