Thank you Madmatt for your detailed reply

[007 Commander]

I appreciate the info you have provided.

I have placed that post here and not the tech section cause i wanted to draw attention to it in hopes of getting more players to see it and respond with a possible work around. I had to post this reply here cause that thread was locked.

The workaround I posted does work. The one work around you stated, continuing one turn with PBEM then load it back to TCP does not work. I have tried that twice.

The no refund policy that I am sure is there, I was under the impression that TCP worked. I understand you or the company as a whole frowns in refunds in general, but some concession should be made toward the people that payed 52.00 for TCP ability and have not recived satisfaction on this area.

I will deal with this work around, and it will be a lesson as a purchaser that I obviously will not learn, cause as i hate to admit it, your going to get my money again when CMBB comes out.

So I am the fool here, it seems. You have made a great game, but a huge issue has developed with a standard feature in todays gameing and it just so happend to have been the MAJOR selling point for me. TCP/IP is why I made this purchase.

To be honest, I do still see a value with this product for the money i spent, I am just frustrated at having to deal with this issue on my own.

I do have some more info for you as well. I was testing this yesterday for seveal hours. I used a custom map with nothing but 100% open ground. I started with both sides having just 4 platoons each. The error never happend.

I added some heavy weapons like MG squads and then the error started to surface. Several times when the error surfaced, there was not any captured units, and no vehicle crews since I have not included vehicles at all. However it is possible, and you would know more on this then me, but maybe the game engine considers the men in a MG unit "crews".

I will post more about my results on the tech forum.

Thank you for your time.

007

[ February 11, 2002, 02:25 PM: Message edited by: 007 Commander ]

[CombatGeneral]

You are not the fool here. I have had a lot of trouble with tcp/ip games as well. To be honost they dont happen often, but when they do happen, it is very annoying. However, the no refund policy is interesting. Any contract made with a buyer must be fully met by both sides. If a product is advertised with certain features, ie. tcp/ip ability, that product MUST be able to have tcp/ip ability. If it does not, the original contract fails, and reverts back to the buyer. It appears that you can somtimes play tcp/ip games, so this would be a matter for a judge to decide. LOL. my two cents worth. Anyway, BTS is not out to screw people, in my opinion. I'll try a game with you bond.

[007 Commander]

Yea, i agree with what you said, and I hope no one thinks I mean by any definition that BTS is out to screw people at all.

But Ill have a game with you, as long as you dont ask me to call you sexy!

007

U can reach me at bond_7007@yahoo.com, I prefer taking a few hours for an attempted TCP/IP game rather than PBEM. So if you want to try email me.

[aka_tom_w]

I would llike to point out that MANY of us here bought the game by pre-ordering it before it was released KNOWING full well the version of the game they shipped us would NOT have TCP/IP capability and that we should not expect it for another 5-6 months

And there are ONLY 5, really just 5 guys (Are you up to 6 now?) working on this thing and there is ONLY one programmer (Charles the God of Programming Wargames)

Hell, I have alot of respect for them because these TWO guys (Steve and Charles) said HEY!, "lets make the kind of game we would like to play"

Lets look at ASL as the foundation and make it FUN and REALISTIC with historically accurate armour penetration

and those 2 guys Made CMBO out of nothing really.

And yes they made a PILE of money on it and now it is finished

they will make more money on CMBB, I'm VERY happy for them

they made a game that we would only ever dream about back in the old

days when we playing Tobruk and had to roll the dice 4 times for EVERY single

round that a tank fired.

TCP/IP works most of the time really anyway

and yes it is the best way to play.

When the game was released I bought without the ability to play TCP/IP

thats right I was one the players to be (future buyer of the game, it was only available in beta demo then) who voted (yes we actually had a chance to vote back in those days of the beta demo) to have the game released to us (for FULL price) without TCP/IP. That is the truth.

it was taken on faith that a WORKING patch would follow the release of the game

(that patch is the v1.12 path we are using) the game was patched and re-released about

4 times since then and then they finally said it works now and we are done with it lets move on to the Russian front.

I cannot find fault at all because they asked us all to pay full price up front for a game that

did not have tcp/ip capability until about 6 months after it was released.

no big deal really

I hope a little historical perspective helps here.

-tom w

[ February 11, 2002, 04:48 PM: Message edited by: aka_tom_w ]

[007 Commander]

Originally posted by aka_tom_w:

TCP/IP works most of the time really anyway

and yes it is the best way to play.

-tom w

Not true, for those of us that do have this problem this error WILL surface before 30 turns our up, about 80% of the time. So this does not indicate that TCP/IP works MOST of the time. In reality the error happens MOST of the time, for those that have it at all.

All of what you said and very true. However for me, and maybe im alone here, but I didnt not buy the game in the begining. I did not buy to play PBEM. I loved the original Squad Leader board game and I am a devoted PC gamer. I have LAN parties every week, I just play multiplayer games.

I bought this game for its TCP/IP ability, which is a STANDARD feature in todays games. My opinion is coming from a gamer consumer, not a war sim fan.

I do realize the value and pontential of this product. Besides my prior thread really does not say anything contary to your response.

007

[Wesreidau]

Not sure what the problem is but I would say it must be with your system and not the software. You've patched up to the latest version (1.12?).. tried it on other PCs? Other ISPs?

My ISP doesn't allow me to host games. I am sure there are other tales out there.

As such, BTS can't be held responsible for errors in your system/ISP.

PeterNZ

[Captain Wacky]

I've never had this problem before, are you sure it's not a local one like Peter suggested on your machine?

[007 Commander]

Originally posted by PeterNZer:

Not sure what the problem is but I would say it must be with your system and not the software. You've patched up to the latest version (1.12?).. tried it on other PCs? Other ISPs?

My ISP doesn't allow me to host games. I am sure there are other tales out there.

"Off topic here, but what are u saying?"

As such, BTS can't be held responsible for errors in your system/ISP.

This statement can be insulting. I am not holding BTS responsible for "errors" in my system. These issues are consistant, and happening on MAC's Win98, 95, and 2k and XP for that matter. There is a thread on the tech forum with 136 post regarding this issue that u seem to think is related to the buyers system.

PeterNZ

007

[007 Commander]

Wacky and Peter,

Help me, if neither of you have had this problem, ever, AND you have played a complete TCP/IP game several times, lets say more than 3. Can you both give me your system specs?

I am a tech and therefor have a hard time blaming coder and game engins for problems. I usualy blame my system first, however this problem seem way too common and on several systems the same problems even on a Mac, so that would leave a logical blame to the coding. But i am still willing to troubleshoot my system.

I would like to compare your sys specs with mine.

In fact of you both can run system info and save the text file of the first section (summary) this will tell me what im looking for.

thanks,

007

[Madmatt]

Yes let me re-emphasise that this issue is by no means global. No, it does not always occur and for me (and I played CMBO TCP/IP non stop for over 18 months) I have NEVER had that issue, nor have our beta testers, that is why it was never noticed until months after release and only recently was the issue even narrowed down enough to have us concentrate on looking at captured crews.

However, we do know that there is a problem, and have never denyed it.

007 are your crashes occuring when a unit is being captured or are they seemingly random? There is the very high probability that there may be an issue with your ISP or with your home network which could be contributing to your crashes.

The IP port that CM uses is not one in which your browser, email or FTP use and so if there is a issue there it would not neccesarily be immeditalty recognizable just from ones experience browsing the web or playing other online games.

Your previous comment about you cracking the demo to enable TCP play doesnt really sit too well with us either.

Lastly, I am not even 100% sure that your crashes ARE being caused by the crew capture issue since you have not indicated if that happened during the affected turn or not.

Now,then keep your posts on this topic to the Tech Support forum where they belong and I and others will try and work with you to get this resolved or at least enable you to continue playing your game with a suitable workaround.

Madmatt

[Wesreidau]

O i seee.. that problem. Saw it discussed a while ago and forgot about it

Yeah, you're right, it's not ISP or system, it's just bad luck.

To be honest I've never had it happen myself and i've played a couple of dozen TCP/IP games.

I'd say, just work on taking no prisoners =) (make sure you use reg or vet or better troops. Set both players to vet and you'll have few troops surrender) or use the PBEM workaround.

Sorry to have jumped to conclusions

PeterNZ

[aka_tom_w]

Originally posted by 007 Commander:

Wacky and Peter,

Help me, if neither of you have had this problem, ever, AND you have played a complete TCP/IP game several times, lets say more than 3. Can you both give me your system specs?

I am a tech and therefor have a hard time blaming coder and game engins for problems. I usualy blame my system first, however this problem seem way too common and on several systems the same problems even on a Mac, so that would leave a logical blame to the coding. But i am still willing to troubleshoot my system.

I would like to compare your sys specs with mine.

In fact of you both can run system info and save the text file of the first section (summary) this will tell me what im looking for.

thanks,

007

I run CMBO on a G3 Mac laptop (400 mHz 192 Megs RAM) and play almost always against one other guy on a fast new (purchased this past Christmas) PC running windows XP I think. I think he is running with 128 megs of ram.

I usually host and the game when it does crash (not that often) crashes on my Mac.

if that helps...

-tom w

[007 Commander]

The IP port that CM uses is not one in which your browser, email or FTP use and so if there is a issue there it would not neccesarily be immeditalty recognizable just from ones experience browsing the web or playing other online games.

"Madcatt, is the port number listed? In the manual? Havnt looked yet, thanks."

Your previous comment about you cracking the demo to enable TCP play doesnt really sit too well with us either.

"Sorry, it would be one thing if I had done this started posting here about it and giving it away. To be honest, after my first demo tcp game, it was then that i was hooked, and why you now have another buyer. Off topic, it would have been a really good idea to release another demo with it enabled. What I did simply made you another customer, for two of your products. Once again, I apologize that my acts do not "sit to well" with your company. I am trying to solve another topic at hand here.

Lastly, I am not even 100% sure that your crashes ARE being caused by the crew capture issue since you have not indicated if that happened during the affected turn or not.

"Actualy i did indicate just that, i wrote that in the above comments. But I have had this crash with a very basic generic battlefild, only infantry. I have the crash happen several times without any captured prisoners. Just lots of dead people. I also have not had this until i started adding MG units to my custom battle."

Now,then keep your posts on this topic to the Tech Support forum where they belong and I and others will try and work with you to get this resolved or at least enable you to continue playing your game with a suitable workaround

Thank you very much for your patience with my threads.

I hope some day to be able to sit well with your company again, maybe i can help solve this delima. I would like to get that port information too if i can.

Thanks,

007

[Kwazydog]

Hi 007,

I just wanted to take a moment to clarify here that the issue we have noticed with TCPIP games happens only when you capture crews. It appears you have a different problem as your crashes are happening pretty much at random, extremely often as you cant complete a game, and the work around that works for other people isnt working for you.

The above would lead me to say that either you have found a problem that no one has even reported before or (and to be honest somewhat more likely) there is something system related causing your problem. I remember back when CMBO was first released I was having an extremely random and odd problem (corrupt turns, etc) that ended up being related to a faultly network cable, so hopefully you problem may be as simple as that.

Good luck with it, and I suggest that you will find help over in the Tech Support forum. Im going to lock this one up now as it really is a support issue and should be over in the supprt forum.

Dan