This JUST happened to me. I started a game on an icey map (no tree/bushes outside, completely ice w/ mud. like that) and played it as normal, but this is where i encountered a bug with digging. Long story short:
A miner failed to aquire a dig path, but when i made a second selection directly north of the inital tile, digging began. I looked at the surrounding area, and there was nothing to suggest that i had selected a block of stone in a diagonal position* so it should've worked just fine.
Then, after some of the dig had been finished, people failed to obtain the ores (i hit silver almost immediately, and in large quantities; 20 to 30< blocks VISIBLE before crash) and stones and put them in the proper piles, despite me having stone, ore, and mining piles. After 2 minutes of this, I dug out the entrance a bit more (3x3 ^2 entrance, with a single-wide corridor going in) and then the others seemed to be able to aquire them just fine. Really, really weird pathing issue right there.
Now the critical peice, and the reason why i'm posting this: The crash.
Some time into the game and after the first summer and first flood, i decided to place a 2x3 tile (that's vertical, btw) farm plot and a retractable (S) bridge nearby leading into a wall. However, i misplaced the bridge (it's left side was completely surrounded by fields) and when i went to remove it (T, Select, X) the game crashed to the desktop.
The area looked like: (Copy and paste into notepad for a non-distorted view)
code:
####..~~~~~~~..#
...+...~~~~~.##
####FF~~~~~~##
#FFBBBBBB#
#FF~~~~~~#
##.~~~~###
##~~~~~#
F is the Farm (unbuilt)
B is the Bridge's placement
. # + and ~ are the floor, wall, door, and cave-river water, respectively.
If it matters, i was running windows media player at the time with the sound folder changed to "sounds" so i could listen to the music player without distortion being caused by the game's music. 3Ghz, 2 Gigs of ram, 120 Gig HD, ATI RADEON 9600 Pro(? Long time since i looked) DX9.
*Visual aid:
PPW
PWTTT
PW
P is the pathable area, W is a wall, and T is the dig target, which is unreachable. However, i used "K" to look at the area, and saw no walls in such a configuration as to block the dig site:
PW
PT
PW
[ August 13, 2006: Message edited by: Mechanoid ]