Pioneer dev forum

Every time I try to load a saved game, or select 'continue game' it then runs in a very slow/jerky manner, evidenced by my mouse pointer jumping around the screen rather than gliding smoothly. When I click to go into hyperspace, the '3-second' countdown takes anything up to 2 minutes to finish, then the game immediately crashes back to desktop. There is then a Window called "Microsoft Visual C++ Runtime Library" which says there has been an "assertion failure" and gives me options which I don't understand.
I think this must be a problem with the game not my PC, because the game functions perfectly when starting from scratch. I can enjoy just playing it for a while, because I used to be addicted to Frontier Elite II and Pioneer plays identically but with modern graphics, and it is a major trip down memory lane, but at the moment I always know that when I'm forced to drag myself away from it, there's no chance to resume where I left it. Kind of spoils it, can't make progress.

I also would like to know how to take screenshots, there is a specific button on my keyboard but it does not appear to work. Is there an app I can download that would let me take a screenshot of anything?

Hi,

There was a bug but this was recently fixed, just a day or two ago.

Might be worth getting the latest version and trying again. Unfortunately your old save game won't work with the new version :(

Sorry about that but it was a bug with the save/load code that caused the problem.

Andy

Also if you want to take a screenshot you can press CTRL+PrintScreen or CTRL+* on the keypad :)

Hi Fluffyfreak,

Many thanks for your advice, you are a star (yes, a big ball of hot gas! Just kidding) That did the trick perfectly, you've unlocked the whole galaxy for me, the game is now truly unlimited. Any more probs, I'll look out for subsequent newer versions.

Thanks also for the tip on screenshots. I never got one by pressing the print screen button on its own, but there is a little blue symbol on that key, which matches the colour of a button labelled 'fn' which I took to mean 'function' so I assumed that was a sort of 'ctrl' button for any key with a blue icon next to the main symbol, but that never worked either. Both the solutions you've told me are so simple I'm embarrassed not to have discovered them myself, but if you don't ask questions that risk embarrassing oneself, you never get anywhere do you? I've even managed to find where they are put once I've taken them, so for once I have surpassed myself.

Now I can relive my youth and waste an outrageous amount of time, I'm so grateful. Many thanks again (sorry to gush.)

Glad to hear it's working for you now :)