Newbie Looking for Some Answeres

[Jeff Mullen <cpu.write@verizon.net>]

I'm basically exploring Xconq, and went to check out the "Advances 
Through History" set-up.  It's left me scratching my head.

I can't get 20 turns into the scenario without the program just up and 
terminating.  It always happens after I try to put in a new research 
goal.  I'm running under freespire 1.0 on an IBM PC compatible that I 
built myself.  I'm a long time C Programmer.

This is a bug of one kind or another.

If I'm losing the game and it's not telling me this, it's a design bug.  
If it's running into some contradiction in the research goals that it 
simply can't handle and giving up without so much as printing an Fatal 
Error Message, then it's a coding bug.  Even if my machine is running 
out of memory (one of the $#@)(! RAM sticks went bad and I haven't had a 
chance to replace it yet, so I'm down to a measly 256 megs of the ol' 
PC2100), there should be some indication that this is what is 
happening.  There isn't.  The program just stops running.

Either way, I'm being left high and dry, and it's really annoying me.  
Whenever one designs a program, one should have it provide something 
called "graceful degradation"--that is, when it bombs, IT SHOULD GIVE 
YOU SOME IDEA AS TO WHY!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Any help would be appreciated.  Please reply to the email address from 
which this message was sent, as I have no idea what the mailing list is 
let alone how to get on it, and I'm not in any mood right now to spend 
the time to find out.

Any help that could be given will be appreciated.  I promise that I'll 
be calmed down and nice and shiny polite by the time I reply to any 
replies.  No need to mistreat folks who are trying to help.  Thanks in 
advance.

Jeff