Map stops painting

[DanNeely]

I've spent about 90 minutes playing the tutorial during which the map has stopped painting three times forcing me to exit to the desktop and restart the game. The game doesn't appear to have crashed since I can still open any of the other dialogs but although the mini map scrolls the main map does not update. After this happens attempts to load a save game result in the same thing happening. All the controls around the edge of the screen are working but the game loading screen is not replaced by the main map.


I'm playing v 1.01 (impulse)

Win7 ultimate 64
i7-920, 6gb ram, 2xGTX260 SLI

[Andrew Loveridge]

Could you attach a DxDiag?

[DanNeely]

as requested.

[DanNeely]

There appears to be a graphics related factor in the problem. I tried updating to the most recent WHQL (195.62) drivers and instead of not painting the game instead freezes completely and I get the windows dialog reporting that the game is no longer responding. I also tried the latest beta drivers (195.81) but the behavior was identical to 195.62.

[Andrew Loveridge]

Unfortunately, there is a issue with some NVidia cards and the tactical battles.  The developer is working on it, and we hope to have a patch soon.  Try minimizing the graphic settings, that should allow you to run the battles.

[DanNeely]

None of my problems have occurred during a battle. Every crash has been while in the star map.

[Ntronium]

This can sometimes be caused by screensavers.
If it happens press Alt + Enter to force the game to run in a window. There will be a short pause while it reloads everything. Do Alt + Enter again to return to full screen mode.

[marc420]

I'm seeing the same thing.  But it doesn't have anything to do with screen savers.  It just happens anytime you leave the game and go to the desktop.  There's this very strange behavior where the desktop background has become the game map, and if anything disturbs that map, like clicking the button to go to the real desktop, the map is hosed and the map stops painting and the game must be restarted.

The buttons on that stupid advisor thing still work, so I can save and quit the game.  And it looks like it should reload from that main game menu by pressing Load Game, but that always leads to an unhandled exception.

Someday I wish game programmers would realize that the DOS era is long gone and that windows users frequently switch between windows and do things like check email, read the manual file, or come to this website while playing the game (since the only game documentation these days really comes as free work by users on these web forums).  Switching between programs is common behavior these days.  Expecting a customer to only remain in your game is so DOS.  Hitting Alt-Tab to go to another window, or letting a screen saver or energy saver screen blanker kick in, or hitting Go To Desktop should be standard tests run on your software from the very beginning.

As a record of how the only useful information is on these forums instead of in the manual, the ALT-ENTER combination listed above as a potential solution to this isn't in the hotkey list in the manual.  Apparently you had to come here to find that.  But, on my system, coming here crashed the game.

PS ... since I know you'll want to give me the stock answer you try to brush everyone off with, I don't have a Nvidia card and I can't stand the silly tac battle system and never use it.

[Terl]

ORIGINAL: DanNeely

None of my problems have occurred during a battle. Every crash has been while in the star map.

Give a try to turning shadows all the way down. I had issues with my nVidia card as mentioned above by Erik and turning the shadows down fixed it. The game still looks fine while playing.

[Iceman]

As a record of how the only useful information is on these forums instead of in the manual, the ALT-ENTER combination listed above as a potential solution to this isn't in the hotkey list in the manual.

Hmm? ALT+ENTER is not a game specific key combo...

[Terl]

ORIGINAL: Iceman

As a record of how the only useful information is on these forums instead of in the manual, the ALT-ENTER combination listed above as a potential solution to this isn't in the hotkey list in the manual.

Hmm? ALT+ENTER is not a game specific key combo...

ALT-ENTER is a windows thing... it maximizes a window...that's why it is not in the game manual