posted 05-16-99 01:38 AM ET        

I have joined a PBEM game for the first time, and discovered a VERY horrible bug... When SMAC exits at the SAVE AND EXIT option in PBEM, it doesn't deallocate most of the resource threads that it has allocated. This seems to steal massive amounts of my Pentium II 400 MHz processor so that I have to reboot my system to regain the allocated resources. While I have to wait a WHILE at shutdown/reboot as the system stops the leftover threads, they do shut down.

This lack of releasing all resources used also seems to occur under normal play, but not to such a GREAT degree. It takes opening and playing SMAC a few times under the same power on cycle to achieve similar means.

I suggest you pick through the code and find what resources you are not releasing, ESPECIALLY under Multiplayer PBEM. In this day and age of Resource Tracking Development Tools, it makes SMAC to appear to be less than the star it should be to be displaying such symptoms.

Also, go check your Graphics code. I do not understand why your program is the only DirectX program that screws up my TRUE COLOR palette. Other games utilizing DirectX do not do so, nor have done so since they started requiring DirectX 4 (and beyond). While I understand that Graphics are a very difficult thing to get working across such a wide variety of hardware manufactures, there is something that SMAC does that screw up the settings and doesn't restore them to what they were at program beginning. This occurs with just opening the program and shutting it down at the main menu (new game, load game, multiplayer, yada yada yada). Once SMAC has messed up the color palette, I have to reboot my computer to reset the palette.