Tac-map blank screen/freeze upon loading

Hi.
I'm running the dos version, and have noticed problems saving during missions.

My first game went a couple of months in without trouble, but upon trying to load mid-mission, was presented with a blank black screen with the cursor stuck in the topleft corner. No map, not even the stats/buttons/toolbar thingy along the bottom.

Just running xcomutil btw, and I also used ClarkWehrEnterprises editor to change soldier appearance (something irks me about having a trooper with an Indian name and bright blonde hair, for example), but that's it.

Now I know xcom can be flakey at the best of times, but I don't recall this ever happening on the windows CE version.

Any fixes?


http://www.mediafire.com/?mbmxhyfpmjb

There's the first occurance.

Key presses don't help.
And I've tried running the various .exe's directly (not through dosbox), still no difference.

Really Fast Game

Right, I previously had this problem when installing the game (CE), as probably everyone does.
I then used the usual assortment of fixes to sort it all out. No problem.

However, I have recently installed some new drivers to counter an issue with a different game, and now my game is REALLY fast.
The game clock in the geoscape still ticks along nice and slow as usual, and the globe rotates just as nice and slow too, but everything else (menus, scrolling etc) is fast as hell.

In a way, it's kinda cool.
Explosions and smoke looks a bit better, I think. And autofire is about as rapid firing as it would be in real life (pew-pew-pew!). But the problems outweigh it. Firstly, if there is alien/reaction fire, it's impossible to tell what it was, where it was from, or even what got hit.
Secondly, scrolling around the map is a bitch.

Chuffing Base Defense Crashes!

Right, I've had about a half dozen base-defense missions, all floaters iirc, and they've all suffered crashouts within the first 3 or 4 turns.

Now, in the event of a crash, it just dumps me to desktop, initializes t5he seperate geoscape exe, and dumps me to the debriefing screen, where it usually declares it a success with all the aliens killed, and lots of gear. I don't get the gear, and worse, all of MY stuff from the equip screen that I didn't use (so was left on the ground in the storerooms) vanishes!
Worse still is the rare occasion it declares a mission loss, in which case I obviously lose the base.

The crashes always occur right after the aliens have taken their turn, so presumably it's something to do with them doing stuff they shouldn't.
This theory is supported by the fact that (if I'm lucky/quick) if I can storm them and grab a few kills (specifically the one individual alien that is crashing me), I can sometimes avert the crash all together.
However, this can be difficult to achieve.



Ideas?


edit:
right, I had noticed a couple of floaters were unarmed (due to the item/spawn point limitations), but I don't think that's related. I've tried hiding all my guys, hence giving the aliens nothing to shoot at, and I still crash.

An XcomUtil game with a slow timer?

Anyone know how to get a Util-modded game to run with a normal-speed clock (ie: not really friggin quick)?

I've installed both xcomutil, and Moks patch, but they don't want to work together. I can either have a really fast util game, or a vanilla normal-speed one.


Now, I know it is possible to get both desired effects, since I did it before (before my pc died and had to be replaced, that is).
Only problem is, it happened pretty much by accident, and I'm damned if I can replicate the procedure.

Any ideas?

BombBlokes uniform mod + Bagirovs uniforms?

Hmm.....If I may induldge in a spot of off-topic-ness for a moment......


Just tried your uniform mod, BB.
Seems cool, but I'm having a problem with it.

When I run the bat file to install, I get errors stating "couldn't find the patch.dll", and when I run the game the graphics become corrupted.
It's been a little while since I ran the game last, but I don't remember problems previously. And I (for some reason) had another copy of the game in a different folder. Convenient. Anyway, that works fine, so I'm assuming the mod is casuing a problem.

Any ideas what it may be?

edit:
nm, gfx card bug.