Steam version and crashes

[SugarDad]

Hi all!

I just joined the forum today because I purchased TFTD via Steam a couple of days ago. I bought UFO: EU in some package deal many years ago and as you all know it was a revolution in game design I tried TFTD back then too but I don't think I ever played through all of it. Now to the matter at hand.

 

Sometimes I've had crashes, and I've seen this mentioned in the News-thread (https://www.strategycore.co.uk/forums/index.php?showtopic=6335) but I think it might be better to keep TFTD-discussions in the TFTD-thread, so I start a new topic here.

 

First up I haven't gotten any music to play but I've seen solutions to that which I'm gonna try (changing the MIDI synth source, volume, etc...).

 

Secondly, my game crashes very often in the current mission. It's a shipping route terror mission and the game crashes sometimes when (it seems like at least) I move or turn an aquanaut around, sometimes during hidden movement. I've had a few crashes every now and then during other missions but this is extreme. It's so often that I started saving after every single aquanaut movement, but it became to tedious that I just gave up. I'm on the 2nd stage of the ship.

 

So, any of you XCOM-experts know of any oddities about the Steam-version and how they can be fixed? When it crashes it says "XCOM Terror from the deep gold edition has encountered an error and needs to close", or something, and as mentioned before there's some patch by "f0dder" included?

 

In the game folder there's a "runme.exe" "Terror from the Deep.exe" and "Terror from the Deep_patched.exe"

 

I am guessing the last one is the one with the f0dder-patch (whatever it does) and it's the one run by Steam.

 

Anybody please?

[SugarDad]

Well I'll post the first reply myself.

I got the music to work by changing the MIDI source. To do this you go to Control Panel->Sounds and Audio Devices. Click the Audio tab. The option at the bottom there should be MIDI Music Playback.

 

In my case, since I have an SB Audigy 4, I had the following options:

SB Audigy 4 Synth A

SB Audigy 4 Synth B

SB Audigy 4 Sw Synth

Microsoft GS Wavetable SW Synth

 

The Microsoft one is the only one that enabled music in the game. Not sure why, but that's the solution for me at least.

[Bomb Bloke]

You know that socket on your sound card that you used to plug joysticks into? That's actually a MIDI port. You had Windows using that for your output, but with no device actually plugged in there, you wouldn't have heard a thing.

 

(If you have a MIDI capable instrument, like a digital keyboard, you can plug that into your computer (or ANOTHER instrument, like an electric guitar) and one can play music through the other).

 

Though you usually need an adaptor. Not sure why they didn't build it into the sound card.

 

f0dder's patch fixes graphical glitches. If the screen isn't a random mess of garbage when you start the game, you don't need to worry about that.

 

As for crashing during a mission... Sometimes it happens. I advise going back to the last save you have on the GeoScape, and restart the mission from there (If you've only been using one save slot so far, now's a good time to change that habit).

[SugarDad]

You know that socket on your sound card that you used to plug joysticks into? That's actually a MIDI port. You had Windows using that for your output, but with no device actually plugged in there, you wouldn't have heard a thing.

 

(If you have a MIDI capable instrument, like a digital keyboard, you can plug that into your computer (or ANOTHER instrument, like an electric guitar) and one can play music through the other).

 

Though you usually need an adaptor. Not sure why they didn't build it into the sound card.

 

f0dder's patch fixes graphical glitches. If the screen isn't a random mess of garbage when you start the game, you don't need to worry about that.

 

As for crashing during a mission... Sometimes it happens. I advise going back to the last save you have on the GeoScape, and restart the mission from there (If you've only been using one save slot so far, now's a good time to change that habit).

 

Yeah I used to be a bit of a hobby musician so I am well aware of what MIDI is and how it connected to the old SB cards. I guess I didn't express myself clearly enough You see the problem is that I can play the .mid-files in WinAmp for example with ALL of the options. They sound slightly different (Well not Synth A and B) but they all work, but not in-game. That's what I thought was odd. And of course the Synth A (which was default for me) didn't work Thanks for your explanation anyway

 

About the crashes... I slowly grinded (ground?) my way through that mission with a lot of saving and loading. All other missions just seem to crash very rarely, but that boat mission was insane.

 

Anyway, I think I just screwed up the lance research. Havne't seen any Calcinids yet and I've researched Gill-man Also, in a alien base mission I couldn't find the last alien so I searched around and found instructions how to do it, but I guess there are some problems with the Steam version of TFTD and xcomutil. I got some error when I ran the config (don't remember what) so it aborted and then the game complained that some patch.dll was missing (or something) so I couldn't run it. Doesn't matter. I reinstalled the game (backed up saves of course) and did the old-fashioned slow search

[Bomb Bloke]

Config?

 

Truth be told, I haven't tried the Steam version. Patch.Dll is part of f0dder's loader and should be in your game directory (if it's not there, then whoever packaged the game stuffed up).

[Gray Fox]

I'm going to buy the Steam version in a few days (when I get my new comp), I have SB Audigy 2 (which I will be using on my new comp as well) and I've never had any trouble with the sound in the regular TFTD. I use Synth A. So I'll let you know if I have any trouble with the Steam version once I get it.

[SugarDad]

Config?

 

Truth be told, I haven't tried the Steam version. Patch.Dll is part of f0dder's loader and should be in your game directory (if it's not there, then whoever packaged the game stuffed up).

 

Yeah I mean the xcusetup, sorry , that's what gave me an error message, and then everything seemed broken. No biggie, seems others have had problems with terror missions as well. Just wondering if there was any solution. Also, if anyone has an idea how to run the game in "pixel-mapped" 1280x960 on an LCD and an nVidia card. I guess 1280x960 is 2x the native resolution of the game and it would give a nice upscaled image of it. I've tried centered view and all that in the driver and I've tried QRes but without success.

[Knan]

Actually, it is 320x200 native ... so it isn't quite a 1:1 scaling factor. 1280x800 would be perfect.

[SugarDad]

Actually, it is 320x200 native ... so it isn't quite a 1:1 scaling factor. 1280x800 would be perfect.

 

Really? Heh wow Anyway my monitor reports it as 640x480 when I have monitor scaling enabled. When I try "centered view" in the driver (no scaling on monitor or video card) the game seems to have some 1:2-ratio resolution bug, like 320x400 instead of 320x200. It's a lot higher than wide. Usually I get buggy colours as well. It kind of sucks that you can't do such an elementary thing as 2x scaling easily. Ah well. Guess I should give up on this 12-year old

[Bomb Bloke]

LCD screens tend to mess up UFO's display. Dunno why. If you set them to the proper refresh rate (60hz) the image is often a little squished vertically, but if you set it to something else (as people sometimes do, thinking it's like a CRT monitor) the display gets stretched instead.

 

"xcusetup" is part of XcomUtil, a mod of sorts for UFO/TFTD. It edits the game in various ways... Changes weapon strengths, craft layouts, lots of stuff.

[SugarDad]

Ok I gave up on xcomutil and finished the mission. Now on the next alien base mission I'm getting fed up of having to run around like a mad man trying to find this last camper. I tried xcomutil again. If I try running xcomutil directly it complains that I haven't run xcusetup, so I run it and get the following:

 

D:\games\Steam\STEAMA~1\common\x-com terror from the deep>XcuSetup.bat

 

When using XCOMUTIL with TFTD for Windows, it is best to create a

shortcut. If you are having video problems, you should enable f0dder's

bugfix loader. Please follow these instructions now, since they will

not be repeated unless you delete XCOM4WIN.XCF.

 

Do you want to enable f0dder's loader? (N)

y

 

Right-click on any portion of the desktop background, then select New, then

Shortcut, then Browse. Go to the directory in which the game is installed

and select RunXcomW.bat. After you select the Next button twice, you will

see a selection of icons. Since this is a batch file, you get to choose

the icon you want. I recommend the one that looks like a satellite dish.

Finally, select Finish. You MUST use this shortcut to start the game.

If you are using WinNT or Win2K, you will not be given the opportunity to

choose your icon.

 

Press any key to continue . . .

XCOMUTIL Setup for TFTD

Fixing Survey Ship and Escort Mixup

 

XcomUtil 9.60 for XCOM/UFO and TFTD by Scott T Jones, Scott@ScottTJones.com

This program modifies saved game files or program files. Use at your own risk,

only after making backups. I am not liable for any damages this may cause.

 

XCOMWIN 1.0 version of game detected

 

Patch Applied: Ship statistics set from XCOMUTIL.CFG

Read failure on UFOEXE\..\MAPS\XBASE_00.MAP

Error executing XCOMUTIL, XCUSETUP aborted

 

 

D:\games\Steam\STEAMA~1\common\X-COMT~1>

 

Now before I hear an RTFM, I want to say I Read the seemingly relevant parts of TFM .

It's trying to access something from UFOEXE? Isn't that only in the DOS version? As I understand the xcusetup will split the exe into two exes. I see it has copied it to geoscape.exe and tactical.exe but there is no directory called ufoexe.

Is it just me or is there actually something else going on here that nobody else has been experiencing before?

 

And by the way, I don't REALLY want to do this setup thing. I just want to do:

xcomutil game_3 vis wrt

but it won't let me unless I do the setup first apparently...

[Bomb Bloke]

Well, you're quite right: UFOEXE is a folder that should only exist in the DOS version.

 

Too much of a pain to stop XcomUtil looking for it so just create an empty folder of that name instead, see what happens.

[SugarDad]

Well, you're quite right: UFOEXE is a folder that should only exist in the DOS version.

 

Too much of a pain to stop XcomUtil looking for it so just create an empty folder of that name instead, see what happens.

 

Hi and thanks for replying Well, since it's trying to open more than just the directory and is actually looking for a file to read I don't know what it's gonna do if I just create an empty UFOEXE dir. I'm sure it's not the only problem xcusetup is going to have anyway. There will probably be other files missing as well. There has to be a more high level solution to this.

 

I don't want to whine but I thought xcomutil should work on both versions of the game, yet it forces me to run the setup when all I want to do is do the VIS thing on a save file, and then the setup won't work because it expects things that are in the other version of the game

 

Hm...

[Bomb Bloke]

What it'll DO is find a file that's really located in the MAPS folder.

 

But, if you really don't want to try that, I've uploaded the version of XcomUtil I've got on my drive. I've tested the install routine on my copy of TFTD CE, so I know it works.

xcomut96.zip

[SugarDad]

What it'll DO is find a file that's really located in the MAPS folder.

 

But, if you really don't want to try that, I've uploaded the version of XcomUtil I've got on my drive. I've tested the install routine on my copy of TFTD CE, so I know it works.

 

 

Thanks for bearing with me Well the archive you attached is the same as the one I have. I did a UFOEXE folder in the root game folder and copied ALL the other folders into it just to make sure there's everything it'll ever need, but it failed with the same error.

Suddenly it occured to me that the path in "Read failure on UFOEXE\..\MAPS\XBASE_00.MAP" might actually just be "MAPS\XBASE_00.MAP", since ".." is the parent, assuming UFOEXE exists of course Well it still doesn't help... I should remind you perhaps that I'm using the Steam-version and not any boxed CE version. Is there anyone else who got it to work? If not then maybe the new maintainer (whatever his name was) might have his work cut out for him

I looked at that xcusetup.bat and it was not a pleasant sight heh... Well thanks again for trying to help! Appreciate it

[Bomb Bloke]

Took a look at my maps folder, there's no "XBASE_00.MAP" file there at all. Closest match is "XBASES00.MAP".

 

If other folks get the same issue with the Steam version Blade'll probably fix it. For now I'm sick of the matter, so I wrote a stand alone editer that should do the job for you.

 

Ought to work with all versions of X-Com 1/2, just extract the archive to your game folder, run the tool, follow the prompts. Gives you the options of revealing the map, or revealing/mind controlling/killing all the aliens.

GameTwk.Zip

[SugarDad]

Took a look at my maps folder, there's no "XBASE_00.MAP" file there at all. Closest match is "XBASES00.MAP".

 

If other folks get the same issue with the Steam version Blade'll probably fix it. For now I'm sick of the matter, so I wrote a stand alone editer that should do the job for you.

 

Ought to work with all versions of X-Com 1/2, just extract the archive to your game folder, run the tool, follow the prompts. Gives you the options of revealing the map, or revealing/mind controlling/killing all the aliens.

 

Sorry if I upset you with all my complaining

Anyway, thanks a bunch for the util! I'd make one myself if I knew the format of the save files, but why re-invent the wheel

I'll try it next time I run into trouble. At the time I'm struggling to keep the battleships and dreadnoughts away with my poor Manta

Thanks alot again!!!