[UNRESOLVED] CTD-Corrupted Save?

[=HighXplosive=]

Whats the shader model got to do with this?

[Tango12345]

Thats exactly what I want to find out. If it has no effect, so be it, if it does, all to the good.

[p00-mca]

I'm fairly certain that this has nothing to do with the mod in itself, but rather something that happens in-game and cannot be handled by the game when loading a save. I have had the savegame problem in campaigns in Empire (vanilla and with different mods), Napoleon (vanilla and with different mods), Medieval 2 (vanilla and with different mods) and Shogun 2 (haven't played any mods there yet). It seems to me that the problem occurs with events of some sort and only affects the games ability to load the save.

I have played numerous campaigns where i save each turn in a new file and when (and if, because it doesn't always happen) this problem occurs, I can "step back" trying to load each save until i find one that works. After loading that one and resuming the game, there seems to be a notably increased risk of the same thing happening again within a few turns (but it doesn't always). Most often, I can continue playing the game for several turns (saving each turn as a new file) without loading again, but when and if the problem reoccurs, all the saves back to the one i managed to load last time will be corrupted, or sometimes a couple of saves past it are useable.

Since I always use new saves, it really seems to be something that happens in-game, a random event of some sort, that makes any saves after it occurs unable to load. I think it's a random event type since it doesn't always occur, but when it does it seems to reappear at about the same in-campaign time as it did the first time.

I really don't think that the problem is directly mod-related, since it appears in vanilla versions. I might however, if my theory that its triggered by an in-game event of some sort is correct, increase or decrease in frequency in case a mod more or less often triggers the hypothetical event type.

No matter what, this bug is well documented by the community by now and it appears in (vanilla versions of) several TW games. It's well past time for CA to do something about it - and let the modding community know what's triggering it.

[p00-mca]

I have tested my theory that the corrupted savegames has nothing to do with them all being corrupted by a game crash or something like that. Here's what I did:

I have a campaign of E:TW (with the Blue and Gray mod 2.6) with two saves each turn. It was corrupted at turn 44 and I had to step back through my saves until I found the latest working one - at turn 33.

I set upp a script that copied each new savegame file every few minutes to a different drive. Then I started playing. Got to turn 43 and then there was a crash, with all saves after the original working one (turn 33) unloadable. I copied the backed up saves from the other drive back to the savegame folder and tried loading them. Same result, none of them could be loaded and I had to go back until turn 33 to find a loadable save even among the backups.

Since there's no way the game could instantly corrupt files that has been copied by a third party script to a different location, the savegame corruption can't be something that happens and that corrupts already existing savegame files. It has to be something that happens in-game (on of right after turn 33 in my case) and that makes all subsequent saves contain information that makes the game unable to handle the loading of that specific information.

I have no knowledge of TW modding, so I can't really troubleshoot the problem or check the contents of the savegame files. But I'll be happy to provide copies of the "turn 33 file" to anyone who wants to take a look?

[The Librarian]

Sorry for bumping this, but I wanted to use one of the bigger topics on this subject instead of starting a new one. I had the save game problem on turn 53 and beyond of my GB custom campaign. The earlier saves still worked, but every time I reached turn 53 the save crashed on loading. So I decided to follow the suggestions of resetting scripts and reinstalling the mod. Retried the mod, every save past turn 53 still crashed (even new ones).

Then I decided to reload an earlier save (turn 52) and try some things differently. I autoresolved or retreated from all battles, avoided attacking any armies, but still repeated the build/agent/movement actions I normally did. The main difference is that I didn't go to the East Indies trade theatre with one of my fleets. Went past turn 53, saved, reloaded, and... It worked. Pressed end turn a couple of times, reloaded, and it still worked.

I've successfully circumvented the bug. I don't know if it's got anything to do with specific battles, or a problem with the trade theatres, and of course it's impossible to see what the AI was doing, but I want to share the information anyway.