GUI disappears from screen, can't interact with game after that.

[Kuplo]

Hello,

I uninstalled the game, then reinstalled it and patched it.

Now the game is crashing in the frequency of about every 10 to 15 minutes. What is happening now is that the GUI is disapearing from the screen just as if I had pressed the F12 key (only I didn't press it) and pressing the F12 key again does nothing.

The mouse cursor is still the in game mouse cursor but I can no longer intereact with the game, the screen is like a snapshot of the game screen before it did this, so nothing is moving on the screen.

I can still interact with the game like pressing the F5 key to do a quick save but that's about it. I then have to kill the application in task manager.

TM, is there a resolution for this problem, a certain driver that I can use that won't cause this, anything at all?

Edit: I think the game might also be somehow interacting with Windows Explorer because after I've killed the game in task manager, I notice that Im missing the few icons from the system tray (like the volume, and the Nvidia video properties etc not a lot as I don't keep a lot running in the background) and I have to kill explorer in the task manager and then bring it back up to get the normal icons in my system tray. So somehow the game is causing windows explorer to have issues it would appear. Just FYI in case it helps.

[Kuplo]

A Positive Update:

I was able to play for longer than before by playing in "window" mode. Granted it's harder to scroll around using the edge scroll of the game (please consider making the hotspot for edgescrolling just a hair bit wider to make it easier to play in window mode, yes I know about the middle mouse button) but at least I've been able to play for more than 20 minutes without the GUI doing it's disapearing act on me. So this is a positive thing.

Maybe this information will help TM to track down what is causing the disapearing GUI bug if they don't already know what is causing it.

If the bug returns while in window mode I'll update this thread but so far the prospects seem positive since I couldn't play for more than 10 to 14 minutes before, everytime I tried before.


2nd Update:
I'm sorry to report that just a few moments after going back into the game I attempted to place a road and the game locked up on me. The GUI was still there and the mouse cursor was still there and movable and I could hear things like the road noise when you have a road piece on the end of your mouse and you hold down your left mouse button but I couldn't get the screen to refresh so I couldn't even see the game screen itself but the GUI didn't leave so it's still slightly positive and maybe again this information will help TM to track down what is causing this, regardless if it's in the game coding or my computer, Im really not opposed to having to set something right on my computer to play this title that seems to grow on a person.

[Need_Help]

Sometimes I also have the problem like your 2nd update in your 2nd post. I always ended up using 'End Task' button to close the game. Hopefully there will be a new patch to fix this problem.

Thanks :)

[Kuplo]

Update:
Could it be shadows that is causing the crashing? I've turned off or turned down all the settings and managed to play for about an hour give or take and then decided to turn up the settings one by one to see what iif anything I can do before it crashes.

I turned on the shadows and within 10 minutes or so the game locked up hard and I had to press my reset button to get my computer back. Ctrl Alt Del did nothing to break away from the game once it crashed.

I'm going to try it again tommorrow morning and see if I can pinpoint at what settings might reliably make the game crash frequently, at least if I stumble on something such as that, I can leave off whatever setting it is that causes it. But Im still unsure at this point if the shadows were what caused it, or maybe it was just it's time to crash again.

[Need_Help]

Shadows is not a problem (for me). I think the problem may be caused by some of the graphic settings, which made the computer need to 'work hard' to render the game and finally, the computer just 'gave up' and crashed. (that means the game should be optimized so that it will not use too much system resource)

Thanks :)

[mouse]

Kuplo shadows were a known issue with CIV for some people specially once cities hit a certain size. This game is built on the same game engine.

[Kuplo]

Thanks for the information Mouse, I had a feeling it was building on the same game engine. Which may be a bad thing since I had no problems with C4 (well other than usual lag with large maps) so maybe it's not even related to the shadows, but I'm going to remain hopeful since I no longer an ATi as my video cards and am now using Nvidia technology so maybe....

I shall remain hopeful until TM can suss out what's going on with this game and the problems it's looking like it's got.

Now, back to trying to pinpoint if I can make it crash with a specific setting.