Matrix Games Forums

I purchased a copy of Starshatter from the Matrix group at the Origins convention just a couple of days ago. The "out-of-box" version was v.4.02.

I applied the v.4.5.0 update/patch over this, without applying the interim v.4.03 patch, if that is of any significance.

I didn't detect any problems at first from all this.

Yesterday, however, I attempted a campaign mode of play. In the "Highland" stage (second), I would complete a mission and save the progress. However, when I bring up a saved campaign, and try to access the remaining available missions for that campaign stage, all I get is a flicker of the mission title without the missions filling out as a list. Therefore, I am unable to continue progress.

Thanks for your attention,

Ed

This problem appears to be date-based.
Here is a segment of a savegame file I just created using Starshatter 4.0.3 - it should be the same in 4.5, but I haven't tested that specifically.

SAVEGAME

campaign: "Operation Highland"

grp_iff: 1
grp_type: 2
grp_id: 18
status: 1
basetime: 0x80469bf9
time: 0x00009e60 // Day 01 11:15:44

The basetime entry contains the start date of the campaign (from your computer's built-in clock) and is used to drive the star system simulation. The problem is that the timestamp is now larger than two billion, and when saved in this hex format it "wraps around" to a negative number.

The manual workaround is quite simple. Just open the save game file in notepad and change the basetime value to start with a number less than 8 (e.g. basetime: 0x7F469BF9). In other words, just change the first two hex digits from 80 to 7F and you should be OK.

Sorry for the inconvenience.

Thanks for the help. [:)]