TDM mod -- unplayable on my computer

[Samurai]

Hi,

I've tried two times now, and both times the game has eventually frozen up during the AI turns.

The first time it was about turn 500, the Last time about 100.

This is really frustrating for a couple of reasons: 1) It happens after investing hours of gameplay; 2) The unmodded game, while playable on my computer, offers little to no challenge.

Here's what happens: I hit the end turn, and the message comes up saying the AI is taking its turn. Then it gets stuck and nothing happens. In the first game, it was Player 2 and in the second game, Player 8. After a long time, I hit CNTRL+ALT+DEL and it says SEIV [not responding].

Can someone please help me? Please?

[Suicide Junkie]

Q) Have you saved your game during play?
Q) Can you reproduce the problem?

If you've had the game running for 100 turns in a row, it is possible that memory leaks have killed it.

Use one of the saves from your freezing games if possible, and as you play, save regularily.
If you can get to a point where the AI will consistently freeze on the next one or two turns, even after closing and reloading SE4, post it, and we will find you an answer.

For now, do you have any details, such as:
- Which TDM race freezes?
- Which techs are available at the time of the freeze?
- Any unique game settings or events?

[Samurai]

Hi,

Yes, I've saved both games. The problem occurs at the same time, no matter how many times I reboot and try again.

The first game, the Aquilaeian Empire freezes. The second game, it's the Norak Continuum.

The first game was low-tech start, no warp points available. As far as techs available, it's very far into the game, so I have almost all the techs. I'm not sure about the other empires, but I'm sure they must be very far along.

The second game was a standard warp point map, all techs available at the start, with mines and stellar manipulation turned off (I thought maybe the first game froze because the AIs were using techs like the Star Creating device and that was causing the problem, or maybe they were laying too many mines).

Thanks for trying to help. I really appreciate it!

[Mephisto]

Samurai, can you post the save games here so we can have a look into it?

[Q]

Samurai what is "a long time" for you and what computer hardware you use?
The reason for this question is that many of the TDM races use a lot of fighters in small fighter Groups and in combats this may give very long calculation times (on my pentium II computer 32 MB RAM, 233MHz up to 15 minutes!).

[Master Belisarius]

Yes Samurai, please can you post the save game or at least, send me it to jlperyr@adinet.com.uy?
Thanks for the report!

[Samurai]

Hi,

Thanks for trying to help!

Which file(s) should I post? Just the .gam file or some of the others too?

Also, I use my own ship set. Does it matter if you guys don't have the same set? I doubt that it does, but I just want to make sure.

[Master Belisarius]

The *.gam file will be ok.

But you can do a test if you want: you know the race that's having problems, then, you can:
1)Load the save game
2)Change the race with problem, to human control.
3) Run the turn, and you could see where is the problem (surelly, a combat with lots and lots of fighters).

[Samurai]

Here's one of the problem games: I hope someone can help.

[Master Belisarius]

Well, the problem is (as Q suggested), that you have a really big game with a big map, and also there exist some really big AI empires, then, the AI take a long time to play their turn.
The Aquilaeian and the Pyrochette are the big ones (I'm proud of my babies!!!), and the AI take a looooong time doing their moves.
To run this game you need a lot of patience, or a monster computer.
I have attached the next turn, but you can get the same result, only waiting... How long you must wait, will depend of your computer.