HUGE bug in the GOLD DEMO

[Delta]

Every time (literally, I tried it 3 times, then I got fed up with it, because of no save setting.) Every time I invade Russia after I defeat france, it goes fine until may. And that during may, Russia goes through its turn, and is almost done, but purchases a few corps, and when trying to purchase the last one, it freezes the game. A quick ctrl-alt-delete shows that SC is "not responding". Its ****ed up... and Im getting quite pissed, cause Ive been waiting for this demo for soooo long (ever since I got sick of the beta demo).

If it helps, Im using XP Home, and P4 1.65 processer with 256mb DDR RAM. (Im on my friends computer right now, this is his computers problem.... hopefully it will not happen on my 1337 Athlon 1800+xp, 512mb DDR RAM, Geforce 3, on the XP Home platform.

Please tell me what I can do to fix it, and if you dont know how, or cant tell, than can you at least tell me when there going to be a patch to help me?

Isnt anyone else having the same problem? Maybe its just XP Home, or maybe its just my bad luck

I would like a response ASAP. Thanks guys.

[ July 19, 2002, 08:24 PM: Message edited by: Delta ]

[Hubert Cater]

Every time (literally, I tried it 3 times, then I got fed up with it, because of no save setting.) Every time I invade Russia after I defeat france, it goes fine until may. And that during may, Russia goes through its turn, and is almost done, but purchases a few corps, and when trying to purchase the last one, it freezes the game.

Hi Delta,

Believe me I can understand your frustration but I'll just ask you to please refrain from using profanity if possible.

Not sure exactly what the problem could be off-hand, could be related to the new security patchwork for the demo, i.e. one of the reasons you can no longer save your game files, but since you report that the game freezes in May (1941?) you are actually not missing much since the demo is set to end at exactly this time anyways.

Please send me bug report to support@furysoftware.com with a list of your game settings, i.e. FoW turned on etc., and I'll help you track down the problem.

Hubert

[Randell Daigre]

I'm having the same problem, with a similar system. I'll send you a bug report, also. No big deal. If it was easy, I'd write my own games.

[Delta]

Ah, fixed it. I found the solution on another post.

What you have to do is delete the beta demo and everything that is related to it. That did it for me, cause my friend just played and it didnt freeze for him after I deleted everything.

Now the only problem is the gold demo ends only 2 turns farther than the beta demo.... bah!

[Hubert Cater]

Good point, I forgot to mention the incompatability with the previous beta demo. I'll mention this in a new post.

Hubert

[Delta]

God damnit..... it happened ONCE AGAIN!!! My friend is quite pissed. So am I. This time it froze March 7th. All when Russia was buying Corps left and right.

The setting was green, with no increase to computer experience (hey, sue us, we're n00bs to the hardcore wargaming scene - we are used to conventional RTS and games like Red Alert 2 and starcraft and others like Axis and Allies and junk).

My friend says

Originally said by my friend

"I dont understand what the hell happened... all they had to do was add 2 months to the game and it would be enough time to take Moscow AND the Urals. And ya know whats even suckier? They removed the save option, for whatever stupid reason. Why make me go though taking france and the low countries, every time i play the game, when all I really want to do is invade Russia or Britain. Thats such a dicky thing to do"

I also think its a "dicky" thing to do, as he so eloquently put it. Surely there was more options to hacker-proof the game than disabling the save option? Cripes, either way, a serious enough hacker could make save games possible, it would just take a crap load of time and effort.... so I guess you got your objective done since you turned away most pirates and hackers by doing so.... but still, its quite annoying for the average player.

He also asks why the heck its much harder to do take cities and kill units... so I told him about Hubert increasing defense and decreasing offense attack points. He says thats real stupid because its not nessesarry to both decrease attacking strength and increase defensive measures like entrenchment value and defense attack points. Its overkill to do both, because it just makes defending that much easier. In RTS, theres a term "Hermit" for players that only make static defenses and some mobile reserves to defend the base... and its pretty hard to do so for the most part. But what you are doing here is just making it that much easier to be a "hermit", and hide behind your defense lines of corps while the attacker gets his ass handed to him.

I would like to add, that we love your game, and enjoyed the beta demo for countless games and numerous hours. We just think that you guys made a couple of mistakes with the game, but thats ok, because if we can do some mods to it (to make it kind of easier to attack and sort of put it back the way it was in the beta demo, than there is really no issue here).... but since we got the gold demo, which was going to hold us over till the game is shipped to us, well... its kinda sucky to have it freeze at seemingly random intervals (when russia purchases over a certain amount of corps, or any units for that matter). We wanted to play the gold demo ever since we heard about it. Now its a big dissapointment.

Oh well. Hopefully you will adress these bug issues in the gold demo, and hopefully you will allow people like us to mod the game so that it will be what it was like in the beta demo (minus the gamey strategies and bugs, of course).

[ July 19, 2002, 11:11 PM: Message edited by: Delta ]

[Hubert Cater]

God damnit..... it happened ONCE AGAIN!!! My friend is quite pissed. So am I. This time it froze March 7th. All when Russia was buying Corps left and right.

If you can send me a detailed bug report on your system and game settings, where and what your forces were doing at the time of the freeze that will help me track down the problem.

...all they had to do was add 2 months to the game and it would be enough time to take Moscow AND the Urals

Tthe demo is intended to be a litmus test of sorts for your tastes, i.e. to determine if it is your cup of tea or not without giving the whole game away

Surely there was more options to hacker-proof the game than disabling the save option?

Unfortunatly due to the previous events it was necessary to strip down the Demo version so that it could not be played as a full version (even if tampered with). To be honest, I wish it were not necessary sometimes these things are a matter of circumstance.

He also asks why the heck its much harder to do take cities and kill units... so I told him about Hubert increasing defense and decreasing offense attack points.

This is actually not entirely accurate, only air units had their offensive power reduced by 1 point, and other adjustments were only made to naval units. Perhaps your difficulties lie with the adjustments I made to how the AI plays in general and most of these adustments have to deal with the AI making better use of natural defences and making more intellegent decisions on when to remain in ciites and entrench itself. The core rules are the same, it's just a matter of the AI making better use of them, and if this is giving you a bit more trouble then I have achieved exactly what I was shooting for

I would like to add, that we love your game, and enjoyed the beta demo for countless games and numerous hours.

Thanks!

Hopefully you will adress these bug issues in the gold demo.

Send me a bug report and I'll take it from there.

Hubert

[Otto]

Anyone familiar with the word "tact"?

Has anyone who finds a bug considered emailing the problem directly to Fury Software instead of posting it here, it is what I would do.

[Compassion]

Originally posted by Delta:

God damnit..... it happened ONCE AGAIN!!! My friend is quite pissed. So am I. This time it froze March 7th. All when Russia was buying Corps left and right.

Athlon chipsets can be twitchy. Makesure you have whatever the latest and greatest drivers installed(and be prepared for some regression as needed). Also, you might have a cooling issue depnding on how heavy a load the prcessor is put under... I'm not sure if that's really an issue with this game, though. Only real knowlege I have of the load the game puts the proc on is delay finishing a turn and it doesn't seem too bad.

The setting was green, with no increase to computer experience (hey, sue us, we're n00bs to the hardcore wargaming scene - we are used to conventional RTS and games like Red Alert 2 and starcraft and others like Axis and Allies and junk).

He also asks why the heck its much harder to do take cities and kill units... so I told him about Hubert increasing defense and decreasing offense attack points. He says thats real stupid because its not nessesarry to both decrease attacking strength and increase defensive measures like entrenchment value and defense attack points. Its overkill to do both, because it just makes defending that much easier. In RTS, theres a term "Hermit" for players that only make static defenses and some mobile reserves to defend the base... and its pretty hard to do so for the most part. But what you are doing here is just making it that much easier to be a "hermit", and hide behind your defense lines of corps while the attacker gets his ass handed to him.

Please don't take this the wrong way, but this isn't an RTS and the balance isn't weighted as heavily on destructive power. As to you point... I'm of two minds. I can see where you are coming from, but I had a problem with the tidal wave that the Germans could deliver if they can kick off in the East before September or so. THe roughshod over runs were a little much. You should be able to advance easily, perhaps, but it does take times to reduce large formations of troops and to take well defended cities. I was a bit concerned that I could blitz to Smolensk in 2 turns and crush Odessa in one. This is a bit better balanced, I think.

On the other hand, there've always been a couple balance problems with the game in that it was difficult to recreate the 1940 experience of Tearing through France in about 6 weeks... Still tough to do, but it doesn't take much more time... just forces the attacker to recognize an use combined arms tactics a little more than previously. AS Hubert pointed out, though, it's more because the AI plays smarter and a reduction in the way air uses (it was a replacement for combat units in the beta... this is totally incorrect, it's a force multiplier in the right circumstances, but it's surely not a repalcement for men and guns).

You have to use a little more skill in the attack, but at the end of the day, the advantages of pushing the game a little closer to reality (though not perfect, of course) far outwiegh any drawbacks. In this case the balance remains (as well as the drawbacks) without adding any new ones and the game give a little more realistic results (though there is always room to improve).

[ July 20, 2002, 01:14 AM: Message edited by: Compassion ]

[Straha]

It's a good idea to have the save option removed for the demo.

Straha

[DSpore]

I'm having the system freeze problem too only its happens in August when trying to move a unit or have it attack. About half my demo games are ended that way. I'm wondering if it could be related to system resources avaiable. Before I load the game my system resources available are around 60% with nothing else running except the usual stuff that windows automaticly loads.

[arax3]

Dave: Send your bug report to Schullencraft(sp?) (Ian Straw). He will fix it for you if at all possible. Perhaps you need a new video card? Your friend, A3

[SuperTed]

Originally posted by arax3:

Dave: Send your bug report to Schullencraft(sp?) (Ian Straw). He will fix it for you if at all possible. Perhaps you need a new video card? Your friend, A3

Sorry to step on you here, A3, but all technical issues should be directed to Hubert. Despite doing a great job in the CM technical community, I believe Ian has never set foot in here.

Dave, Hubert and I found a bug yesterday that may be what you're seeing. The bug we found has been fixed, but only Hubert can verify whether or not that will help your specific case.

[Hubert Cater]

Hi Dave,

Got your email so I'll respond in more detail there.

Hubert

[Madmatt]

Originally posted by arax3:

Dave: Send your bug report to Schullencraft(sp?) (Ian Straw). He will fix it for you if at all possible. Perhaps you need a new video card? Your friend, A3

As Ted said please understand that Ian (Schullencraft) does what he does in the CM technical forum on his own, he is not a staff member of Battlefront.com and so its not fair to send him emails on technical issues unless he asks someone to.

Madmatt