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Author Topic:   Countdown to Consumer Action

fredmoss posted 03-07-99 06:36 PM ET
I have seen multiple threads for severe problems with the program, from the weird things that certain users do, to complete system crashes. After playing the game for almost a month now, I have experienced them all. In a month, I have only completed on game, on the lowest level, and had to contend with multiple crashes.
The one thing I haven't seen in all these threads is when Firaxis will fix these problems. I want to know when the next bug fix is due out and what bugs it is intended to fix.
I have read a lot of arguments about how this is a Windows problem. That is the equivalent of writing a bad paper and blaming it on your typewriter. I have been managing programmers for many years and I have a simple rule -- "No matter how cool it looks, if it does not work, take it back and fix it." I know it is popular to blame Bill Gates for everything from Bad Breath to Global Warming. He must be evil and nasty because he is successful and give people like you and me a living. But in this case, I did not pay money to Mr. Gates, I paid them to Mr. Meier et al.
Is it time for me to stop playing the game and spend all my extra time contacting the various game boards and magazines with reports (from your own boards) about how Firaxis sells (and continues) to sell a known faulty product?
This is not a threat, this is just consumerism. If I bought anything else and it worked this abysmally, I would get a refund or get the problem fixed. Companies who sell software seem to imagine they are imune from the basic laws of economics -- "you paid for a horse, I sold you a dead mule. But, doesn't it look COOL!"
This sort of tactic in any other industry is called dishonest.
Fix it or refund it!

Brother Greg posted 03-07-99 07:06 PM ET
The problem is Drivers, NOT Windows. And nobody could expect Firaxis to test for, or write drivers themselves for other people's hardware.
If you want a fix, go and install DirectX v3, and it should work fine. OR Go and buy some up to date hardware with well written drivers. Don't try and blame Firaxis just because your Video card manufacturer writes useless drivers though, and you sure as hell can't expect them to patch for those drivers (hell, I don't think it'd be possible, other than to remove DirectX support, and then, woohoo, they'd have to write a version for everybody's PC individually).
fredmoss posted 03-07-99 07:23 PM ET
That would make a lot of sense, but wait. I have been playing Seven Kingdoms with Direct X 6.0 on the system for about six months without a single bug.
I have the standard Dell video card in my box and no other application has had any problems with it, including some 3-D stop motion animation routines that don't seem phased by my "out of date" drivers.
The bottom line is, I paid money to Firaxis to play their game, their game does not work on my system -- even though my system matches the requirments on the box -- so I should either get the game fixed or my money back.
HermitTwig posted 03-07-99 07:24 PM ET
I myself having been playing SMAC since Feb. 12, on several different computers, ranging from a high-end desktop, to my low-end desktop, to a bare-minimum laptop, and on all of those, I have only crashed twice. I just wish I had better performance than my P-166. Sorry, you won't get a complaint like about game quality on this one.
Brother Greg posted 03-07-99 08:56 PM ET
And maybe it is your sound card drivers. Who knows? All I know is that it works almost perfectly on my system, and lots of other systems, so therefore Firaxis' coding is pretty good - if there was an error in their DirectX coding, it would appear on ALL PCs, not just a selection. The fact that it doesn't work on your system points strongly towards the system being the problem, esp if Firaxis tech support have said that is the case.
Fusker posted 03-08-99 03:52 AM ET
Hmm, I've played over 40 hours and have not had a single crash. The mag reviews I've seen (and trust) all played the game extensively and made no mention of fatal bugs. So, you can try your little 'consumer action' conquest.....but i doubt you'll find many takers... most mags are hailing this as one of the best (if not THE best)games of all time...and I agree...my only beef is the lack of attention given to the fact that the patch kills all sound. Been flawless for me without the patch. Love the game!
Fusker posted 03-08-99 03:55 AM ET
And by the way....how has anyone been playing the final product for a month? I live in a pretty good sized city and the game has only been on the shelf 2 weeks.....just wondering.
Juggler posted 03-08-99 04:23 AM ET
Well bought it in the Netherlands on Feb the 18th for $55.
But I think if figured it out. EA doesn't want to sell originals to Europeans, they want us to buy illegal copies from US versions that only cost $4!!!!!!
Well just maybe we should (but only if the game is distributed by EA).
VIRGIN RULEZ!!!!!!!!!!!!!
(EA you can learn from them, they DON'T disciminate European customers).
Juggler,
Vice provost UoP
Ourobouros posted 03-08-99 12:45 PM ET
I'd just be happy with a refund, but after the 14-day period it looks like that's not possible. There's still the 90-day 'replace if defective' but that usually refers to the CD media, not the software design. Maybe I'll buy the game again in 12 months or so when it's up to version 4.
To all you folks that haven't had a crash - good for you. Please try and be a bit less smug to the *many* people who can't play the game at all, or even worse, play for a while and GAME OVER - all that time wasted.
Scavenger posted 03-13-99 11:22 AM ET
I guess I feel fortunate that I was able to play the game for 3 weeks without any serious problems---until now. My sound no longer works with any program EXCEPT SMAC! When trying to initialize sound or play WAV's, I get a message stating my sound card is in use. I have bought and installed a brand new PCI sound card and have the same problem! I have no hardware conflicts, no (apparent) DirectX problems, and even checked my Registry for problems, all to no avail. There are also no settings for audio in my AC.ini file. Any ideas?
Croaker posted 03-13-99 02:30 PM ET
Well, lets see.. all the problems with SMAC are my hardware manufactures fault eh? Sounds like a load to me. Not that Fraxis isnt trying, but they havent gotten there game to work for me. Ive played just about every game that comes out on the market. I worked for a company that made sound drivers for years, and Ive profesionaly tested games for a long time. While it is possible and probable that a few really outdated folks are having problems with old drivers, most of us have played alot of other games that use the SAME driver calls and use the SAME libraries that dont crash. I really hope that Fraxis fixes the current Terran.exe crash. Its real, its bad, and it isnt Creative Labs fault. Get it?
Croaker
Cadfael posted 03-13-99 06:25 PM ET
I received the game from EA the day after it was released in the US. I have been playing it everyday and have completed about a dozen games, usually playing University or Spartans, and I have never crashed. I did lose sound quality when I installed v2.0, but that does not effect game play.
BikeDude posted 03-13-99 07:47 PM ET
I've been a software developer myself for a couple of years now (7 or so). And although I haven't made any fullblown games (yet... ;-) ), I have seen quite a bit wrt hardware, device drivers from the enduser point of view.
Often, upgrading a device driver, changing the display adapter or similar, will be the difference between crash city and blissful stability.
Or you could just upgrade to NT. Crappy h/w and device drivers will kill NT too, but atleast then there's no doubt about it and the issues are easier to identify.
I once asked Matrox why they had more frequent Win95 driver releases and didn't do more for the NT platform. Their reply was that there were more issues with Win95 to be resolved and that NT was a much more stable platform.
OTOH, I personally am struck with problems caused by the added copyprotection here in Europe. The game flat out refused to start. Once I replaced the EXE file with the american version, the game started and I was even able to apply the 2.0 patch!
This is the reply I got from EA-UK support:
"We are fully aware of the
issues concerning the copy
protection scheme and we will
strive to ensure that similar
problems are not encountered
in the future. Please forgive
us, I am sure you can understand
why the industry has been
forced to take such action."
Now _that_ is one company that deserves a thorough shake. Their reply didn't help me at all! (I wish they had gone into more details on how they plan to fix this in the future)
Anyway, I'm running this game under Win2000 (NT5), with my trusty old 4MB Matrox Millennium PCI graphics adapter and SB AWE64 soundcard. What h/w do the ones of you with problems have?
--
Rune
axe posted 03-16-99 05:37 PM ET
I'm going to have to agree with Brother Greg..What you people don't seem to understand, is that even though your hardware works on other games, doesn't mean those games use routines aligned with calling others. And maybe we can call that advancement. There are always problems there, and always will be. Maybe it's not your individual(whoa big word for being tired) hardware, but maybe a combination? MB + Video? Crap memory + MB? Who knows..I know my problem with SMAC: Diamond FireGL 1000 Pro + Computer = Bad...heh
Dave posted 03-16-99 06:21 PM ET
I think all of you that believe that all of these SMAC problems are specifically DX problems are severely misinformed. Take my problem as an example. As most of you already know, SMAC has an AI problem where the game hangs indefinitely. If this were a DirectX problem, then how is it that even when I disable DirectDraw, use an entirely different graphics card(STB Velocity 128 instead of a Monster 3D 2), turn off all sound and run the game in 800 x 600 it still hangs. Oh wait, it must be a DirectX problem...so I'm wrong right? They wrote a hole in the code is all. In many cases they can place blame on others but a good half of these problems are unheard of. I stopped playing SMAC entirely after 3 different attempts at a full game failed to complete after a hang. The answer Firaxis gave me was to load a previous saved game...didn't work...that was over three weeks ago.
Dire posted 03-17-99 12:01 AM ET
Try loading a game from 5 or more turns back...its damn annoying but that usually does the trick. I'm sure this bug will be fixed in version 3.
Dave posted 03-17-99 12:44 AM ET
Well, I did try this previously. Twice in the same game. The first time I loaded a game X amount of turns back (either 5 or 10) the game hung again on a different year. The second time I was able to transcend and finish the game. This "workaround" is obviously not failsafe.
Travathian posted 03-17-99 11:12 PM ET
Lemme ask all the complainers out there.
How many of you own cars? Probably most all of you. How many times have you gone to start your car, and it wouldn't the first time you tried? Did you just give up and take the car back? Hell no, the dealership would laugh at you. Is the car defective, or the subject of poor workmanship? Not necesarily, cars sometimes just dont start.
Just like not all cars are made to go thru two feet of water and not stall, or knee high mud and not get stuck, or go 0-60 in under 5 seconds.
Some of you are asking for a Corvette, Dodge Ram, and a minivan all put together, for the price of a Volkswagon Bug. Get over it.
If the game is sooooo flawed like some of you are saying, could you please point me to a gaming magazine which put this in the headline of their review of SMAC. Can't find one huh? Because its not that serious of an issue. I have played hundreds of games, and I have yet to play one which didn't crash, lockup, stall, or just not work at all. It happens, get over it.
If you don't know enough about computers to solve your own problems, buy a Playstation.
Dave posted 03-18-99 12:40 AM ET
Hey, don't misunderstand me and think that I do not like this game. I love it. I complain about it because unlike most other developers, Firaxis has taken a bit of time in patching up these problems. Duh, every release has countless bugs. We all know this. The difference here is the amount of red tape it takes to release the patches. Seems our friends in Europe had some trouble getting the 2.0 patch as an example. Let me ask you something...is it so horribly wrong to be able to play a game straight through without a major hitch after owning it for over a month? No, I don't own a car and I can't see how that has anything to do with the topic at hand. As I stated earlier, certain bugs are dismissable...you easily learn to live with them while playing the game. There are those bugs that should be dealt with with some expedience. This is not an issue of how much a person knows about computers...it's common sense. I do not feel that this problem is entirely the fault of Firaxis. I believe the EA is a bit slow in their own right. One of the last posts I read was that the 3.0 patch was already in the EA Quality Assurance testing phase...it's at that point where Firaxis is no longer to blame for the slowdown. For you who actually care about cars, I guess we already have our Lamborghini that's just a few steps away from near perfection...all we're waiting for are the fixes to push it that extra mile.
Bark posted 03-18-99 01:46 AM ET
Uh, first off, who has paid 50 bucks for a brand new car. And if my brand new car did not start on the first try in the first week I had it, I WOULD TAKE IT BACK!!!! I would tell them to fix it!! Seems to me that this is the problem. Firaxis seems not to be so concerned about fixing this game,,,,,,
macroz posted 03-18-99 02:06 AM ET
Some Infos about the terran.exe bug
1. If you have the European Version you are get the US (at least terran.exe) because the heavy compression causes a lot of breakdowns.
Firaxis said this will be probably fixed by v3.0 .
2. If you have an AMD K6 233 or lesser, and it was fabricated over two years ago, you will have some serious problems with the game graphics engine as it uses some acceleration stuff processor based.
3. Don't overclock your CPU for the same reason.
4. The game may use at some time more than 180MB of virtual memory for some reason, esp. on large and huge map games.
5. Disable background programs, esp. virus scanners.
6. ForceOldVoxelAlgorithm=1 in Alpha Centauri.ini
Firaxis can't change the engine so the bug fixes will not fix any game problems with
video / CPU so buy an new PC, acess the one of your brother/sister/roommate etc.
Another option was to force Firaxis to give the sourc code for AC but I dont't think they will do so.

davidgun posted 03-18-99 06:18 PM ET
Travathian. Are you trying to tell us that if you had a car that frequently failed to start and then died every couple of blocks you wouldn't take it back?
NotLikeTea posted 03-18-99 08:42 PM ET
I personally have had no problems with SMAC, but I will not contest the fact that you people have.
However, I don't think that the Firaxis gang are evil people. I don't think they sat around several months ago and said "Hey, here's and idea! Why don't we make a lousy game, and get rich from it!"
I think that these problems are a result of a betatest that was not extensive enough. I doubt that if a betatester had reported these problems, they would have ignored them. The impression I get from their posts is that they genuinely want to make a good game.
Is this unfortunate? Yes, no doubt. Was it a result of bad planning? Probably.. but I do think they mean well.. they want to fix the problems, and are releasing patches. An evil group would have ignored the public alltogether...
<Rant mode off> Sorry bout all that.... needed to get that off my chest there. This is not so much a reply to any particular person, as to an attitude I see, more and more frequenty.
axe posted 03-19-99 01:56 PM ET
Okay, 1.) You don't pay 50$ for a car, you pay 15,000$ ...Two..Cars don't have to be specially designed to work with many different (and hard to make generic) types of streets, stop signs, traffic lights, and parking spots...If that was the case..Cars would be as hard to make as programs..
crisp posted 03-19-99 07:03 PM ET
Dave
re. If this were a DirectX problem, then how is it that even when I disable DirectDraw, use an entirely different graphics card(STB Velocity 128 instead of a Monster 3D 2), turn off all sound and run the game in 800 x 600 it still hangs. Oh wait, it must be a DirectX problem...so I'm wrong right?
Yup you're wrong. Your Monster 3D is a 3D only card so for DirectDraw you'll be using the 128. All disabling DirectDraw will do is redirect calls to the standard Windows display interface which in-turn will call your video card driver. So, bascially, I'd say there's a problem with your video card driver or the DirectX interface to it.
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Author	Topic: Countdown to Consumer Action
fredmoss	posted 03-07-99 06:36 PM ET I have seen multiple threads for severe problems with the program, from the weird things that certain users do, to complete system crashes. After playing the game for almost a month now, I have experienced them all. In a month, I have only completed on game, on the lowest level, and had to contend with multiple crashes. The one thing I haven't seen in all these threads is when Firaxis will fix these problems. I want to know when the next bug fix is due out and what bugs it is intended to fix. I have read a lot of arguments about how this is a Windows problem. That is the equivalent of writing a bad paper and blaming it on your typewriter. I have been managing programmers for many years and I have a simple rule -- "No matter how cool it looks, if it does not work, take it back and fix it." I know it is popular to blame Bill Gates for everything from Bad Breath to Global Warming. He must be evil and nasty because he is successful and give people like you and me a living. But in this case, I did not pay money to Mr. Gates, I paid them to Mr. Meier et al. Is it time for me to stop playing the game and spend all my extra time contacting the various game boards and magazines with reports (from your own boards) about how Firaxis sells (and continues) to sell a known faulty product? This is not a threat, this is just consumerism. If I bought anything else and it worked this abysmally, I would get a refund or get the problem fixed. Companies who sell software seem to imagine they are imune from the basic laws of economics -- "you paid for a horse, I sold you a dead mule. But, doesn't it look COOL!" This sort of tactic in any other industry is called dishonest. Fix it or refund it!
Brother Greg	posted 03-07-99 07:06 PM ET The problem is Drivers, NOT Windows. And nobody could expect Firaxis to test for, or write drivers themselves for other people's hardware. If you want a fix, go and install DirectX v3, and it should work fine. OR Go and buy some up to date hardware with well written drivers. Don't try and blame Firaxis just because your Video card manufacturer writes useless drivers though, and you sure as hell can't expect them to patch for those drivers (hell, I don't think it'd be possible, other than to remove DirectX support, and then, woohoo, they'd have to write a version for everybody's PC individually).
fredmoss	posted 03-07-99 07:23 PM ET That would make a lot of sense, but wait. I have been playing Seven Kingdoms with Direct X 6.0 on the system for about six months without a single bug. I have the standard Dell video card in my box and no other application has had any problems with it, including some 3-D stop motion animation routines that don't seem phased by my "out of date" drivers. The bottom line is, I paid money to Firaxis to play their game, their game does not work on my system -- even though my system matches the requirments on the box -- so I should either get the game fixed or my money back.
HermitTwig	posted 03-07-99 07:24 PM ET I myself having been playing SMAC since Feb. 12, on several different computers, ranging from a high-end desktop, to my low-end desktop, to a bare-minimum laptop, and on all of those, I have only crashed twice. I just wish I had better performance than my P-166. Sorry, you won't get a complaint like about game quality on this one.
Brother Greg	posted 03-07-99 08:56 PM ET And maybe it is your sound card drivers. Who knows? All I know is that it works almost perfectly on my system, and lots of other systems, so therefore Firaxis' coding is pretty good - if there was an error in their DirectX coding, it would appear on ALL PCs, not just a selection. The fact that it doesn't work on your system points strongly towards the system being the problem, esp if Firaxis tech support have said that is the case.
Fusker	posted 03-08-99 03:52 AM ET Hmm, I've played over 40 hours and have not had a single crash. The mag reviews I've seen (and trust) all played the game extensively and made no mention of fatal bugs. So, you can try your little 'consumer action' conquest.....but i doubt you'll find many takers... most mags are hailing this as one of the best (if not THE best)games of all time...and I agree...my only beef is the lack of attention given to the fact that the patch kills all sound. Been flawless for me without the patch. Love the game!
Fusker	posted 03-08-99 03:55 AM ET And by the way....how has anyone been playing the final product for a month? I live in a pretty good sized city and the game has only been on the shelf 2 weeks.....just wondering.
Juggler	posted 03-08-99 04:23 AM ET Well bought it in the Netherlands on Feb the 18th for $55. But I think if figured it out. EA doesn't want to sell originals to Europeans, they want us to buy illegal copies from US versions that only cost $4!!!!!! Well just maybe we should (but only if the game is distributed by EA). VIRGIN RULEZ!!!!!!!!!!!!! (EA you can learn from them, they DON'T disciminate European customers). Juggler, Vice provost UoP
Ourobouros	posted 03-08-99 12:45 PM ET I'd just be happy with a refund, but after the 14-day period it looks like that's not possible. There's still the 90-day 'replace if defective' but that usually refers to the CD media, not the software design. Maybe I'll buy the game again in 12 months or so when it's up to version 4. To all you folks that haven't had a crash - good for you. Please try and be a bit less smug to the many people who can't play the game at all, or even worse, play for a while and GAME OVER - all that time wasted.
Scavenger	posted 03-13-99 11:22 AM ET I guess I feel fortunate that I was able to play the game for 3 weeks without any serious problems---until now. My sound no longer works with any program EXCEPT SMAC! When trying to initialize sound or play WAV's, I get a message stating my sound card is in use. I have bought and installed a brand new PCI sound card and have the same problem! I have no hardware conflicts, no (apparent) DirectX problems, and even checked my Registry for problems, all to no avail. There are also no settings for audio in my AC.ini file. Any ideas?
Croaker	posted 03-13-99 02:30 PM ET Well, lets see.. all the problems with SMAC are my hardware manufactures fault eh? Sounds like a load to me. Not that Fraxis isnt trying, but they havent gotten there game to work for me. Ive played just about every game that comes out on the market. I worked for a company that made sound drivers for years, and Ive profesionaly tested games for a long time. While it is possible and probable that a few really outdated folks are having problems with old drivers, most of us have played alot of other games that use the SAME driver calls and use the SAME libraries that dont crash. I really hope that Fraxis fixes the current Terran.exe crash. Its real, its bad, and it isnt Creative Labs fault. Get it? Croaker
Cadfael	posted 03-13-99 06:25 PM ET I received the game from EA the day after it was released in the US. I have been playing it everyday and have completed about a dozen games, usually playing University or Spartans, and I have never crashed. I did lose sound quality when I installed v2.0, but that does not effect game play.
BikeDude	posted 03-13-99 07:47 PM ET I've been a software developer myself for a couple of years now (7 or so). And although I haven't made any fullblown games (yet... ;-) ), I have seen quite a bit wrt hardware, device drivers from the enduser point of view. Often, upgrading a device driver, changing the display adapter or similar, will be the difference between crash city and blissful stability. Or you could just upgrade to NT. Crappy h/w and device drivers will kill NT too, but atleast then there's no doubt about it and the issues are easier to identify. I once asked Matrox why they had more frequent Win95 driver releases and didn't do more for the NT platform. Their reply was that there were more issues with Win95 to be resolved and that NT was a much more stable platform. OTOH, I personally am struck with problems caused by the added copyprotection here in Europe. The game flat out refused to start. Once I replaced the EXE file with the american version, the game started and I was even able to apply the 2.0 patch! This is the reply I got from EA-UK support: "We are fully aware of the issues concerning the copy protection scheme and we will strive to ensure that similar problems are not encountered in the future. Please forgive us, I am sure you can understand why the industry has been forced to take such action." Now _that_ is one company that deserves a thorough shake. Their reply didn't help me at all! (I wish they had gone into more details on how they plan to fix this in the future) Anyway, I'm running this game under Win2000 (NT5), with my trusty old 4MB Matrox Millennium PCI graphics adapter and SB AWE64 soundcard. What h/w do the ones of you with problems have? -- Rune
axe	posted 03-16-99 05:37 PM ET I'm going to have to agree with Brother Greg..What you people don't seem to understand, is that even though your hardware works on other games, doesn't mean those games use routines aligned with calling others. And maybe we can call that advancement. There are always problems there, and always will be. Maybe it's not your individual(whoa big word for being tired) hardware, but maybe a combination? MB + Video? Crap memory + MB? Who knows..I know my problem with SMAC: Diamond FireGL 1000 Pro + Computer = Bad...heh
Dave	posted 03-16-99 06:21 PM ET I think all of you that believe that all of these SMAC problems are specifically DX problems are severely misinformed. Take my problem as an example. As most of you already know, SMAC has an AI problem where the game hangs indefinitely. If this were a DirectX problem, then how is it that even when I disable DirectDraw, use an entirely different graphics card(STB Velocity 128 instead of a Monster 3D 2), turn off all sound and run the game in 800 x 600 it still hangs. Oh wait, it must be a DirectX problem...so I'm wrong right? They wrote a hole in the code is all. In many cases they can place blame on others but a good half of these problems are unheard of. I stopped playing SMAC entirely after 3 different attempts at a full game failed to complete after a hang. The answer Firaxis gave me was to load a previous saved game...didn't work...that was over three weeks ago.
Dire	posted 03-17-99 12:01 AM ET Try loading a game from 5 or more turns back...its damn annoying but that usually does the trick. I'm sure this bug will be fixed in version 3.
Dave	posted 03-17-99 12:44 AM ET Well, I did try this previously. Twice in the same game. The first time I loaded a game X amount of turns back (either 5 or 10) the game hung again on a different year. The second time I was able to transcend and finish the game. This "workaround" is obviously not failsafe.
Travathian	posted 03-17-99 11:12 PM ET Lemme ask all the complainers out there. How many of you own cars? Probably most all of you. How many times have you gone to start your car, and it wouldn't the first time you tried? Did you just give up and take the car back? Hell no, the dealership would laugh at you. Is the car defective, or the subject of poor workmanship? Not necesarily, cars sometimes just dont start. Just like not all cars are made to go thru two feet of water and not stall, or knee high mud and not get stuck, or go 0-60 in under 5 seconds. Some of you are asking for a Corvette, Dodge Ram, and a minivan all put together, for the price of a Volkswagon Bug. Get over it. If the game is sooooo flawed like some of you are saying, could you please point me to a gaming magazine which put this in the headline of their review of SMAC. Can't find one huh? Because its not that serious of an issue. I have played hundreds of games, and I have yet to play one which didn't crash, lockup, stall, or just not work at all. It happens, get over it. If you don't know enough about computers to solve your own problems, buy a Playstation.
Dave	posted 03-18-99 12:40 AM ET Hey, don't misunderstand me and think that I do not like this game. I love it. I complain about it because unlike most other developers, Firaxis has taken a bit of time in patching up these problems. Duh, every release has countless bugs. We all know this. The difference here is the amount of red tape it takes to release the patches. Seems our friends in Europe had some trouble getting the 2.0 patch as an example. Let me ask you something...is it so horribly wrong to be able to play a game straight through without a major hitch after owning it for over a month? No, I don't own a car and I can't see how that has anything to do with the topic at hand. As I stated earlier, certain bugs are dismissable...you easily learn to live with them while playing the game. There are those bugs that should be dealt with with some expedience. This is not an issue of how much a person knows about computers...it's common sense. I do not feel that this problem is entirely the fault of Firaxis. I believe the EA is a bit slow in their own right. One of the last posts I read was that the 3.0 patch was already in the EA Quality Assurance testing phase...it's at that point where Firaxis is no longer to blame for the slowdown. For you who actually care about cars, I guess we already have our Lamborghini that's just a few steps away from near perfection...all we're waiting for are the fixes to push it that extra mile.
Bark	posted 03-18-99 01:46 AM ET Uh, first off, who has paid 50 bucks for a brand new car. And if my brand new car did not start on the first try in the first week I had it, I WOULD TAKE IT BACK!!!! I would tell them to fix it!! Seems to me that this is the problem. Firaxis seems not to be so concerned about fixing this game,,,,,,
macroz	posted 03-18-99 02:06 AM ET Some Infos about the terran.exe bug 1. If you have the European Version you are get the US (at least terran.exe) because the heavy compression causes a lot of breakdowns. Firaxis said this will be probably fixed by v3.0 . 2. If you have an AMD K6 233 or lesser, and it was fabricated over two years ago, you will have some serious problems with the game graphics engine as it uses some acceleration stuff processor based. 3. Don't overclock your CPU for the same reason. 4. The game may use at some time more than 180MB of virtual memory for some reason, esp. on large and huge map games. 5. Disable background programs, esp. virus scanners. 6. ForceOldVoxelAlgorithm=1 in Alpha Centauri.ini Firaxis can't change the engine so the bug fixes will not fix any game problems with video / CPU so buy an new PC, acess the one of your brother/sister/roommate etc. Another option was to force Firaxis to give the sourc code for AC but I dont't think they will do so.
davidgun	posted 03-18-99 06:18 PM ET Travathian. Are you trying to tell us that if you had a car that frequently failed to start and then died every couple of blocks you wouldn't take it back?
NotLikeTea	posted 03-18-99 08:42 PM ET I personally have had no problems with SMAC, but I will not contest the fact that you people have. However, I don't think that the Firaxis gang are evil people. I don't think they sat around several months ago and said "Hey, here's and idea! Why don't we make a lousy game, and get rich from it!" I think that these problems are a result of a betatest that was not extensive enough. I doubt that if a betatester had reported these problems, they would have ignored them. The impression I get from their posts is that they genuinely want to make a good game. Is this unfortunate? Yes, no doubt. Was it a result of bad planning? Probably.. but I do think they mean well.. they want to fix the problems, and are releasing patches. An evil group would have ignored the public alltogether... <Rant mode off> Sorry bout all that.... needed to get that off my chest there. This is not so much a reply to any particular person, as to an attitude I see, more and more frequenty.
axe	posted 03-19-99 01:56 PM ET Okay, 1.) You don't pay 50$ for a car, you pay 15,000$ ...Two..Cars don't have to be specially designed to work with many different (and hard to make generic) types of streets, stop signs, traffic lights, and parking spots...If that was the case..Cars would be as hard to make as programs..
crisp	posted 03-19-99 07:03 PM ET Dave re. If this were a DirectX problem, then how is it that even when I disable DirectDraw, use an entirely different graphics card(STB Velocity 128 instead of a Monster 3D 2), turn off all sound and run the game in 800 x 600 it still hangs. Oh wait, it must be a DirectX problem...so I'm wrong right? Yup you're wrong. Your Monster 3D is a 3D only card so for DirectDraw you'll be using the 128. All disabling DirectDraw will do is redirect calls to the standard Windows display interface which in-turn will call your video card driver. So, bascially, I'd say there's a problem with your video card driver or the DirectX interface to it.