Ships designs broken

from GalCiv2 Forums

I used the search but couldn't find anything related. Maybe I just used the wrong keywords, but in that case I'm sure someone will point me in the right direction :grin:

 

Anyway, my problem is this: I bought GalCivII Ultimate a few days ago. Everything was fine, except the exe crashing after I quit the game, but that might've been Vista related. Doesn't matter.

I played a few short games, trying to get familiar with the game. I designed a few ships and so on, everything was OK. Then yesterday I started a new game and suddenly the pre-build ships looked somehow different. The colony ship was lacking it's colony module - only visually however - and the "flag ship" had no wings (Korx Dominion style).

I quit the game and started a new game later. While adjusting my race I clicked through the different ship styles in the Appearance section and saw that all ship styles are "broken". I checked the ship designer as well, with the same result. The ships don't seem to miss parts, some of them are simply invisible (like the colony module) while others have a very odd angle. Some of the ships look like they've just crashed at the speed of light into the next starbase.

Another problem is that for example I couldn't place the colony module by hand, because he wouldn't show me the module and so I couldn't put it on any of the hardpoints.

 

I already reinstalled the game twice and even manually deleted the folders (Install Folder and the one in My Games\...) before installing again, to make sure the game would install fresh copies of all files). I also updated my graphics driver, though I don't see why this should be a problem as the game already worked with the older version.

I hope someone knows how to fix this.

 

Here's the debug file: http://www.core-project.de/evo2/images/cache/debug.err

and a screenshot. All the different styles look broken like this or miss parts.

Broken Ships Bug

5,294 views 8 replies
Reply #1 from GalCiv2 Forums Top

No one? Not even an idea what could cause this?

Right now I'm wondering what happend to the famed support in this forum.

 

Anyway, I got a new screenshot for you. As you can see, all the ships are "broken" and (don't know if you can see it on the screenshot) one half of the planet is simply gone, i.e. transparent/invisible. That's not how it's supposed to be neither and wasn't like that the first few days until this bug appeared.

 

Bug in Galaxy View

Reply #2 from GalCiv2 Forums Top

That's really odd, especially if it worked fine previously. Have you recently changed your video drivers or anything else about your system?

Sins of a Solar Empire II
Reply #3 from GalCiv2 Forums Top

I updated them and DirectX (Mar09 Update) after the bug appeared, but that didn't help.

The .Net-Framework was updated and I installed another game. I don't remember if it was on the day the bug first appeared or a day before. But unless this game replaced a file commonly used by games for rendering or something, this should not have affected GCII.

Aside from that, there were no major changes in the system.

My first guess was, that the ship templates might be broken. But after 2 clean reinstalls of the game, I'm sure that it must be something deeper in the system.

Reply #4 from GalCiv2 Forums Top

Could it, by any chance, have something to do with the ship templates? I know it shouldn't, because the the problem persists even after a reinstall of the game.

 

I'm running out of ideas right now. I checked the DirectX files that the game seems to use (updates 27 and 28) but size and version number corresponds to the ones I extracted from the latest DX redistributable.

I don't know what else could cause this. It's a shame really. The game itself isn't broken, but I simply don't like to play it with broken looking ships and planets that are only half there.

Reply #5 from GalCiv2 Forums Top

It's really frustrating. I bought Endless Universe on DVD and guess what - same problem. And I still have no clue what's causing the problem.

Reply #6 from GalCiv2 Forums Top

Please contact [email protected], they may have some idea.

Reply #7 from GalCiv2 Forums Top

This HAS to be corrupted *.shpcfg files.

Reply #8 from GalCiv2 Forums Top

I don't see how. I've reinstalled the game three or four times now. In different locations (system drive, game drive), from different sources(Ultimate via Impulse and Endless Universe from DVD).

I don't see how the files could become corrupt every time and there is also the issue of the graphic bug that makes one half of a planet become transparent.