Galactic Civilizations II Forum

I installed it on Impulse on my actual PC, 7z'd up the installation directory, then ran it in an XP bottle - it launched and runs just fine. All options seem to work as well. There are a number of complaints at launch about old drivers and bad resolution settings (0x0), but clicking "OK" on those dialogs proceeds to launch, at which point everything seems fine.

After quitting and restarting, however, I couldn't get past the first few screens of the game before a virtual memory fault would halt the program. Very odd! ("random crashes" are what the winehq folks are complaining about).

To answer my own problem, searching winehq came up with the idea of using native overrides for these dll's:
d3dx9_27.dll, d3dx9_28.dll, usp10.dll, msvcrt.dll

And sure enough, I seem to be up and running fine, with only font glitches.

http://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=version&iId=9965&iTestingId=18007

this page taught me about the +loaddll flag:
http://ftp.winehq.org/pub/wine/docs/en/wineusr-guide.html#AEN1081

Finally, based on this stack trace of the crash I was seeing, it's looking like the problem was in d3dx9_27.dll:

Backtrace:
=>0 0x4334e9c4 X11DRV_XRender_ExtTextOut+0x809() in winex11 (0x0033f088)
1 0x433335fc X11DRV_ExtTextOut+0x7b() in winex11 (0x0033f148)
2 0x426dd7e0 ExtTextOutW+0xe8f() in gdi32 (0x0033f4a8)
3 0x0081e5c8 in d3dx9_27 (+0x2e5c8) (0x0033f514)
4 0x0081f1a3 in d3dx9_27 (+0x2f1a3) (0x0033f65c)
5 0x00820ad4 in d3dx9_27 (+0x30ad4) (0x0033f684)

Can you explain how you managed to get galciv running from the copied install folder?
I copied the folder (as installed by impulse) to my osx machine, but when I launch GC2Launch.exe from my xp bottle it encounters "a serious problem and needs to close."
When I launch GalCiv2.exe it tells me "The product appears to be validated but the serial number or the machine SID don't match." Did you find some way to work around this?

You've got my hopes up!

Is yours a fresh install of GalCiv2? It kinda sounds like a DRM issue is getting in the way. I just bought mine recently. I'm happy to work on tracking this down with you, but I don't think I did anything fancy in that area - just a zip-up of the GalCiv2Ultimate folder (is that the version you have?) and unpacked it into a fresh XP bottle with only Netscape installed. I then had to use "run command" to get it to run, and saved that to my Applications menu. I didn't have to add any command-line flags. When it starts, I get some complaints about desktop resolution and video driver versions, but I dismiss those, and it runs fine.

Hmmmm. Does any of the above stir any ideas?

Thanks, that is what I wanted to know. If I figure it out I will update here.

UPDATE
I did this:

1. Uninstalled and reinstalled galciv from impulse (on windows machine), and did NOT run it
2. Copied folder over to osx as before
3. Deleted sig.bin file in the copied galciv folder.
4. This time when I ran galciv2.exe in crossover, a registration window appeared. The text fields and buttons grayed out when i moved the mouse over them, but I took it on blind faith that what i was typing got entered, and pasted in the serial code
5. It worked! Just as described.

Please let us know if and how the font glitch gets resolved...

I don't know if you would know, Dylan, but maybe someone else could let me know if this will work.

I own GalCiv2 and its expansions (separately, from before the GalCiv2 Ultimate version was released). If I were to install the games (via Stardock Central, most likely), then do the same using Impulse in a WinXP virtual machine, and then copied over all files except the sig.bin files (which seems to be the file the DRM revolves around), would I still be able to run the games without any trouble?

I'm thinking about doing it that way, because then any registry keys are set via the install, and the "Start menu" shortcuts are made. Assuming the launchers work properly. I know I had trouble with the launchers not working in Games 7.2.

I managed to get it working again, and I have the pre-Ultimate Edition bundle purchased via digital download. I still get the random crashes, though, even with the overrides. I'll post a detailed analysis later, when I've had more time to play.

UPDATE:
So far, the crashes happen immediately upon entering the options screen (actually, the screen gets that hazy blue tint, but I can still control the app, but the crash dialogue pops up when I return to the main menu), and immediately upon starting a new game. So the game is essentially unplayable.

UPDATE 2:
I figured out that by setting the in-game resolution to 1440x878, which essentially just allows a 22 pixel gap for the OSX menu bar, the game no longer instantly crashes when I start a new game or go to the options menu. I don't know why this works, but so far so good. When I get a chance I'll play a game and see what happens, then report back.

I dl'd the demo and some of the fonts on the navigation screen are garbled. Is there any fix for this?

Also, there seems to be some disagreement as to whether or not this game is playable due to DRM restrictions (something about Impulse and .Net). Can anyone confirm or deny?
Thanks.

Just read my last post. That's about as much confirmation that you can get. Or even better, read my entry in the Tips & Tricks section. It works great for me.

Thank you very much. I don't have a copy of windows to put on my mac, but I might be able to download the file to my PC and then bring the file to the Mac. Colin seems to have done that so I think it should work.

I bought the Galactic Civilizations II Ultimate Edition on CD from Amazon.

Here's what worked for me.

When you put the CD in, you will get a pop-up asking if you want to do an Express Install, Advanced Install, or Ignore. Ignore. Neither Express nor Advanced Install from the pop-up worked for me. Instead, from the Crossover Games menu, I selected "Install Unsupported Software." I created a Windows Vista bottle, and I manually selected the installer. I chose the setup.exe. Apparently the autorun.exe was the problem because setup.exe worked just fine.

Partway into the installation, I got an error message:
impulse.exe - .NET Framework Initialization Error
c:/windows/microsoft.NET/Framework/v2.0.5072/mscorwks.dll could not be loaded.

In case it messed up the install, I ignored it. When the the install went to 100%, I clicked "ok" and that got rid of the error message and the game finished installation.

The game crashed when I tried to load it from the regular icon, so I used the RUN command in the Crossover Games menu, selected the bottle and then selected GalCiv2.exe from the Program Files folder and ran that.

I got a whole bunch of error messages but just clicked through them. The game started up beautifully.

Still some of the minor yellow fonts are garbled at this point. I'd love to work that out. Also, the game crashed pretty quickly because I didn't fix the resolution (as mentioned here and in the tips&tricks section).

If anybody else comes along with the CD version, I hope this will help you get your game going.

Thanks also to all the people here who helped me get my copy going.

UPDATE***
Font issue: I went to my home PC (running XP) and copied the fonts from the c:/windows/fonts folder. I then went to my mac. I right-clicked the icon for Crossover Games, selected "show package contents" and selected contents/SharedSupport/CrossOverGames/share/wine/fonts and pasted the windows fonts. All my garbled fonts in GC2 are no longer garbled.

Crash issue: Every time I tried to load a saved game, it crashed. If I messed with the screen resolution settings in the GC2 menu, it crashed more often, even in a new game. The more I tried to fix it, the more it crashed.

I reinstalled. This time, from the Crossover Games menu, I selected "manage bottles", I then selected the bottle for GC2, then "control panel", then "winecfg" and "launch selected item". From the "winecfg", I clicked "graphics" and checked the box "Emulate a virtual desktop". I then followed the tips and tricks and entered my screen size minus 22 pixels for the menu bar.

I don't know 100% if I solved the crashes (perhaps not), but for the first time I was able to load a game without crashing the program, so at least I've made progress.

I followed the tips and tricks but I'm still getting a lot of crashes.

When I tried to run in full-screen, I set the resolution (from the game menu) to 22 pixels height less than the screen resolution (Resolution shown in Graphics/Display under System Profiler says 1600 x 1000 so I set game resolution to 1600 x 978.) This left the menu bar and the dock visible and the buttons at the bottom of the screen were partially lost. Not sure why. Game still crashed.

The 'load' button crashes the game. I don't know why, but my only success seems to be:
Run the game in windowed mode. Set window resolution to 1300 x 844.
Use the 'run command' from the Crossover menu, select the bottle and the galciv2.exe from the program files, and (again, I don't know why) add -no3d. For some reason it seems to crash slightly less often (but I've also done it without the -no3d).
*Start a new game (change the galaxy size to prevent a crash), and from within the new game, load my saved game.

I've been able to play for long periods of time, but the Galactic New Network sometimes crashes the computer. I'm now at an impasse with GNN and may have to start a new game (I might also have too many ships moving at once).

Any suggestions on what I might be doing wrong or what might not be working would be welcome. If I find something that works better, I'll post here.

Still having so many crashes that the game is unplayable.

Hey Dylan, I installed it on a PC then zipped it over exactly like you, then it worked like a charm on CrossOver 9.0. Then I went to change resolution and sound settings, and the game won't even so much as launch. If I attempt to launch from the Run Command, it gives me a "serious error" message. Did you ever trouble shoot with something like this before? Any help would be appreciated, thanks so much!