Cannot zoom out of home planet - Gamebreaker bug

[Seriphin]

Massive game breaker bug I cannot get past.

After my save point some aliens come and attack my home planet (blalalahis happens WAY TOO FREQUENTLY), after I go there and save my planet I can't zoom out into the solar system. I become stuck in the top of the atmosphere unable to move expect for flying down to the surface using the UI.

Sometimes the game starts to glitch and slow down to the point I have to back out and close the game (this happens AS I'm stuck in the atmosphere).

Need urgent help.

[Seriphin]

Bump, please help me fix.

[nfoo]

I have the exact same problem, on the MAC version, though.

First of all, it's not very fun to have the SAME kind of attack on your planets EVERY 5 MINUTES! Is that supposed to be game play? Very disappointed by SPore so far.

And then, from time to time, I get stuck after defending my home planet, because everytime I want to zoom out, spore crashes.

Very funny.

[Rivke78]

I have the exact same issue. I have to chose between not helping my homeworld when its being attacked or risk spore crashing everytime I try to leave my orbit. /cry
I really wanna keep playing but I have had to stop as my save is right before I enter my homeworld and I have already recieved the communication to go help so....

[Bttlshpbll]

Same!!!! and Bump!

[Mroovek]

Another bump. Exactly the same issue. CTD while leaving homeworld after defending it. Not allways, but frequent. Funny thing is that once when I had two attacks at the same time and defended colony first and then homeworld game crashed. However when I defended homeworld first it was ok. Probably coincidence since another time different order didn't help.

[Seriphin]

A fix is needed urgently EA, Spore lovers, like myself are becoming very annoyed at all these bugs.

[Maelstrome]

Stop bumping gawdamnit the bug is well known by many! lol

Sign the petition so we have your two cents

[Mroovek]

#Deleted#

[antonyf]

Stop bumping after five minutes. Bumps are to revive old threads.

Send a tech support request to EA. The more they see this problem, they higher a priority it will be given in the first patch. Don't bother signing the petition, the patch will happen anyway. What is important is that accurate tech support request are submitted to EA.

[Seriphin]

I've found a temp fix for this problem. Once your planet is attacked go there and fight off the invaders, the second they leave and you get a thank you message, leave the planet. Do not repair cities or collect fallen money, just get out. Once you leave, save and do what you want. If this does not work, do things in a different order after loading a save point. I thought this might be helpful for people with the same problem as me.

Sorry about the bumping antonyf. How do I send a tech support request to EA?

[omegaone]

this isnt looking good.. i was all up for the game but if its gonna have technical problems i think ill forget it,sounds like the game has a lot o bugs. I see spore as the only game at its level, but i think its a game for those of us with money, nice computers and lots of time. what also annoyed me was that, even though my laptop is just under 5 months old, its not powerful enough to run spore, which ****es me of cus everytime there is a new game you need to buy a fkin comp after you buy the game, just so you can play the game.

[Camitic]

i wiped out all my cities on my home planet a space colony popped up after
since then ive not crashed.

[Maelstrome]

Originally Posted by Camitic

i wiped out all my cities on my home planet a space colony popped up after
since then ive not crashed.

You will

[Camitic]

lol didnt do it out of evilness i did it because no other planet does it
and the only difference was the cities on ur homeworld are like the one in the civ stage and not like the space colony ones. i figured wot have i got to loose by trying.

[Atsouleon]

I tell you what. Same here but the most annoying part is that they don't f***** answer us. At least tell us when the f******* patch will be out!!!
It would be better download the game for free than giving them money for nothing. They deserve it!!!

[antonyf]

Originally Posted by Seriphin

I've found a temp fix for this problem. Once your planet is attacked go there and fight off the invaders, the second they leave and you get a thank you message, leave the planet. Do not repair cities or collect fallen money, just get out. Once you leave, save and do what you want. If this does not work, do things in a different order after loading a save point. I thought this might be helpful for people with the same problem as me.

Sorry about the bumping antonyf. How do I send a tech support request to EA?

Here:
EA Support

Look up Spore then click to contact them.

You can sign in with the same login.

They will ask you, so you can check up front:

Have you got the latest Directx?
Have you tried shutting down all applications in the background?

Go to start run then type dxdiag. Then click Save all Information. Give this file to tech support, as they'll ask for it.

It's all monkey-see monkey-do support on their behalf, not very helpful. but then you have logged your request and they will get a true picture of it.

If they fail to fix it in a reasonable time you can also legitimately take it back to a retailer for a refund, as you gave them a chance to rectify it.

[tommo83]

Have had this happen many times now so I finally submitted a support question by going to EA's main site tech area, Spore is in the list of games.

I haven't found a solution anywhere on this forum so far, and I've tried quite a few of the suggestions!

Fingers crossed for that e-mail EA...

In the interests of accuracy and raising awareness, detailed problem info below:

Vista 32-bit SP1
Intel Q9550
4.0GB PC6400
nVidia 8800GTX

Product
Spore
Problem
Stopped working
Date
07/09/2008 22:25
Status
Not Reported
Problem signature
Problem Event Name: APPCRASH
Application Name: SporeApp.exe
Application Version: 1.1.0.338
Application Timestamp: 4897d819
Fault Module Name: d3d9.dll
Fault Module Version: 6.0.6001.18000
Fault Module Timestamp: 4791a65d
Exception Code: c0000005
Exception Offset: 00006ddf
OS Version: 6.0.6001.2.1.0.256.1
Locale ID: 2057
Additional Information 1: 032b
Additional Information 2: 780bbb6af72e8f3e3c27a0d597fbb353
Additional Information 3: 530b
Additional Information 4: f379d282887c8958fc1eccf56ed62de9

[Mroovek]

I may have a temporal solution to this problem. At first I got CTD sometimes after defending homeplanet. Later I had CTD everytime I tried to leave my planet, no matter attacked or not. And now for the solution:

Delete "GraphicsCache.package" file. It's located in "Application Data\SPORE" folder in Documents and Settings. In my case this file reached the maximum limit set in game options(I'm not sure if it didn't even exceed it). So problem may lie in this cache file. Take in mind that after you run the game after deleting this file you may see some graphics elements missing, but it's only temporal. It'll be ok after game downloads needed content again.

It helped for me. So far no CTD when leaving homeplanet. However the problem may be back after cache file gets bigger.

P.S.
I suggest making copy before deleting since I can't guarantee that everything will work ok :P

EDIT:
Well it worked for only 3 times I had to land on my homeworld and again it doesn't so it's a very temporal solution or simply it was a coinsidence. :/

[Seriphin]

bump, EA needs to see this.

[Mroovek]

Btw after reading log file I can say one thing. DasmX86Dll.dll is not the couse . The real couse is:

[Exception info]
date: 09-09-08
time: 18.04.19
type: ACCESS_VIOLATION writing address 0x60010d38
address: 0x1f97faa6 <unknown module>

Game wants to use DasmX86Dll.dll after the above error occur.

[Harkole]

Having suffered this one since release day, I seem to have "fixed" it. There is another thread here explaining hot to fix the SLI bug (changing the configmaker.txt in Spore Data to have the current video driver version instead of some future one).

linky: fix for sli issue 10012

I thought that I had been playing in SLI so was intrested to see why I hadn't encountered that problem, turns out I must of turned it off a while back to play something else as it was off, so I duely turned it back on and up popped the message 10012. So I found the configmaker.txt and sorted the line out as instructed in the afore mentioned post...

Now the game ran and I thought oh goody! No difference in the fps (was already running on full whack) but I was now getting lots of texture errors, "hmm another bug I saw on the forums..." so I saved regularly and just kept playing ignoring what was going on... eventually I crashed to desktop when going from Civ to Space.

So deciding that the one off crash while transfering from planet to space was better than what I'd just been through I turned off the SLI again and went back to playing Spore (Note I did not change the configmanager.txt file back)

So I loaded up my save with the space problem and proceeded to play saving after every little incident (ctrl+s = your best friend) and for some reason, even going to the planet that crashed me out everytime I didn't crash. No idea if this is related or not but since I can now play without any issues at all here is my run down on how to get spore going (I'll list my specs to see if its fluke, the hardware or something else)

1. Follow the instructions here fix for sli issue 10012
2. Disable SLI in Nvidia control Panel
3. Run Spore (but remember to save lots just in case!)

Im running Spore with everything in settings turne high/on with 5.1 sound on too...

Setup:

Vista Premium Home Edition 32bit
Intel Quad Core @ 2.6
2GB Ram
Duel 8800 GTS (but running in single card mode also running latest standard release drivers from nvidia.co.uk)
X-Fi Fatality Sound Card
500gb Hard drive with 350gb free

Hope this helps get some of you back up and running, I know how frustrating its been for me.

Sorry for the long post but I thought I'd try help with exactly what when and where!

Cheers
Harcole

[LokalHero]

Nice post, but doesn't help us with ATI cards getting the same CTD or lockups when leaving the homeworld.

[Wyvren]

These two threads should be merged.

Crashing when moving from planet to galaxy

[Harkole]

Played the space stage for antoher 4 hours last night, been all over now got the wormhole key and went on a expedition! Not a single crash and over 400 solar systems visited (according to unlock imagine some are duplicated though or you don't have to zoom in for it to count)

So as far as I can see, doing the sli fix then running in single card mode seems to resolve my issue. For the ATI users the fix is apparently to turn off the AI feature in the Catalyst driver, post on here somewhere...

Cheers
Harcole