Caveat Emptor - Developer Contact Info - Refunds

[tarball]

Okay, I'm pretty much screwed with T-72 BoF. There's no way Battlefront is going to give me my money back. As their policy is to give demos in order to allow the consumer to assess the quality of a release, I screwed up by JUMPING to buy T-72 right away.

MY MISTAKE!

Okay, so, among the remedies listing in the Battlefront FAQs for problems with a title is a Developer Contact Info section. Unfortunately, Crazy House/IDDK are not listed there. So, I really have no recourse there.

Another remedy listed in the Battlefront FAQs is to try the forums. However, other than a curt and brusque acknowledgement by Martin/Moon, we have no REAL and DEFINITIVE/AUTHORITATIVE word concerning the freezes/lockups/hangs with this title.

Battlefront, this is unacceptable. As a refund are not among my options for remedy, please be forthcoming with some real news concerning how the problems with this title will be addressed.

This is the biggest flop among the several purchases I've made with Battlefront and, honestly, feels out of character for this outfit. Look, if you are just fronting this title and not involved, then be forthcoming. If anything, please lean on the developer for some progress.

Again, for many of us, the title is just straight up NOT playable.

Thank you,

Jeff

[Moon]

Hi Jeff, we're leaning. Like I mentioned we'll have news after the Games Convention in Leipzig, Germany, where I'm meeting with the devs in person to try to squish the most pressing issues with regard to what some people experience.

Martin

[Madmatt]

Tarball,

It does neither of us any good for you to have paid for a game that doesn't work. Please email me directly at matt@battlefront.com and we can figure something out.

Madmatt

[Wehner]

Originally posted by Moon:

Hi Jeff, we're leaning. Like I mentioned we'll have news after the Games Convention in Leipzig, Germany, where I'm meeting with the devs in person to try to squish the most pressing issues with regard to what some people experience.

Martin

Well it was a simulation I waited for, and the previews were good over at SimHQ, so I am willing to wait for a patch ( I experience the freezing error and do not use an ATI drivers. More importantly, T72 is the only recent sim that does not work for me.) But I would suggest thinking over you information politics with regards to the customers. I think most of the desaster here could have been avoided by adressing the postings in a more detailed manner. For starters, you could have mentioned when the GC ends, who you are going to meet and what are your steps beyond that. You could have invited the developer to post here. I checked the battlefront.com forum every morning just to see that almost nothing is replied. I will stay with my puchhase and still have good faith you will adress it, but it takes an unausal amount of patience and understanding for the needs of the publisher, if you ask me. No offense, in general I appreciate what you are trying to establish here.

[Moon]

Hello Wehner, thanks for your post and advice. No offense taken. We only take offense when people post unreasonable nonsense, not when they state their opinions. Even if we might not quite agree with the opinion...

I would not call it a desaster. The amount of issues reported here or through email support is far below 1% of games sold. I also don't have any problems with the game, and the devs nor the testers are able to replicate it reliably. It is a big problem for us that some people effectively cannot play it, and we're determined to solve the problems. But since the issues are not with our code but with a driver/software/hardware combo, the fix simply takes time...

I am not sure if inviting the devs would help much, unless you can speak Russian. Besides, they are gone for the show right now.

The GC dates are no secret (August 17-21).

I have already stated that I am meeting with the developers. Do you want the names?

And how can I tell you what steps we'll take beyond that until I have actually had the meeting? I do not think that it's a good information policy to make up stuff instead of holding back until we can post facts.

Sorry if I sound a bit gruff, but I am in a hurry to catch my train this morning

Martin

[Hoggy]

Hi Tarball,

Maybe you should tell us about your system:

Operating System

Hardware

Drivers and version numbers for your hardware

And your level of computer literacy.

And maybe this fine community can find a solution for you to get the game running. I have T72 running on the following:

Windows XP Pro Sp2 and all other updates

Asus A7N8X-X

AMD Barton 2400 overclocked to 2700

Sapphire 9500 Pro modded to 9700 pro (Catylist 5.7 drivers)

2 X 512 Kingmax PC 2700 ram

1 X Western Digital 80 gig HD

1 X Maxtor 80 gig HD

SBLive sound card, (stock Window's SB drivers)

Logitech Wingman Extreme joystick (Wingman 4.6 drivers)

Nothing special there as you can see but yet the game runs fine. The above is not even my main gaming rig as I race a lot and have a wheel setup and don't like swapping controllers.

Helping each other out is what a community is all about.

Hoggy

[tarball]

Moon,

Thank you, you are a gracious individual, however, I can see that you are in the middle.

Matt, will do.

Hoggy,

I started one of the original "Freezing" topics here and I believe I detailed my specs, however, I can do so again here:

Windows XP2 updated regularly

ASUS PC4800 Pro

Intel P4 3.0 Ghz

Radeon X800 Pro

2 x Corsair 512 PC3200 RAM

1 x 250 Gig Western Digital JB 8.0 MB Cache System drive

2 x 36 Gig RAID 0 Western Digital "Raptor" 10,000 RPM drives

SB Audigy 2 sound card with the most recent drivers I could find on the SB site.

Microsoft Sidewinder Pro FF USB stick.

I, like most others, get the freezes intermittently.

In the end, I would mostly like to play the game long enough to give it an assessment, however, this is just not possible.

Other than Martin/Moon's briefs, customers do not have much to go on at all. To that point, I can see what Moon is saying here, but I find it hard to believe that this is isolated. This title sells only through this website. I honestly believe that many of these sales are from people who read/frequent this site/forum. I realize that some hardware/software combinations specific to some of us is causing this, but the fault seems far more related to something the software is getting wrong more than the customers getting something wrong. My system is far from "exotic" and can't see much more I can do other than shut off all non-essential proceses when I run the game and keep my drivers up-to-date.

Moon/Matt, if you could put up a section in the support area about this title and acknowledge that some fixes are on the way, that would help. Also, it would help to have developer's contacts such that they could get into the picture here.

Thanks for all who contributed usefully here,

Jeff

[ August 18, 2005, 06:51 AM: Message edited by: tarball ]

[Wehner]

Originally posted by Moon:

Sorry if I sound a bit gruff, but I am in a hurry to catch my train this morning

Martin

don`t worry, thank you for your detailed answer. You made your points well, though I am wondering how you communicate with the developer - are you fluent in russian ? With desaster, btw, I was not refering to the game or your support but to allow the situation to cook up into the last posting of tarball. I wish you a good time in Leipzig and hope that you'll come back with some good news on a patch.

[Hoggy]

Is that Corsair ram you running low latency. The reason I ask is that a friend was having a similar issue in another game and found that he had to reduce the memory timings by running MemTest86. I know Corsair makes good ram but I regret that I know of at least three individuals who either received a bad stick or had timing issues. Not saying this is the issue, but worth taking a look at.

Are you runing FF with your joystick, if so try turning that off. And from what I understand you'll lose your centering force but at least you'll know. I have 3 joysticks, 3 wheels, and two gamepads, all Logitech. Also, the above mentioned individual uses a SB Audigy 2 ZS and with SP2 found he needed to go back one version of the SB drivers. Once again, just worth looking in to but being a pain to try, only as a last resort.

Do you defrag on a regular basis and do you have a program to check for registry issues. I run Norton WinDoctor about once a month or after I do a number of uninstalls in a brief period of time.

Hopefully we can resolve this but via a forum is a bit of a slow process.

Hoggy

[Polecat]

Let me just chime in here to echo tarballs concerns. I am having the same type of freezing issues.

This most likely has NOTHING to do with tarball's system. I would recommned not mucking around with it as I can confirm that this problem exists when running the game on ANY of the following 3 systems:

System 1

P4 650 (3.4GHz,2MB L2, 800MHz FSB, Socket 775)

Asus P5ND2-SLI Deluxe Bios Rev 0802

Lian-LI PC-60B-Plus

Coolermaster Real Power 550(RS-550-ACLY)

2GB Patriot(PDC22G5600+XBLK) DDR2

2x 160GB Hitachi Deskstar T7K250 Serial ATA II 7200RPM Hard Drive w/8MB Buffer (Raid 0)

1x 160GB Seagate ST3160827AS NCQ Serial ATA 7200RPM Hard Drive w/8MB Buffer

1x 120GB Seagate ST3120026AS Serial ATA 7200RPM Hard Drive w/8MB Buffer

BFG Geforce 7800GTX 256MB PCI-E

Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS (Latest WinXP Beta OpenAl drivers).

Creative Inspire 7.1 Speaker System

NEC ND-3520A DVD-RW

OS: WinXP_Pro Sp2

DirectX 9.0c

Thrustmaster Cougar (Uber2 NXT Mod)

Simped vario Pro Rudders w/F-16 Toebrake addon.

TrackIR3 Pro w/Vector Expansion

Logitech MX-518 Mouse W/Logigamer Lite Software

System 2

P4 640 (3.2GHz, 2MB L2, 800MHz FSB, Socket 775)

Asus P5WD2 Premium Bios Rev 0509

Coolermaster Real Power 550(RS-550-ACLY)

2GB Kingston DDR2 533 (VR533D2N4K2/2G) Memory

2x 160GB Hitachi Deskstar T7K250 Serial ATA II 7200RPM Hard Drive w/8MB Buffer (Raid 0)

1x 160GB Seagate ST3160827AS NCQ Serial ATA 7200RPM Hard Drive w/8MB Buffer

XFX Geforce 6800GT 256MB PCI-E

Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS (Latest WinXP Beta OpenAl drivers)

NEC ND-3520A DVD-RW

OS: WinXP_Pro Sp2

DirectX 9.0c

Thrustmaster Digital F22PRO/TQS

Thrustmaster RCS Rudder Pedals

System 3

Asus A8N-SLI Premium Bios Rev 1007-002

AMD Athlon 64 3200+ (Venice)

Enermax Noisetaker EG495AX-VE (W)SFMA 485W PS

2GB Kingston (4X512MB) DDR400 (2x KVR400X64C3AK2/1G)

2x 160GB Hitachi Deskstar T7K250 Serial ATA II 7200RPM Hard Drive w/8MB Buffer (Raid 0)

1x 160GB Seagate ST3160827AS NCQ Serial ATA 7200RPM Hard Drive w/8MB Buffer

1x 120GB Seagate ST3120026AS Serial ATA 7200RPM Hard Drive w/8MB Buffer

BFG Geforce 6800GT OC 256MB PCI-E

Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS (Latest WinXP Beta OpenAl drivers)

NEC ND-3520A DVD-RW

Plextor PX-716A DVD/RW DL Drive

DirectX 9.0c

OS: WinXP_Pro Sp2

Thrustmaster Digital F22PRO/TQS

Thrustmaster RCS Rudder Pedals

TrackIR (Version1)

These systems all vary enough in configuration that this should confirm to you that is is a problem with the simulation itself. (At best this is very shoddy work for a finished project).

I paid for the product and hoped for far far better then what I have received.

The concept and unique nature of this game is it's ONLY saving grace IMHO.

Please fix it ASAP so I can use what I have paid for on any one of my new high end systems.

Polecat out

[Novum]

ok guys.. i just see windows XP ppl in here.. =)

im a Win2K guy

my specs are

Soltek motherboard

Socket 754

Amd64 3200 CPU

1 Gig ram CL3

2 raid0 SATA RAPOTOR 36gb (VIA controlled)

internal soundcard (VIA)

Gainward Golgensampel 2600 Nvidia 6800Ultra

HP DVD writer

1st was the installation process..

CRC-error on the install 4-5 times before iwhould install itself on my system (worked like a dream on my other computer so no cd faluiure)

2nd sometimes the games JUST CTD and there is a CRC error..

3rd lan play is out ofthe questione..

1-2 seconds lag.

but singel player works ok..

the game feels "not finnished"

im too waitng for patch

[Hoggy]

Ookay, for argument I just installed it on my main system, nothing special either, just runs every game I have great and without issue.

Windows XP Pro Sp2 all updates

Asus A7N8X-Delux

AMD Barton 2500 overclocked to 2800

ATI X800 Pro 256 (Catylist 5.8 drivers)

2 X 512 Kingston PC 3200 ram

1 X Western Digital 80 gig HD

1 X Western Digital 200 gig HD

Onboard Soundsorm, (stock ASUS drivers)

Logitech MOMO Racing Wheel (Wingman 4.6 drivers)

No issues at all with install, played a few rounds, no issues, runs even better. And I just installed the Cat 5.8 drivers prior to this test install.

Now I am curious if those of you with issues are all using nvidia cards? One constant in Polecat's systems is they all have nvidia cards.

Hoggy

[Hoggy]

I noticed Polecat that there is onboard sound available on a few of your systems. Would be interesting to hear if trying onboard, as in losing the Audigy card, fixes your problem.

[Polecat]

No I would not want to try that. By the way, two of the systems were formerly using the SB Audigy 5.1. It was only recently that I updated to the Audigy 2 ZS. Also I have run the game with NO sound at all and I still get freezes.

polecat out

CompTIA A+ Network+ Certified

[Hoggy]

Sorry Polecat, certifications don't impress me. Been around computers since punch cards and Fortran. My history is in IT, LAN Admin, and programming.

[Bonxa]

Could it be a CD related issue after all? It seems the CD quality wasn't the best this time as I have seen several posts about people having to attempt installing many times before it finished. What made me think of that was that it froze on all three of Polecats systems.

[Novum]

T72 balkans on fire is very memory sesitive..

i can imagen that ppl with winxp have more problems then ppl with win2K since the Xp reqiuers more memory.. then is the issue of background programs.. and of course who trust SB (sound blaster) they have give tons of problems compared to the simpler via intergraded soundcards..

my installation process was a pin in the ass.. crc error b4 i understood the memory issue..

and my cd arent faulty!!!!

[Stefan Hundhammer]

You can try to tweak your systems forever - this will not help you a bit. It will only contribute to your system's utter ruination.

My system runs perfectly stable with any other game - no bluescreens, no sudden reboots, no crazy effects. Even "Lock On" (a.k.a. LOMAC) runs without crashing it (since its latest patch, of course).

It is BoF's fault, not the system's. How else could we be able to Alt-Tab back and forth between the Win task manager and BoF? How else could that "restoring graphics resource" message appear each time we Alt-Tab back to BoF?

Please be reasonable. Don't fiddle with memory timings etc.; don't move back to older driver versions or whatever.

You might as well throw a black cat over your left shoulder at full moon for the very same effect. No, that's not quite true: That black cat won't ruin your systems beyond sanity. That's about the only difference.

[Eisen]

Well said Stefan! I mean really, change the timing? Sheesh! If it is an Nvidia thing that means it happens on over half the computers in the world. It's a very popular and well respected company that makes great products. Just wait until they fix it. If they don't? Another lesson learned.

[Novum]

well my memory problem is not a black cat..

i just did what every installer says.. close down background programs.. and the installer worked out fine..

t72 suffers from some bad code..

just like every game does.. like Lock On (btw does it run smooth on your system or does it "cough" some times?) when i play my other games.. like Eve Online or GTA SA i can have my msn running.. my winamp plays tunes.. and so on..

thise things are not my system capebl of when i launch T72

if im gonna play t72 my computer must have lots free resources.. or it will crash.. sooner then later..

changing latency timers is hard and difficult.. beond my knowlidge..

thats my opinon..

but i do hope whe get an monsterus patch thats solves all our enoying errors..

its intreseting though to know if all is Nvidia related..

more input from ati users whould be nice!!

[Polecat]

Hoggy,

I wasn't trying to impress you with my certifications. Please don't assume you mean that much too me. Rather a defensive stance I think. Should I assume your rather hostile response means you have no certifications at all? That would be wrong wouldn't it? Sort of jumping to a conclusion, as yo have done with me.

I too have a background in Networks and administration and am currently working as an IT administrator for several businesses here in New England. I also own and operate a Computer networking sales and service business as well.

The developers have said that the problem exists and they are working on it. This means that the problem lies in the software right? Did you not read the response: I tried it with no sound and previous sound cards.

Polecat Out

No certifications posted here for consideration.

[Gato]

Originally posted by Eisen:

Well said Stefan! I mean really, change the timing? Sheesh! If it is an Nvidia thing that means it happens on over half the computers in the world. It's a very popular and well respected company that makes great products. Just wait until they fix it. If they don't? Another lesson learned.

Agreed. I've read so many PC specs here that almost got me crazy. Another lesson learned: pretty expensive lesson btw. I rather soon put it back to the shelf for it's useless to play if you cannot handle it (the still unsolved Y-axis problem) in a regular way. But it brought me back to some nice SB battles :cool: , almost forgotten- nice effect anyway I did not take time to experience the CTD prob's although they appeared a few times even in the short time I tried. Once more: waiting for any patch, really willing to try, if not....lesson learned.

[Wehner]

Originally posted by Gato:

But it brought me back to some nice SB battles :cool: , almost forgotten- nice effect anyway

same here, got SB back from the shelf. Really a nice effect. I too almost forgot how good it is.

[Gato]

This is not intended to gain posts...

[Soddball]

Oooh, certifications.