Madmatt

We will be announcing the winner very soon. We have a good idea who its going to be but need to get everything prepapred on our end first. Thanks to all that participated! Madmatt

Each license allows two concurrent installs/activations so normally when someone replaces their drive during an emergency they still have 1 activation left over. In fact thats the reason you get two, but if both are in use and something bad happens, simply email elicense@battlefront.com, explain EXACTLY what has happened and why you can no longer access the install on your old computer/drive and if you can also include the code itself or at least the name the order was placed under and the approximate date that you placed your order and we can work with you to get the matter resolved in a fair manner. Madmatt

While this sounds like an interesting idea, our time is better spent trying to fix/address the problems on our end internally than making some sort of test build available to the public. Both ATI and nVidia have been made aware of everything we have seen so far with their drivers and of course we continue to pursue all the performance issues ourselves. Madmatt

V1.03 fixes a host of issues and didn't add any new instability so there is no reason NOT to install it. Madmatt

It should be okay but your best bet is to download the demo and test its performance before you purchase the full game. Madmatt

You can try and delete the intro movie (or simply rename it) but also be sure and have your desktop set to 32 bit color, thats very important. In addition to that, if you have a dual monitor setup, try and disable the secondary monitor to see if it makes a difference. Lastly, the latest readme details how to manually alter the display size.txt file to change the games resolution. You may want to try different values with that and see what you get. Madmatt

Are you running on a single monitor or a dual display? If dual, try and disable the second monitor. You can also hand edit the display size.txt file and set a different resolution (details on how to do this are in the readme file). Be sure to have your windows desktop set to 32 bit color as well! Thats very important! Madmatt

As mentioned above, this is just an unfortunate happenstance. There is nothing that a game could/would do to cause a full hardware fault like this. Also, harddrives usually don't just DIE all at once (but it can happen). Normally you will notice that they begin to fail a little bit at a time and these failures exhibit themseleves as software crashes, long load/access times or seemingly random Windows crashes and error messages. As a drives physical surface sectors go bad or grow more corrupted these errors occur more and more often and eventually you get a total fault where the drive becomes completely inaccessable. An old technicians trick (I was a hardware tech before I became a network engineer before I then worked for Battlefront) is to take a bad drive and stick it in your freezer overnight. Take it out the next day and hook it up to your computer. In many cases you will get the drive to boot up long enough to backup files and folders to a spare drive. Something about the cold causing the disk sirface to contract and become *readable* I guess, but its a temporary fix at best and not always reliable. By the way, 200 bucks for a new drive? You got robbed! You should be able to pick up a brand new 500 GB drive for just a little over 100 bucks, and smaller drivers are even cheaper. Madmatt

As of last night the download image has been upgraded to v1.03. Madmatt

The packaging of the brz files makes no difference at all in gamespeed or game performance. There are reasons that we decided to keep the full versions brz files seperate like that. Madmatt

Its all real. In fact, we even display planets as well all properly positioned. It was one of the very first things that was coded actually. According to Charles, the CMx2 engine actually renders 8012 stars in their correct locations with appropriate brightness (i.e. magnitude). It also shows the visible planets in their proper spots, as well as the moon, in its correct phase with the illuminated area correctly oriented toward the sun and of course all properly placed for the viewing positions latitude and longitude. Madmatt

What version of the game did you see this in? Do you by chance still have a save game of this? We had thought we had fixed this issue in the past, but its possible a certain set of conditions could still trigger it. Whats happening is that the model is reverting to its "default" pose, with no animation being played properly. Madmatt

Make sure and enable Anti-Aliasing in the games Options panel. Madmatt

Just to update, I did some tests, installed CMSF in a non-standard directory, then downloaded the patch and it worked exactly as it was supposed to. It detected the new directory location, patched fine with no errors. I will keep my eyes open though if anyone else ever encounters something like what you saw. Madmatt

While I am glad that you got it working, several things you mentioned concerned me. First, the patch SHOULD detect where the game is installed, no matter what Second, the patch doesnt have any EULA file (its a license agreement text) and I have never seen that error EVER before in any patch or installer I made, so thats curious. Are you POSITIVE you downloaded the Battlefront.com v1.03 patch? What was its exact size? I just want to make sure that there isn't some corrupted patch floating around because the behavior your describing is certainly not normal. Madmatt

Refresh the first link and you should find links to my new Paradox Patch installer. TGhe patch currently on Paradoxplaza is okay, and includes all the files but it might not always properly detect where the game was installed. My newer version (the one being mirrored on other sites) fixes that. Madmatt

There is a known issue with some Nvidia drivers where the display of shadows also caused the infantry to become invisible. The fix was to turn shadows off. I believe Rune first noticed this back in the beta but I thought it was fixed with the newer Vista drivers however your running those new beta drivers that just came out. What OS do you run? Madmatt

Been there all along.... Madmatt

I don't have an ETA other than "soon"! As to updating demo's, well I always ask them to update and replace older files with newer ones. Sometimes they do...sometimes they don't... Madmatt

The patch is all-inclusive so there is no need to install a second patch but you may want to use a download manager program and attempt to download the patch from yet a different spot. Sounds like you keep getting a corrupted version. As to our download version, I will be updating the master image later today so that when people buy the game, it will download as v1.03. Obviously the CD will continue to be v1.01 until we run out and press new ones. Madmatt

Any chance one of you could post a screenshot of what you are seeing? It might help us to diagnose the problem although I have an idea already. Madmatt

Please post your full system specs and driver version #'s. Thanks! Madmatt

Thats all fine and good and all but you know the map IS sort of a sales incentive to get people to buy the Deluxe Version so we would appreciate it if it is NOT posted anywhere. We will be offering it for sale seperately though in the very near future (along with the mousepad). Madmatt

No, if you launch the game and it still says 1.01 then its not running 1.03 (or even 1.02) You may need to change the default install location of the patch to be the same location as where you have the game installed. I didn't make the Gamersgate installer so I am not sure what its defaults are but I am making a custom Gamersgate version patch installer which should be able to locate where the game is installed and patch properly. Madmatt

is there not a 1.03 gamersgate patch already up then? cos I've downloaded 1 :/ 98.3mb </font>