[1.07] Game loads, but cannot actually play it

from Elemental Forums

At first I was overjoyed by the 1.07 patch, since the performance jumped drastically for me.  However, now I can no longer actually play the game.  (I have the hotfix after 1.07 installed as well)



After installing the 1.07 patch, everything loaded up fine, and I played for an hour or two with absolutely no issues.  I just tried to load up my save game, though, and Elemental doesn't do anything.  The menus work fine, the sovereign and race creators work fine, and I can load the map and building editors without a problem.  But when I go to actually *play*, elemental just sits there.  This happens for save games, new games and even new campaigns.  I've given it as long as 5 minutes, and it just never loads the map, it just sits on the tip screen with the music playing.

 

The really weird aspect is this, though.  I switched from full-screen to windowed mode so I could keep the task manager up (it was the only other program running) and see if Elemental was actually doing anything.  And, to my amazement, the game suddenly worked as before.  I exited, reloaded the program, pulled up my savegame and that worked fine too - I ran through a couple tactical battles, everything was normal, and then I exited again to write this post.  However, then I realized I never checked to see if city construction still worked.  And it turns out I'll never know, as Elemental fails to load anything in both windowed and full screen modes now.

 

What I did glean from watching the task manager while in windowed mode, though, is that it seems like something is just not getting initialized.  On the two occasions it worked while in windowed mode, Elemental's CPU utilization was running around 40-50%.  All the times it hasn't worked I've never seen it jump above 10, and its usually in the 1-5% range.  And its not like it spikes up to 40 and then goes back down - from the moment I hit the 'play' button, it just stays around 5%. 

 

I never had any issues with the maps loading before, either in the beta or in the previous 1.0x builds.  I thought it might be graphics causing the problem, but it gives me the same issues whether or not I have 'use cloth map only' checked.  Tried resetting my system, and that didn't affect anything either.  It doesn't seem like the game crashed, either, as I can alt-tab in and out of the fullscreen mode freely, and the background music and the tip screen text don't even hiccup.

 

What file(s) if any should I post to help diagnose this?  (For reference, my system's a laptop with Vista home premium 32 bit, 2gb ram, intel core2 duo 1.73 ghz processor, ATI mobility x1400 video card.  I know its a bit below specs, but as I said I was able to play fine in the beta, and the only other issue I've had since release was the black screen on loading which seems to have gone away for me)

4,636 views 6 replies
Reply #1 from Elemental Forums Top

Please open your debug.err file in notepad, and link the contents into a post here via pastebin. This will give us some technical information that can help troubleshoot your problem.

The file can be found in My Documents\My Games\Elemental

Be sure to copy the debug immediately after the error occurs; if you start the game again, the debug log will be erased and recreated for the new session.

Star Control: Origins
Reply #3 from Elemental Forums Top

It's hard to say just what's going on as the debug doesn't seem to indicate much aside from a few alt-tabs followed by an exit. What point exactly is it hanging at now?

Reply #4 from Elemental Forums Top

Once I hit play, the game will go to the screen that pops up while the map loads where it gives you the name of the world and some type of hint.  And then it will just sit there.  As I said, there isn't any type of crash, and the menu music keeps playing fine, but it just never goes from the tip/loading screen to the actual map.

Reply #5 from Elemental Forums Top

Barring dev feedback post-weekend, if you're not using any mods (if you are, try getting rid of them), go ahead and give a fresh reinstall a shot if you can.

Reply #6 from Elemental Forums Top

Just finished a fresh install, actually.  No change.  Fried my custom sovs and custom races entirely too (in addition to not using them), and that affected no change either.

One random thing I did notice is that it looks like the intro cinematic doesn't seem to be loading for me either (had it turned off, but I tried frying my preferences file to see if that helped, and the recreated default turned it back on).  Don't know if that's related at all, and hitting escape jumps past it to the main menu just fine.