07-09-2000 17:18									#1
	Lost events in TOT Full PM-box? Change here!

Has anyone else had problems with losing events in Test of Time.

I recently started a new scenario that had a event to produced a text message on the first turn, which it successfully did, so it proved that it had found the events file when it started. However something that I then did made it lose any further events.

I have had the problem twice now so the third time I tried to recreate exactly what I did step by step having added lots of extra text messages to the events file to prove that it was still active and I haven't been able to isolate it.

My one suspicion is that it may have been when I made an alliance with someone as that is the only bit that went differently from the two times when it did happen?

Thanks in advance, as always,

Adrian

	08-09-2000 00:20									#2
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Please define "lossing events". Do you mean that the events do not trigger as you expected?

	08-09-2000 04:42									#3
	Enter the AD-FREE zone

Have you used the 'debug' tool? The fact that you're not getting an error as the scenario loads would indicate that there's nothing wrong, but it may be worthwhile checking anyway(?).

Are the text messages being triggered by something simple like 'turn=x' or something more complex like a mask? (n.b. - if it is a turn-based trigger, check the 'turns elapsed' count just in case you've passed it before the trigger has fired).

	08-09-2000 06:28									#4
	Put an end to popups!

Yes, it's an old problem, but an irregular and inconsistent one. I was led to believe it was fixed in the patch, and it did seem better after that, but I've still experienced the problem and heard others complain of it. I can't remember how much the patch improved things, but make sure you're running with the latest patch, anyway.

The cause was never precisely nailed down. It seemed to be a function of people's systems. The most plausbile theory suggested that it was a simple memory/resource problem. People reporting the problem frequently indicated that they were either a bit light in memory, or had a tendency to run programs or memory-resident utilities, simultaneously (competing for resources). The problem also seemed more likely to occur if you played for a very long period of time, without exiting the game and/or rebooting (suggesting that the game itself had a problem releasing the resources it used).

I basically gave up trying to figure it out; not enough people seemed to be complaining to convince Microprose that it was still a problem (I don't know if this has changed). So I just settled for a work-around. If you don't mind the lack of elegance, just modify the events.txt file to display a message like "events still loaded", each turn. Save each turn, and if the message doesn't appear, go back to saved game. I can't remember, but it may be necessary or desirable to exit/restart the game or even reboot your machine.

Many of the complaints about things not working when people reached Alpha Centauri, in the extended game, were really dropped event files.

	08-09-2000 14:00									#5
	Suffering from ads?

Wow, thanks for all the feedback guys. I was trying the 'add a text message event each turn' method to try and debug the problem the time that it did not reoccur. However I have since discovered the fact that you can do turn=every so I might try that.

I tried running a delevent against it and it claimed that it managed to delete the events header. I have now reloaded the events file by creating a scenario of my last save and the events appear to be working again so I think I have got round the problem.

It may be a problem with my memory system as I do have quite a large number of programs in my system tray these days, which presumably all stay resident in memory. I might try removing several of these.

Thanks again for the advice, (I think Apolyton's civ2 community must be one of the most helpful game communities I have ever encountered)

Adrian