Origins suffers from a driver-related bug which causes the Z-buffer to become reset on the 3D character viewer. Bioware programmers forgot to check the error code when retrieving the Z-buffer pointer, and when this pointer is invalid, the attempt to dereference this pointer triggers a memory access violation.

I have altered the program to intercept attempts to access the Z-buffer. I inserted a new code segment into the executable, which is responsible for performing the missing error checking.

If this patch works, or if it does not work at all, please leave a comment listing known hardware and/or graphics driver information. Important data includes the operating system, the CPU architecture (32-bit or 64-bit), the video card or chipset, and the GPU driver version.

A text notice will be displayed at the top-left console area when a crash is prevented.


Digital Rights Management (DRM) software systems protecting the original game executable were not tampered with, or affected by, the changes I have made to the executable.

Crash information
This patch addresses a specific program crash, shown in the following Windows report:

Do not use this patch if you do not experience crashes identical to the one above.

Installation

• Copy daorigins_i9h.exe from the downloaded archive, to the DA:O bin_ship directory.
• Backup or rename the original DAOriginsLauncher.xml, found in the DA:O data directory.
• Copy DAOriginsLauncher.xml from the downloaded archive, to the DA:O data directory.

Development misc.
Info relating to the programming aspect of the crash. Patch code is documented at the bottom.

edit: Moved to Pastebin.