Sid Meier's Pirates! Steam version crashes due to pure virtual function call?

Question

I used to love Sid Meier's Pirates! and had a physical copy of the game I sadly misplaced. In a Steam sale a year or so ago, I bought a virtual copy, but have only recently gotten around to playing it. I experience a crash due to a pure virtual function call, always within the first 30-60 minutes of gameplay whenever I try to begin a new game. It can happen when I'm just sailing around, in battle, in a tavern, etc.

As a software developer, I know that pure virtual function calls (virtual functions called from a constructor or destructor that cause the code to look for an implementation of the function in the base method of the class that doesn't exist) are a no-no, but I'm not sure if there's anything I can do to fix the problem on my end - there doesn't seem to be a forthcoming patch. Has anyone else experienced this and found a solution?

Answer 1

I am not a developer, I don't exactly know what I fixed the problem. I just know that after these steps, the problem was fixed. I successfully run the gold edition of the game on Windows 10.

1. Set the compatibility to Windows XP Service Pack 3.
2. Create a config.ini file inside the game directory with the following lines:

Gamma = 1.000000
KeypadStatus = 1
DisplayShadows = 1
TrilinearFiltering = 1
DisableShaders = 0
AdvancedLighting = 1
WindowWidth = [resolution]
WindowHeight = [resolution]
WaterDetail = 2
WorldDetail = 5
ObjectDetail = 2
MasterVolume = 1.000000
MusicVolume = 1.000000
SFXVolume = 1.000000
DanceVolume = 1.000000
IsSlowMachine = 0
MyName = [name]
Fullscreen = 0
3DAudioDriver =
CustomSail =
CustomFlag =

That fixed it for me, hope it helps!

This is where I found the fix: https://www.pcgamer.com/how-to-run-sid-meiers-pirates-on-windows-78/