Am playing Celtica - got as far as the Pyramid puzzle. When I try to click on the crystals (without even manipulating them as per MaGtRo's w/t), miniature snapshots appear onscreen including a snapshot of the finished pyramid bearing an image of the Celtic cross. Thinking the puzzle was somehow solved, I tried to back away from it only to get a "this program has performed an illegal operation" message. Clicking on "details", I saw "page fault" with a bunch of numbers/code.

Is this a glitch/bug?

http://i221.photobucket.com/albums/dd225...aloperation.jpg

Here are the details -

Image 1: http://i221.photobucket.com/albums/dd225/KellySt10/My%20latest%20Game%20problems/celticapgfault1.jpg

Image 2: http://i221.photobucket.com/albums/dd225...calpgfault2.jpg

Here are my VPC 2004 Windows 98SE specs -

System specs - http://i221.photobucket.com/albums/dd225...systemspecs.jpg

Video specs - http://i221.photobucket.com/albums/dd225/KellySt10/my%20computer%20specs/vpcwin98dxdiagvideo.jpg

If more info is needed just ask and I'll try to provide it.

Is this a VMware (or VPC) snapshot?

all are VPC snapshots.

The invalid page fault is a problem mentioned in this walkthrough
http://www.balmoralsoftware.com/celtica/celtica.htm

I remember having some sort of trouble with the pyramid puzzle back when I played the game 9 years ago. It didn't load all the pieces and was unsolvable, so I had to go back to a save. Once a puzzle gets spoiled in Celtica, you have to go back to a saved game because the puzzle won't reset when you pull back from it. Some people used to recommend saving before every puzzle because you couldn't be sure which one would mess up. Most puzzles will probably be fine, but remember to save regularly just in case.

If this puzzle was unsolvable, were you able to finish the game? When I get to the pyramid puzzle (happens each time I approach the table) my game loads all 4 pieces of the pyramid but when I try to manipulate the pieces that's when the trouble starts.

EDIT - I don't know if this is true, but if the pyramid puzzle in my copy of the game keeps giving me an invalid page fault, I might have to resort to using a solved pyramid puzzle save (as I had to do with the music box puzzle)?

Yes I was able to continue, but I had to go back to a save from before I tried to access that particular puzzle. The game is quirky and puzzles don't always load correctly -- and once you approach a puzzle and back out of it, it won't behave -- unless you go back to a save from before you first approached it.

You notice at the beginning of the MaGtRo walkthrough it says

So now that you've had the invalid page fault with that puzzle, you have to go back to a save from before you approached that puzzle. Otherwise you'll always get the invalid page fault. (and since this is Windows 98, you may have to exit the game and reboot the Virtual Machine in order to clear the cache)

And do what - go to a different (but not the pyramid puzzle) puzzle?

If you were able to finish the game, how did you do it if you had trouble with the pyramid puzzle?

Assuming you have a save somewhere before you attempted the puzzle, you go back to that save, replay up to the troublesome puzzle, and save before you attempt it. Every time you try to load the puzzle, it's a crapshoot whether it will work correctly or not.

So now you have a save right before the puzzle. That's just for convenience because you may have to go back to the save more than once to get the puzzle to work right. You just have to have a save before it messes up. If you back out and save the game, that puzzle will never work right. Not in my experience anyway.

Also (I can't remember for sure) you may have to exit the game and reboot before loading the save. If you want I can try to get you a save afterwards.

Thanks, I'd like a save.

Check your email

I got your save, Jenny - and I tried playing up to the zodiac puzzle - the prism puzzle wouldn't let me move the prisms to the correct location (I had to print out Dan Kennedy's w/t) although I was able to rotate them; I went to the windmill and after getting the windmill shaft to turn, tried moving in to a close up to do the gear box puzzle but then I had no action cursor (it was a yellow ball cursor), so went back to the mansion. In the mansion the door to the kitchen had no action cursor when I placed my cursor on the door (again it was a "yellow ball" cursor) so went into the library, read all 4 pages of the poem, got the safe combination by flipping the cards and using a hand held calculator, but when I tried to enter the combination, the little number windows on the safe began to multiply and appear at random places on the safe, as did the safe wheel, and when I got the safe open, it didn't register the safe as "open", it registered the safe door as "closed" although the safe was open, and when I tried to do the safe slider puzzle the pieces wouldn't move. So I went into Kerry Gardens outside the mansion and tried to do the zodiac planetary puzzle. As I clicked on the hotspots in the little hut, little copies of these hotspots multiplied and began to appear at random places all over the computer screen, and none of the choices I made registered on the puzzle.

Could this be a graphics issue? Hyperthreading? Is my copy of the game buggy? Jenny100, did you have this happen to you when you tried the puzzles? If I played the game in Windows XP (either that or Win 95 compatibility mode) might this fix this issue?

Regarding trying the game in XP, I'm going to wait to see if I get a new PC (Value Series) from the EcollegePC site next month, b/c I believe I'll get the same issue if I tried the game in my netbook's host XP OS due to the cheap graphics card it has.

If I remember right, some of the puzzles don't become available until you've done others. So the ones that went buggy are probably preventing you from doing some of those others and you're getting the inactive cursor. It seems like your game has gotten itself into a buggy state and you'd need to go back to a save before the bugginess started.

When I played the game 9 years ago (on a 233 MHz AMD computer), I had trouble with both the pyramid puzzle and the prism puzzle -- the puzzles that have "see-through" parts. I tried to skip them, did some other puzzles, but then found I was blocked from continuing until the pyramid and prism puzzles were finished -- which I couldn't do because they'd gone buggy. I had to go back to an old save and replay. So it's not a good idea to try skipping a puzzle that's gone buggy with this game. It's best to immediately go back to a saved game before the bugginess started.

I doubt that you're having a graphics card issue if you're playing inside Virtual PC. I've been playing the game using Virtual PC, and the video card inside Virtual PC is the same emulated S3 Trio video card that would be in your Virtual PC. It doesn't matter what your actual video card is, the game running inside Virtual PC will only see an S3 Trio.

There might be some issue with Virtual PC on a netbook that I'm not aware of. I'm not really familiar with netbook processors. But I think the game is just prone to bugs.

I'll try to get you a save from after the prism since it is the next one after the pyramid puzzle in the MaGtRo walkthrough. Hopefully that will allow you to continue.

I reloaded my saves several times, backed out of these buggy puzzles and retried them several times only to find that they still kept being buggy consistently.


Ok - would it be ok if you tried to get me saves that were past all of the buggy puzzles so I can finish the game?

P.S. This is the Dutch version of Celtica that I spoke with you about several weeks ago in the Game Discussions thread here at GB - could this be what's causing all this puzzle bugginess?

I don't know which puzzles are going to be the buggy ones. Some people have reported playing it with no bugs at all and other people have had worse troubles than I did.

I just sent you a save from after the Prism Puzzle.
See how the game works from there. Other than the Pyramid and Prism puzzles, I can't remember which other puzzles caused problems, though I think there were a couple. Also I had a crash when I had to switch CD's (2 out of 3 times it would crash when switching from CD1 to CD2).

I don't think the language of the game would make a difference.

Backing out of a puzzle and retrying won't do any good because it remembers what it was doing from the first time you loaded it. You have to go back to a save that was made before you approached the puzzle. You may also have to exit the game, reboot the Virtual Machine, and restart the game in order to clear the corruption the misloaded puzzle put in your cache. Otherwise it will reuse the corrupted data from the misloaded puzzle. It's a pain in the ... but you have to be thorough to give the puzzle a "fresh start" at loading.

I moved the Glitches forum postings that have hints help and merged it to the Hints forum thread. It facilitates archiving or search for future Celtica help.

Please use Hints forum thread for non tech-game help postings. Thanks.

Jenny - Thanks for the wonderful hints help. Please check there for cruise' postings. Hugs.