Most or all tooltips disappear and remain missing until engine restart

[Eric Ongerth]

This is happening occasionally, maybe about one game out of every four, since Alpha 19. For no obvious reason, with no immediate cause that I have noted, tooltips disappear. Mostly I am referring to the tooltips when you select a building and then hover the mouse pointer over a technology or a type of unit; or also, when you select a unit or units and hover over the display of types of buildings which those units are able to build.

Like most experienced players, I don't need the tooltips to know what the units and technologies and buildings are. But I do rely on them still for the cost of building each one, and also to estimate how soon I will be able to afford the next production; also to track what materials I need to be producing more of, based on what I want to build next. Especially useful is the tooltip for each civilization stage, without which there is no clear measure of whether you need to work harder on (for example) wood or food.

When this breaks, it stays broken as long as the program is running. Stopping or resigning one match and starting another doesn't fix it. I have to stop the whole program and start it fresh in order to fix it. There have even been a couple of times when this issue was showing from the beginning of the first match.

[Eric Ongerth]

One correction: in my most recent game I saw an example of tooltips breaking and then resuming their function correctly again. Previously I think I have never seen that. As reported above, it has been more common for them to remain broken for the rest of the match and sometimes even for a following match.

You may find it interesting (or maybe a meaningless coincidence?) that the moment when the tooltips returned to working properly was exactly at the moment of a shift between fast-forward speed and normal game engine speed (see ticket #3713). I forget whether the shift was in the faster or slower direction.

[elexis]

Replying to eric o:

the moment when the tooltips returned to working properly was exactly at the moment of a shift between fast-forward speed and normal game engine speed (see ticket #3713)

If timers are somehow broken for your version, it might explain all #3713, #3714, #3715.

[elexis]

We got no other reports of timer-related problems as in #3713, #3714, #3715. The related functions have not been changed. Likely something messed up with either your operating system or the installation.

[Eric Ongerth]

Thank you. I must apologize for not updating these reports. I agreed with the suspicion that all three were linked, and it was strange enough to make me suspect my installation as well. So in January I reinstalled and none of the three issues have repeated.