Touching the Unity Rover crashes the game

[Gareth_Bryne]

Hi there!

Recently returned to AC/AX in GOG format. Wanted to try out the patches and the normal Alt-Tab option, specifically Scient's 2.1 and Yitzis 3.5D. In both cases, within 5 turns, I get a Unity Rover. Within 5-10 turns more, if I touch that Rover, the game crashes. This happened for both patches, and for Deidre and Myriam. I remember trying to move them to fungus before the crash happens. Any idea what may have caused this?

[bvanevery]

I don't personally have a clue.

Path of least resistance is to blow off Yitzi's patch, and not see it as a necessity or a value add.  It's not like it makes the AI play better, it doesn't do a thing about that.  And if it's supposed to fix bugs but creates new ones, that's not helpful.  Yitzi's gone, far as I think anyone knows, so it's abandoned work without ongoing support.  He didn't leave enough documented stuff behind him for anyone to be interested in continuing with his work and maintaining it.  So if you remove Yitzi, and the problem goes away, you know the source and your job is done.  'Cuz nobody's gonna fix a Yitzi problem.

Scient is still around and active.  Seriously doubt his work is the problem.  But of course, once you've eliminated Yitzi, if the problem still persists then that's the next thing to try removing.

I only play with the official game binary and my mod, albeit with a hack Scient gave me to save games more frequently.  We were hoping for some difficult to track bug to show up, but it hasn't.  Having lotsa save files is cool though.

I think the main thing Yitzi's patch offered, aside from opportunistic bug fixes, were some extra modding capabilities.  If you aren't modding, or playing a mod that was based on Yitzi's patch, then those don't matter.  In my own modding work, I didn't happen to need anything Yitzi was offering.

[Gareth_Bryne]

So if we speak about the latest and best patch, that is scient, correct? And it includes Alt-Tab?

[bvanevery]

If we're speaking strictly of patches, that only fix bugs, yes that's Scient.  I suppose there are a few minimal modding features but mainly it's for bugfixing.

I have no idea about Alt-Tab.  It is totally unnecessary anyways, as on Windows 10 you can use CTRL-ALT-TAB.  Been doing that with the official binary for years now.  Did all my AARs with it.

[Gareth_Bryne]

It does, but if your screen resolution is high, the result isn't great.

[bvanevery]

CTRL-ALT-TAB is affected by a "high" resolution?  What resolution are you talking about?  I always use DirectDraw=0 in  my Alpha Centauri.ini to get full resolution on modern screens.  Maybe you didn't know about that?

[Gareth_Bryne]

Ok, found a solution for myself. Installed SMACX 2.1, C-A-Tab brings me to a screen with black lines at the sides. Added PRACX 1.11, DDraw=0, works with Alt Tab, but crashes every few turns. Turned DirectDraw back on - no more crashes, Alt-Tab works perfectly!!! It may be related to my Intel Graphics card, I do not know. At least I can play normally now

[bvanevery]

Hm.  When it didn't work, are you sure you started "from scratch" ?  Clean install of an official binary in a new directory, followed by Scient 2.1 ?

But hey, at least you've got something that works.

[Gareth_Bryne]

Yes, I reinstalled the GOG version from scratch, then Scient, then Pracx.