Loading screens and CTD issues?

[MKeogh]

Ok, I've been giving Patch #3 a try-out. I'm playing Sweden on VH campaign/H battles. Overall, the campaign is playing out much better than previous versions. The economic system seems to be working well which for me means that I'm not able to spam armies and have to make choices about what to build and where rather than just filling in every construction queue. Also, the CAI seems to be working a little better with this version. It's still pretty weak. I was able to grab barely garrisoned cities from Denmark and Poland without much difficulty. However, it has been putting-up a little more of fight than in previous versions. Still, it needs a lot of work with avoiding going bankrupt within a couple of turns. (Also, I've gotten 3-4 notifications over the game that the Turks have invaded, but they have yet to take a single city. I'm guessing they're stuck at the bottom of the map just milling around an Austrian city that had turned rebel prior to their arrival. The Turks appear to get confused by rebel cities and won't attack them.)

Sadly, though, this mod is still very unstable. I've experienced numerous random CTDs over the course of the 80-90 turns that I've played:
CTDs just loading the game (it CTD's when I press any button to get past the opening movie)
CTDs loading saved games
CTDs zooming into a battle
CTDs after completing a battle to return to the campaign map (the worst sort of CTD)

None of these CTDs have all been repeatable, but they do share one thing in common: they all occur when the game tries to access a loading screen. I know Gigantus dismissed the idea of the loading screens being a problem, but my experience seems to indicate the opposite. (In an earlier version, I noticed a marked improvement as to stability when Gigantus provided a cut-down loading screens folder.)

I was enjoying my new campaign and was looking forward to getting past 1626, but I'm getting tired of tensing myself for a possible CTD every time I zoom into battle or after a battle has been completed.

[Gigantus]

Other then the zooming CTD it sounds like the old problem.
When installing patch 3 - did you have a small DOS window popping up for a short moment? That was the batch file renaming the globallighting folder to globallighting-org. Please check if that happened in your 1624 data folder. On top of that you should have 3 descr_water* - BW files in the data folder which are the back up files for the disabled 'Better Water' sub mod.

[MKeogh]

Other then the zooming CTD it sounds like the old problem.
When installing patch 3 - did you have a small DOS window popping up for a short moment? That was the batch file renaming the globallighting folder to globallighting-org. Please check if that happened in your 1624 data folder. On top of that you should have 3 descr_water* - BW files in the data folder which are the back up files for the disabled 'Better Water' sub mod.

Yes, the patch installed correctly and the globallighting-org folder and BW files are all present in my 1648 folder.

I decided to experiment with that cut-down loading screen folder that you provided in March. It's too soon to be sure, but it does appear to have decreased the number of CTDs. However, I'm still experiencing some CTDs including just losing the results of pretty epic battle between my Sweden and Bremen. I really do suspect these CTD issues have something to do with the loading screens. As I wrote above, all these CTDs occur ONLY when the game tries to access a loading screen. They don't occur mid-battle or during a campaign turn.

Also, on Turn 127 the scroll map function ceased working. (The campaign map scrolling doesn't respond to moving the mouse to the edge of the screen.) The game still works- you can still click on armies and cities and use the mini-map to jump from area to area, but it's annoying not being able to use the scroll feature. I had this problem before with this mod when I played over a 125 turns. It's not as deadly as the corrupted save issue, but it's still a pretty bad bug.

EDITS:

Ok, I decided to delete the entire loading screen folder and let the game use the vanilla ones. That seemed to do the trick. I didn't experience a single CTD. The custom loading screens are very nice, but they're not worth all the CTDs.

The Turks finally took a homeland.

The CAI needs a LOT of help in order for it to function within this mod. It's really, really struggling. This would be a fantastic mod if the AI could handle it better.

The scrolling feature started to work again after returning to the main map after a battle. I guess it's just another random issue.