Elemental driving me mental!

Are you trying to research techs that have black borders? Those are bugged, and will crash your game if you try to research them.

no, its always random. i seem to be able to just start the game and wait for it to crash without doing anything. Even on the main menu and loading screens constantly. Then sometimes i can play for as long as 20min without a hitch before it crashes.

has to be a problem on my end. just wish i knew what it was.

Try turning anti-aliasing off.

Also, be sure to post a bunch of the debug files so the Stardock team can solve those crashes on their end!

You're not alone, I can't play right now either.

Head to the beta forum, and use this guide to post a bug. That will help them fix it.

It's not just you, friend. I've only managed to finish One Game of Elemental since the latest Beta Build came out. The hot fix they put out afterward didn't do anything to fix any of the issues except for a crash on startup that I didn't have anyway...

I don't see why'd they bother to give us a Beta build to test if it won't run long enough to accurately Test anything. (No offense SD)

For the next build they need to worry more about making it stable then they do the time-frame of getting it to us. I'd rather have waited another two weeks for a build that actually runs then gotten the build we currently have.

:/

Well in rebuttal to Raven.

If they know about those problems, they don't usually patch with them. Most people have a different hardware and software configuration and it can be very, very difficult to get it right on the first try. You just can't be sure how your code is going to work with every hardware and software configuration.

Sometimes they just screw up. People aren't perfect, even the guys in internal QA aren't perfect. Bugs get through and hopefully we catch and report them.

Big patches like this last one tend to be even worse. Too much stuff in them for something NOT to go wrong. The more complicated you make it, the more things that can potentially go wrong. If you'd waited two more weeks, odds are you would have gotten an even worse patch because there would be so much more in it to go wrong.

Also, some of us have found ways around things. From the earlier bug report thread linked I was getting far in the game myself because of the intense slow down that could make it take 5 minutes to advance a single turn without events. If you can find a workaround though you can make the "game" work and some very useful information for the QA team. A work around is often a very good description of what exactly is causing the bug.

This isn't a game preview, this is real beta testing in all its "glory".

Hmm changed my resolution to 1680x1050 and now i can play fine. havent had a crash for quite some time outside the usual bad save.

Be sure to bug report it with all that information!

If we don't tell them the problems, they can't fix them.

I had some graphics bugs and RCTD until I started running the game in windowed mode. That solved all of my issues...

Indeed I know all of that. There was a time I was a "professional" Beta tester. Meaning I got paid, cash, to test games for various companies. I've tested games at the EA Tiburon Office that was in Orlando, I've tested games at home for Microsoft, I've been in the closed Beta's for numerous MMOs, and part of my job on UO was to test new items and find bugs for them on the test servers. I know all about being in Beta programs.

For Elemental I actually paid for the privilege to be a Beta tester. I know all about work-arounds as well and I've been looking for them. As far as I can tell the crashes Elemental has with this build are all almost completely random. I can't reproduce most of them either. I'll be playing along just fine, hitting my space bar to pass turns, and suddenly the game locks up for no reason that I can find. If I was being paid to do this I'd have to tell my employer I can't test this product for bugs accurately because it won't stay running long enough for me to do so. Seeing as how I'm actually paying to be able to do it, I'd like to make sure by the time the game comes out these stability issues are Solved. (which I'm sure they will be)

Hmm... seems i was wrong. Evil Elemental Gremlins are back and really dont want me to play. I was tricked! Onward to painful crashes!

And i tryed windowed mode. Seems that fails to chase away the crashes as well. Are you all able to save and load games? Thats one thing id really like to be able to do.

Load Game crashes Every time I try.

Same. Also crashes if i go to main menu and try to start another game after leaving one. Need some kind of little bug report to show what was going on in the game process so i can see if i can find a work around. Windows 7 just sends some kind of auto report that i really want to see.

Same here, Loading a game crashes to desktop every single time.

Proof, or it didn't happen!
Man, you're lucky, that you actually finished a game - I've never been so lucky. Either I tried to Alt-TAB in full-screen, or to develop a buggy tech.

On the topic. I haven't tried loading the game yet, but at least I don't get any random errors/crashes. When somthing goes wrong, I know I just made a mistake by not evading an error-prone place.

This round is a bit rough. I'm sure we will have another like it before beta 1 is over. I think what is sorely needed here is a working autosave so we can continue to test. If they focus on a stable autosave, then a crash doesn't have to be game over.

Then maybe we can start critiquing the game. So far, I have no idea what they are trying to do with the economic system because I have to start over before 30 turns. I thought I saw some goods being sent by road, not sure why.

Add me to the 'can't test because of random constant crashes' list.  Beta 1A was so bad I gave up trying for 2 weeks (after submitting reports, of which at least 1 is still 'open').  Beta 1B is no better.  Never got more than ~100 turns in before a crash, often crash at startup, tried various ways to get around crashes only to have crashes at other times, never had a save successfully load without crashing, etc.

And yes, I'm not complaining.

And yes, I realize it's beta and things go wrong and this is to be expected for some and there's a lot of different HW/SW to get to work and etc. etc. etc.

So, I'm patiently waiting for updates at which time I try again.

I know things will work out eventually, and the game will be worth this effort (well, not much effort at the moment, but hopefully in an update or 2...    ).

Im getting pretty far, maybe a dozen cities, 400 or so turns go by pretty quick. I cant tell but i think the AI cities dont have a max pop, i just let em grow a bit then take over the ones ai builds. Free really big cities.

I know its atleast one caravan per city. But anyone know if you can get more that that. Say city A and B are connected. I have A building a road and B building a road, they seem to take different paths. Does that create 2 caravans per city? I never get far with caravans because critters keep raiding my routes.

At least you guys have gotten into the game.  (I'm one of those people who gets a lovely view of working main menu screen, with some excellently balanced gameplay option menus, before crashing at the "creating world" screen   )

Yay.. with new patch i havent crashed at all! BUT! it seems i "run out of memory" which seems unlikely. I have 8gig ram and this game barely touches my comps ablities. It IS the evil Gremlins!

Everyone else have big black squares over the honey resources?

Yeah, that's a missing piece of art.

The out of memory thing is just due to memory leaks, and Elemental being a 32 bit game right now. It can't address more then 2GB, no matter how much you have.

What OS do you have? I have x64 Vista Ultimate, and I am still having crashes [even in XP compatibility mode], in fact I cannot even complete a game, because when a caravan appears on the map, my game locks up immediately, so I have to kill the .exe after CTRL-ALT-DEL. Annoying...

im on windows 7 x64

I can play Elemental for as long as I want, as long as I never build any cities! I even managed to win once as such - none of the other AIs did anything so I wandered around with my sovereign and killed them one by one... But the moment I try to build a city and then end my turn, freeze. It also freezes if I conquer someone else's cities and then try to end turn.

So basically all I can do is explore, kill spiders, trolls, swamp bandits and wolves, and collect gold, those healing potions, and the two types of rings that seem to be in the game. Oh, and kill other sovereigns. Sigh Alas, not much for me to test...

I also can't even browse around in the Kingdom Info screen (even though I can't ever have a kingdom...) - the game freezes if I click that button

A new beta. Maybe those people who bought the game right after the deadline can get the new version?

Or am I dreaming? It's funny. I preordered long ago(before my credit card expired) and they never

charged me. They only did close to the release of the beta, and they tried to use the card with the old

date. Sadly, that doesn't matter. So... any chance?