Problems with Shock Force

[tacticalmaster]

Hello,

I recently purchased Shock Force, Marines and British Forces from a games shop.

They were English/Russian versions from Snowball Studios, a russian company.

Shock Force was on 2 CD's, Marines was also on 2 CD's, British Forces was on 1 DVD.

I installed the main game and marines module, but could not update them.

The install directory was Program Files\1C:Originals\..., the patch couldn't update the game (not found)

Uninstalled and reinstalled into Program Files\Battlefront\..., the patch updated the game, but the game crashes after the main screen.

After installing Shock Force, the games version 1.01

After installing Marines, version 1.10

I installed the British Forces also, but it appeared as standalone game, already patched to 1.21, tried updating, no luck.

Is there any way to combine the modules and update the game?

All help is appreciated!

Thanks

[Schrullenhaft]

If these are Snowball releases, then that can complicate things since Snowball's copy-protection/DRM system is different from Battlefront's, which makes the patching process a lot more problematic. I'm not familiar with Snowball's releases of the CMSF series (never seen one), so I'm not sure of the details. I am under the impression that Snowball has NOT released patches (or recent ones) for the CMSF series. So all of the updates are probably just what comes with each game/module (in other words, there appear to be no separate patches for the Snowball releases).

CMSF and all of the modules NEED to be installed into the same directory. If any of the games installs into a 'standalone' directory, then that installation will not have enough of the files to actually fully run.

I don't know why there are multiple CD's or a DVD for any of the installers. The English language versions of the games/modules distributed by Battlefront all fit on a single CD (one for each game/module). I can only assume that the second CD may be graphic and sound mods and extra scenarios, etc.

Typically the patches look for registry install information to 'find' the installation of the game. With non-Battlefront releases, I'm not sure how well this works.

You will want to install CMSF (version1.01), then Marines (version 1.10) and then finally British Forces (version 1.20). You will have to double-check the installation paths to make sure that the game is installing into the appropriate directory. If necessary, make a custom directory for CMSF (instead of using any of the default ones) and make sure that all of the subsequent patches install to that directory. One thing to watch out for is if any of the modules install into a subdirectory that they should not install into (in other words, creating their own subdirectories). The main game executable will be in the root directory of the CMSF folder/directory. The module executables will get installed into the 'Modules' subdirectory, but they ALSO replace the main executable file with one that supports that particular module (or combination of modules as the case with the British Forces install).

With everything installed there should be a 'CM Shock Force.exe' in the root of the CMSF install. In the 'Modules' subdirectory there should be a 'CMSF Marines Module.exe' and a 'CMSF British Module.exe' executable files. If you find that the British Forces module has created its own subdirectory, then you may find a 'CM Shock Force.exe' in the root of this directory and a 'CMSF British Module.exe' in its own 'Modules' subdirectory. Move these over to the actual folders if necessary (the 'CM Shock Force.exe' file will overwrite the file that is there now).

Unfortunately I would suggest NOT installing the 1.21, 1.31 and 1.32 patches right now with your Snowball distribution of CMSF. I can only assume that at the very least you will need a license key that you don't have in order to run the game once you do use those patches.

I will talk to Martin and see if we can find out why Snowball has not released patches for CMSF and the modules. Hopefully someone will reply and we can get some answers as to why this has now worked out, but I'm not sure if we will get the answers we want.

[tacticalmaster]

Some extra information:

I uninstalled everything. Then installed to a custom folder (C:/CMSF):

1: Shock Force

2: Marines

3: British Forces

Executables:

cmsf.exe, cmsf.dll, cmsf_org_remove.dll

cmsf_marines.exe, cmsf_marines.dll, cmsf_marines_org_remove.dll

cmsf_bf.exe, cmsf_bf.dll, cmsf_bf_org_remove.dll

When I click on cmsf.exe it asks for cd2 of the shock force, mount disk, game opens and works (version 1.0)

When I click on cmsf_marines.exe it asks for cd2 of the marines, mount disk, game opens and works (version 1.10), i can see the marines bottom left.

When I click on cmsf_bf.exe it asks for the dvd of british forces, mount disk, game opens (version 1.21) but only shock force and british forces icon, crashes on everthing except options and network.

Gives cmsf_bf.dll error

There are both the marines and british executables int the modules folder.

Only thing I found in the registry:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Snowball Interactive\CMSF_British_RUS

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Snowball Interactive\CMSF_Marines_ORG

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Snowball Interactive\CMSF_ORG_Rus

All of them have:

CDDir REG_SZ E:

[hoolaman]

Mount disk huh? Lol

[Schrullenhaft]

Sorry, I'm unable to help with this. The files and copy protection system are so different from the Battlefront version that I have no clue what can be done. It seems that the second disc of most of these modules is just there for copy protection purposes. The DLLs included in the Snowball release are not part of the Battlefront release. The Battlefront release has only two DLL files that pertain to the eLicense copy-protection system (one of them being a standard Windows/Microsoft DLL). All of the DLLs in the Snowball release must be part of the copy protection system.

It seems that Snowball/1C (1C apparently bought out Snowball, I believe) have messed up the British Forces module by not allowing it to work with the Marines content at the same time. It seems you either get to play with the Marines or British Forces, but not both. The method of launching the game with the modules is completely different too. With the Battlefront release the module executables aren't launched directly. Instead the main executable file (which gets updated to support specific modules) calls the module executables. Snowball deviated quite a bit with a different system of launching the games and copy-protecting them.

I've been told that we sent updated files to Snowball for CMSF and its modules and CMA back in March of this year. So they have access to the code to compile their copy-protection system into updates. However it looks like they will need to do a bit of extra work to get British Forces and Marines content working at the same time with their system. Unfortunately their system might not work with more than one module without possibly giving away the Marines content to people who purchase the British Forces module.

At this point it is all up to Snowball/1C. Hopefully they get around to updating CMSF and CMA and finally get all of the CMSF modules to work at the same time (sounds like they'll need some new DLLs to handle this).

[tacticalmaster]

It seems that I will scrap the Snowball releases and buy everything from Battlefront.com.

Thank for your help!