Done !

recca421 · Post by **recca421** » Wed Apr 11, 2007 3:27 pm

I've seen similar tactics attempted on the Electronic Arts forums regarding Battlefield 2 - in the end, the company changed its email and support numbers in order to try to stem the flood of hate calls and hate mail.

Over a year later, and with a popular expansion pack and two widely panned "booster packs" available for the game, it is actually somewhat playable, although the patch team seems to have felt the need to nerf nearly all the weapons. I haven't bought an EA product since the booster packs (which re-kindled my interest in the game after a 6-month-plus hiatus), and before that, it was the expansion pack.

Our case is somewhat different. We don't even have an official forum to complain on. No offense to the fine folks at Hooked gaming, but this isn't anything near official, doubly so since the Firaxians turned tail and ran when the angry comments really started flying. Neither Firaxis nor Take Two had the fortitude to do what EA can - own their mistakes.

Even the folks over at the Trainz official forums are taking a pounding over their poor coding (?*) on TRS2006, and how dare they start developing a new product before they've even fixed the old one, blah blah.... but kudos to them for having the .... tentacles .... to host their own forums and actually make an attempt to deal with some of the b**ls**t that comes from a combination of poor beta-testing and bad code.

* - I have TRS2004Deluxe and TRS2006. I prefer working in 2006, and only bought 2004 in order to track down some essential content. Perhapse some people are mistaking a lack of features they suggested for "poor coding", as it's no crashier than any other sim I've ever played around with.

CeeBee51 · Post by **CeeBee51** » Thu Apr 12, 2007 12:51 am

recca421 wrote:

but kudos to them for having the .... tentacles .... to host their own forums and actually make an attempt to deal with some of the bullshit that comes from a combination of poor beta-testing and bad code.
.

That hurts, but I'll forgive you since you don't "really" know what went on with the beta testing end of things.

recca421 · Post by **recca421** » Thu Apr 12, 2007 2:43 am

CeeBee51 wrote:
recca421 wrote:

but kudos to them for having the .... tentacles .... to host their own forums and actually make an attempt to deal with some of the bullshit that comes from a combination of poor beta-testing and bad code.
.
That hurts, but I'll forgive you since you don't "really" know what went on with the beta testing end of things.

no, you're absolutely right, I don't.

recca421 · Post by **recca421** » Thu Apr 12, 2007 3:01 am

recca421 wrote:
CeeBee51 wrote:
recca421 wrote:

but kudos to them for having the .... tentacles .... to host their own forums and actually make an attempt to deal with some of the bullshit that comes from a combination of poor beta-testing and bad code.
.
That hurts, but I'll forgive you since you don't "really" know what went on with the beta testing end of things.
no, you're absolutely right, I don't.

Sorry.. Let me explain - Every time I ask WTF on anything resembling an official forum, it seems to spark a hate-fest, same with asking on the "fan" forums. I see the same thing here, too.. angry personal attacks on Firaxis for releasing what seems to be beta software.

Also, I feel that any company who fails to fix the bugs reported by it's beta testers is guilty of bad beta testing. Honestly, I consider that even worse than not testing on a wide enough variety of Operating systems or only testing with nvidia hardware. The beta testers themselves aren't guilty of doing poor work.

If you'd care to enlighten me further as to the actual situation, please do so.

[RECCA421]

CeeBee51 · Post by **CeeBee51** » Thu Apr 12, 2007 3:24 am

well, still being under the NDA I can't say much other than beta testers find stuff and it's up to the company to fix it. If they don't the beta testers get blamed. I'm not saying beta testers find everything, it's obvious they don't with any game and can't since unless you have an open beta with a million or so testers you probably can't test every hardware and software combination or conflict. I certainly don't blame the beta testers for the bugs in SMR but I do blame Firaxis for releasing it with bugs, probably to make a pre-xmas deadline and many a game(read between the lines if you must)

has done the same. I've said my peice and I'd rather we just talk about the game that's the focus of this forum. Sorry for getting off topic and dragging this out..... won't happen again.

d53642 · Post by **d53642** » Thu Apr 12, 2007 10:58 pm

You have to remember one thing with Sid and Firaxis, they are owned by TakeTwo and if they decide a project is dead there is nothing really that can be done about it from the guys that devolped the game. From past experience once a company moves onto new pro you will rarely see a new patch for a game.

I haven't played this game since I installed Vista as they do not care for each other on my system.

Lowell · Post by **Lowell** » Fri Apr 13, 2007 6:01 am

That is funny you are saying you are having trouble running Railroads! In the Games For Windows Magazine it just tested Vista with Sid Meier's Pirates, which I also have...and it tested with no issues and worked fine. Also Civ IV and Warlords installed and updated error-free and ran fine. I use the editors in CivCity Rome, Civilization IV, Sid Meier's Pirates!...no issues game or otherwise...all made by the same guys.

However that being said...You are going to find that Steam games won't work well in Vista yet. Battlefield 2, Call of Duty 2. Somehow the OpenGL isn't quite right yet...either Vista or Nivida is at fault...but the update will be coming from them...not here. Darwinia runs like a pig in Vista...getting only 11fps using a dual core cpu and 8800 graphics!

...not good at all... my Darwinia mod The_Particles_Within "plug

"

Then too you may need a motherboard with a PCI Express slot...AGP ports are way too slow for the new games coming out. Bump your graphics to at least a 7900 card, I run 2 7900s in SLI mode, and any gamming machine I build for friends has at least two gigs of ram...

Also remember Mods are made by the gamers...of course there will be bugs in them or they would have paid us to build the game... ha ha ha

The regular game should run fine though. Most troubles with any mods are found quick from what I've seen. Also remember that "mods" are a fairly new fad to the gamming world. Just a few years back most game developers wouldn't like gamers to mess with any of the games files...period.

EDIT// Roller Coaster Tycoon3 is another good example of a game that needs allot of resources. All mods have crash issues, all games...they get worked out...also true from the comment above, I also have Trainz 2006 and Microsoft Train Sim never had a crash except when building new engines sometimes in the past.

I wish I knew more about your issues recca421... A friend of mine bought the game and wasn't pleased...I told him the time had come and took an ASUS motherboard over and an old 7600 graphics card. His trouble was his old card wouldn't do "shaders." It ripped the ground, tore land tiles and drowned the landscape in waterâ€¦oh and white snow looked blue. The "chipset" on his motherboard could have run Pioneer One. After the upgrade his eyes lit up. I re-worked all his maps xml lists and now he has doubles of all engines and can run all maps. He likes Train Table mode and plays day and night...so I know the maps get a workout from him...and believe me he will let me know of any and all troubles...

choobacca · Post by **choobacca** » Fri Apr 13, 2007 3:30 pm

d53642 wrote:... From past experience once a company moves onto new pro you will rarely see a new patch for a game...

If the company doesn't feel it could make any more money on this game, they probably won't spend the resources to fix or enhance it. They have probably moved onto other projects many months ago (before the game was even released) and left Railroads as it stands today. How many copies have they sold?
Their lack of support also leads me to believe they aren't going to release a sequal since they aren't trying too hard to keep current fans happy. I mean would you buy SM Railroads 2? Actually we would probably let one or two people on the forum try it and see if they had fixed all their problems and if they had anything new to offer that we couldn't add with a mod.

d53642 · Post by **d53642** » Sat Apr 14, 2007 10:24 am

If the company doesn't feel it could make any more money on this game, they probably won't spend the resources to fix or enhance it. They have probably moved onto other projects many months ago (before the game was even released) and left Railroads as it stands today. How many copies have they sold?
Their lack of support also leads me to believe they aren't going to release a sequal since they aren't trying too hard to keep current fans happy. I mean would you buy SM Railroads 2? Actually we would probably let one or two people on the forum try it and see if they had fixed all their problems and if they had anything new to offer that we couldn't add with a mod.

I taled with Dan shortly after xmas and they did make a little money off of Railroads! but not a whole lot. They were never expecting Railroads! to be a cash cow and no they did not abandon the game after it was released. The game was worked on by a skele crew up to the X-Mas break.

Now as for Lowell saying I need a pci-e card, I guess the SLI mode I am running now should suffice.

So far out of my games Railroads is the only one I can't get to boot with Vista 64. I have Battlefield 2 but not installed. All of my games I had in with XP work in Vista 64 bit expect Railroads for me.

Daryl

recca421 · Post by **recca421** » Sun Apr 15, 2007 10:47 am

Lowell wrote:I wish I knew more about your issues recca421...

Well, I'm pretty sure my card does shaders : it's a BFG Geforce 7600GT-OC. Pixel and vertex shader v3.0 according to Trainzdiag. My motherboard is an Asus a8n-e, fairly recent bios (i'm from a time when bios flashing was nearly always lethal and therefor not advised). 1gb ram seems to keep most games runnign plenty smooth for me. Processor is a 2.2ghz Athlon64-3700+, often OC'ed via Clockgen to either 2.4 or 2.6, depending on ambient temps, game sensitivity (BF2 doesn't like 2.6ghz for example, but will run happily at 2.2 or 2.4).

My biggest issue on this machine (my other one was crap, but ran the game tolerably well) is the ever-changing water color. I'll be playing along fine, albeit with neon pink water, then *flashie flashie* ooh cool white-ish uber-reflective water. a couple of minutes later *flashie flashie* and the water is a horrid murky yellow, similar to the actual "world atmosphere" which seems to hide below the terrain. Colors are random, as is how often it happens per round. If there is no water, the trees disappear.

that, I'd say, is the worst problem i have.... of course, the routing system is still non-existant....

I've mostly moved on to trainz.

Post by **Warll** » Sun Apr 15, 2007 2:40 pm

Thats coased by your over clocked BFg card.

recca421 · Post by **recca421** » Sun Apr 15, 2007 3:20 pm

Warll wrote:Thats coased by your over clocked BFg card.

Well this would be the only game my card causes to glitch then. Odd that, as I know of at least one in my collection that says it won't work on OC'ed gear (Battlefield 2). Then again, it also says that it won't work under win2k, but it's ONLY ever worked on that OS for me.

recca421 · Post by **recca421** » Sun Apr 15, 2007 3:50 pm

recca421 wrote:
Warll wrote:Thats coased by your over clocked BFg card.
Well this would be the only game my card causes to glitch then. Odd that, as I know of at least one in my collection that says it won't work on OC'ed gear (Battlefield 2). Then again, it also says that it won't work under win2k, but it's ONLY ever worked on that OS for me.

That being said, it would be just my luck if, due to either the OCing or bad code, this game happened to be the exception.

K-class · Post by **K-class** » Mon Apr 16, 2007 8:02 am

hmm I have a 7600gt AGP since last week (see my sig for card and driver) as my 6800 gt was killed by SMR Im sure of it as it played ok with halflife 2 and doom.

With this new card it has happened 3 times now SMR has crashed to my desktop and I have lost the colour! ends up in 16 bit colour at the lowest resolution setting and takes a reboot to come back. My card is not overclocked.

MicrosoftÂ® DirectXÂ® 9.0 Shader Model 3.0 Support
Ensures top-notch compatibility and performance for all DirectÂ® 9 applications, including Shader Model 3.0 titles.

The drivers I use below (see sig) have been working ok for the last week.

SMR is just badly coded.

Lowell · Post by **Lowell** » Sun Apr 22, 2007 7:03 am

I have been doing some building/editing of some new maps. During the testing I would see the game mess up several times while laying track. Or...save the game and the track "anywhere on the map" will segment to a bunch of tiny blocks ...or... block lights will be created during a random save, 10 to 15 towers merged into one big light tower. â€œTakes forever to fix.â€