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Author Topic: My friend's DF keeps crashing randomly  (Read 1123 times)

Ifeno

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My friend's DF keeps crashing randomly
« on: January 30, 2012, 09:55:26 pm »

This is something i've NEVER seen happen before.  I've had my own computer blue screen or have the hard drive crash.  But i've never seen dwarf fortress just randomly stop functioning and closing.  He says it seems to happen randomly.  It has occured 3 times within the past 2 days.  How could we go about fixing this?  Could this be a computer issue or is there something wrong with his save?  He's running a somewhat old world 31? on the newest version of the game.  However this has just recently become an issue.  His laptop is fairly new.  A little under 2 years old to my knowledge.  I don't know the specs but it's running windows vista.  My friend doesn't have an account on this forum so i decided to post for him.

Thanks for any advice and help!
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ive gotten in the habit of replacing my chief medical dwarf as soon as he gains any notable skill in diagnosis.
It's really funny watching them do unnecessary surgery because of a wrong diagnosis.
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FuzzyZergling

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Re: My friend's DF keeps crashing randomly
« Reply #1 on: January 30, 2012, 09:58:25 pm »

I had this problem with some of the older less stable versions, but nothing on 31.25.
Is there any action he does which triggers a crash, like trying to view a certain screen?
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Ifeno

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Re: My friend's DF keeps crashing randomly
« Reply #2 on: January 30, 2012, 10:01:56 pm »

That's the confusing part.  The 1st time i was there.  It just happened randomly in the middle of playing.  The 2nd time i was also there.  It happened in the middle of an ambush towards the end of the battle as the goblins retreated.  The last one happened without my attendance.  He said he hit the save button and it suddenly crashed.  Thoughts?
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ive gotten in the habit of replacing my chief medical dwarf as soon as he gains any notable skill in diagnosis.
It's really funny watching them do unnecessary surgery because of a wrong diagnosis.
the conditions were bad enough to turn a dwarf who didn't care about anything mad, that's pretty hardcore.

Ifeno

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Re: My friend's DF keeps crashing randomly
« Reply #3 on: January 30, 2012, 10:06:01 pm »

Recent update:  My friend claims to have missremembered the version in which the game was genned in and claims it was version 26.  Thoughts on how to fix it?
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ive gotten in the habit of replacing my chief medical dwarf as soon as he gains any notable skill in diagnosis.
It's really funny watching them do unnecessary surgery because of a wrong diagnosis.
the conditions were bad enough to turn a dwarf who didn't care about anything mad, that's pretty hardcore.

FuzzyZergling

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Re: My friend's DF keeps crashing randomly
« Reply #4 on: January 30, 2012, 10:08:52 pm »

Recent update:  My friend claims to have missremembered the version in which the game was genned in and claims it was version 26.  Thoughts on how to fix it?
Version 31.26 hasn't been released yet, yo my knowledge.
I would recommend he delete his DF folder and re-download it.
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Ifeno

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Re: My friend's DF keeps crashing randomly
« Reply #5 on: January 30, 2012, 10:18:34 pm »

The goal is to save his current fortress save.  Would this work if he just copies the current save into the new version?

Also, weren't we on version 35 a WHILE ago?
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ive gotten in the habit of replacing my chief medical dwarf as soon as he gains any notable skill in diagnosis.
It's really funny watching them do unnecessary surgery because of a wrong diagnosis.
the conditions were bad enough to turn a dwarf who didn't care about anything mad, that's pretty hardcore.

Quietust

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Re: My friend's DF keeps crashing randomly
« Reply #6 on: January 30, 2012, 10:35:49 pm »

There is no such thing as "version 26" or "version 35" - the current version is 0.31.25, and the last major release (before version 0.31.01) was 0.28.181.40d (and the last major release before that, back when the game was only 2D, was 0.23.130.23a).
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Garath

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Re: My friend's DF keeps crashing randomly
« Reply #7 on: January 31, 2012, 03:05:08 am »

The goal is to save his current fortress save.  Would this work if he just copies the current save into the new version?

Also, weren't we on version 35 a WHILE ago?

if he has the current version, yes, it would work. Compatibility with the upcomming new version, probably not
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i2amroy

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Re: My friend's DF keeps crashing randomly
« Reply #8 on: January 31, 2012, 11:12:33 am »

If the problems continue after copying his save over into a fresh install then my next piece of advice would be to create a new world and see if that fixes the problem; it's possible that his world data could be corrupted.
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tj333

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Re: My friend's DF keeps crashing randomly
« Reply #9 on: January 31, 2012, 11:46:47 am »

I have had the problem where a fortress would always craash at one particular point a few times. Roughly the same amount of time after loading a save it would crash.

Only solution was to either delete the save or delete DF and redownload. Never had much luck saving the fortress though.
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DeltaRomeo

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Re: My friend's DF keeps crashing randomly
« Reply #10 on: January 31, 2012, 04:41:02 pm »

Before you go doing anything drastic, go into the init.txt file and change COMPRESSED_SAVES to NO. This worked for me when I had a similar problem. Just reply if you need more details.
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i2amroy

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Re: My friend's DF keeps crashing randomly
« Reply #11 on: January 31, 2012, 06:43:37 pm »

I have had the problem where a fortress would always craash at one particular point a few times. Roughly the same amount of time after loading a save it would crash.
This is usually when a specific creature (say a raccoon for example), is corrupted in the save. Then the instant that creature tries to enter the map the game crashes, and since it keeps trying to enter the map every time you reboot the save... you get the idea.
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Quote from: PTTG
It would be brutally difficult and probably won't work. In other words, it's absolutely dwarven!
Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead - A fun zombie survival rougelike that I'm dev-ing for.