Symptom - Crashes When You Arrive At A Particular Planet

This page discusses the possible causes of a crash that seems to always happen at a particular planet or star. It may be the homeworld of a new race, or a planet where a specific quest is supposed to trigger. Either way, when you get there, the game crashes to the desktop, or just stalls out and hangs indefinitely.

There's a few possible causes for this symptom. It could be an issue with your planet or star itself, so we'll start with that.


Problem with Planet Class or Star Class

Did you create this planet entirely? If it's one of the normal planets from the main, unmodded game, then you can skip to the next section. But if it's a new planet type that you added to the game in your mod, keep reading.

The planet class (or even star class, if you messed with those) might not be listed in game.ini or distribution.ini. Either can cause a crash. Alternately, your new planet might lack a CLAS line, which could crash it as well.

Solution: Check the "STARS" and "PLANETS" sections of game.ini to make sure any custom star or planet entries are included on the appropriate list, by file name. Then check "STARCLASSES" and "PLANETCLASSES" in distribution.ini. If no problems show up in those two places, make sure you have a CLAS line in the (planet).ini file, and that the entry on the CLAS line corresponds to one of the planetclasses from distribution.ini.

If the planet type, planet class, star type or star class is missing from the appropriate list, add it in, and your game should stop crashing.

Planet Class, in particular, has an extra little wrinkle. Here's the list of planetclasses from distribution.ini:

PLANETCLASSES
A dead
B frozen
C barren
D forest
E grassland
F ocean
G jungle
H desert
I volcanic
J toxic
K gasgiant
L homeworld
END

For my upcoming Drives'R'Us v4.0 mod, I added an extra line to that block. It says "M nopick". Then I made a point of NOT including any M's in the PLANETDIST block (which is a little further down Distribution.ini). This allows for special planets that don't appear on the map at all in the course of normal starmap generation, and can only be placed by specific quests. It's like gas giants in that way (since they only show up in certain quests), but without the damocles-related baggage or the noitems FLAG.

There's no significance to the name "nopick" - I just made up something that pointed out to me that this was the category I'd made for planets the game wouldn't pick unless I told it to.

If you do want your new planet to show up as just another planet type, you'll need to add it to PLANETDIST, or give the new planet a CLAS line that corresponds to one of the existing planet classes.


Other Problems:

Graphics Issues:

If your planet includes a custom image, then the problem likely lies in the GFXP line of the planet itself.
Solution: Double-check that the image file referenced in the (planet).ini files exists in the first place, then check for typos, and that the file extensions match.
For further information about graphics issues and crashes, see Symptom - Graphics Display Issues .

Item Problems

If there's a custom item that's always found on the planet, it could be some element of the item that's causing the problem.
Solution: Check the GFXP line of any items that automatically spawn at the planet. If that doesn't have a typo, check the ITEM or ITMS line for problems. If that is normal, too, then the next place to check is to make sure your items are listed in game.ini.
For further information and debugging instructions involving items, see Symptom - Crashes When A Particular Item Is Generated

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