Alpha Centauri 2

Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri & Alien Crossfire => The Theory of Everything => Topic started by: Tularis on September 07, 2018, 11:28:59 PM

Title: unable to allocate draw buffer, terminating program
Post by: Tularis on September 07, 2018, 11:28:59 PM

Sooo I get the error "unable to allocate draw buffer, terminating program" when I end my turn and it looks like I am being attacked...
Does anyone know how to fix this?

I've tried reinstalling Directx 9.0c

I'm on Win7Pro x64 with Yitzi's and PRACX..

It's been an epic game and I'd like to see this one to the end...

Title: Re: unable to allocate draw buffer, terminating program
Post by: bvanevery on September 10, 2018, 02:30:16 AM

Hm, I wouldn't expect Yitzi + PRACX to have a problem like that, but it's been awhile since I used either.

If you were playing plain vanilla SMACX, I would suggest looking for an enemy plane attacking your forces, that is about to be intercepted by one of your Interceptors / Tacticals.  That's the #1 thing that locks up my games.  My workarounds are to disband the Intercepter, fly it somewhere else, keep it on a 2nd line for counterattack and never use its intercept capability, build few to none of them, and whap the crap out of enemies before they can start using planes on me.

If that's not it, then be very careful about which version of Directx you're installing.  I haven't contemplated Win7 for awhile, but I think you should not be doing that.  And you've probably messed up your system doing that.  Pretty sure all DirectX that you need actually comes with Win7.  So now you're going to need to learn how to restore it to correct conditions.  The tool dxdiag helps with that.  Can you run it and post results here?

You might also try, forget Yitzi, forget PRACX, run your saved game in plain vanilla SMACX.  Your problem may go away.

If it still doesn't, also try adding DirectDraw=0 to your "Alpha Centauri.ini", in the [Alpha Centauri] section of the file.  This tells the game to use the system's underlying screen resolution.  Very handy for getting it to display on wide screens, which didn't exist when SMACX was made.  Maybe you'll find a vanilla game with DirectDraw=0 to be more stable.

Another thing I've done, is turn Secret Project videos OFF.  I've had stability issues in the past with those on.  I can't remember what .exe or other settings I was using when I had instability.  Nowadays it's OFF because I've seen those videos so many times.

Title: Re: unable to allocate draw buffer, terminating program
Post by: Tularis on September 10, 2018, 10:27:04 AM

Thanks! It looks like DirectDraw=0 has resolved the issue, I completely forgot about that.
DX9 is fine to reinstall on Win7, most steam games re-run the install as a prerequisite

Title: Re: unable to allocate draw buffer, terminating program
Post by: bvanevery on September 10, 2018, 02:36:27 PM

Quote from: Tularis on September 10, 2018, 10:27:04 AM

DX9 is fine to reinstall on Win7, most steam games re-run the install as a prerequisite

That doesn't make any sense.  Win7 comes with DX9.  Frankly it comes with DX11!  You're talking about reinstalling something that's 2 generations behind and already included in the OS.  If the system had any brains, it would say "you already have a later version, you can't do this" but I don't think that's what actually happens.  I'm glad DirectDraw=0 solved your issue, but I would suggest using dxdiag to check on whether your DX components are correct anymore.