posted 03-11-99 11:45 PM ET     

So I was reading the README file and it said running in 800x600 mode improved performance, and you could force it to use that mode by adding Video Mode=800 to the alpha centauri.ini file. So I tried that.... and it didn't work. Not only did it not fix the crashes, it didn't change the mode to 800. It was still 1024, like always.

So now I'm wondering, does it even read that file? Do all these things we've been putting in there, ds3d=0 and ForceOldVoxelAlgorithm=1, do they do anything at all? I know it writes the file out, because the Modified date changes whenever I play, but, hmm..

So, just to see if I could get 800 mode to work, I manually changed my display preferences, changing to 800x600 res mode before I launched the game.

And it worked. No crashes. All my old saves, the ones crashed without fail at the end of the turn, played flawlessly. I played one game for 6 or 7 hours without a single crash. It is a lot faster, too.