News on Issues

[Erik Rutins]

Hi everyone,

We're as unhappy as you are that some customers are having problems with RFTS. On all of our test systems (as well as SSG's) of course it runs without a problem, but around 5% of customers seem to have severe issues with crashes and freezes. We've been trying to work out these issues with SSG and they have made several attempts to resolve them. As those of you who own other titles from our line know, we are not interested in selling a product that doesn't meet our customers' expectations and neither is SSG. In fact, SSG is generally known for solid, bug-free games.

With that said, after our last discussion with SSG on this last week we have hopes that a new programmer may be able to unravel these issues. I hope we'll have news on that soon. If that doesn't happen, we'll come up with something to make it right for the group of customers that have been affected. Thanks for your patience everyone.

Regards,

- Erik

[KG Erwin]

Thank you, Erik. If the programmers tear their hair out and try to find "memory leaks" in the program without success, then it HAS to come back to user hardware problems, whether it's with our video cards, operating systems or whatever.

I've been one of the harshest critics of this particular game, and if it comes down to a hardware problem, then it's MY problem, NOT yours.

However, I hope we can pull together and identify which systems have the CTD problem, and go from there.

For the record, my system is a stock Dell Dimension 2400, with the in-board video card and the latest drivers for all its components. It runs SPWaW (itself a notorious "memory hog") flawlessly.

[RocketMan]

Erik,

I have sent in at least two save games that consistantly crash to desktop. Are you saying that those saved games do not crash on the developers computers?

[Erik Rutins]

RocketMan,

Unfortunately, apparently getting it to crash on the development systems, with the debugger, is another story. I'm waiting to hear back on the final word in terms of whether the new programmer has been able to shed any new light on this. If not, we'll come up with another solution for those customers that have been affected.

Regards,

- Erik

[RocketMan]

Erik,

I found a solution to my CTD problem. I solve the problem by going to Device Manager and disabling my SoudBlaster Live! 5.1 card. Note that I already had the latest driver installed. Of course I don't get any sound with my sound card disabled, and I have to reboot every time I disable and enable it, but it will at least let me play the game.

[Erik Rutins]

RocketMan,

Thanks for the report and I'm glad you have a work-around for your system. I've also heard that in some other cases making sure forced anti-aliasing is off in the video card drivers helps. Ultimately though we need to find out if a permanent fix is going to be possible or not.

In the meantime, if anyone else who has these issues can try one of these work-arounds and see if they help, that would be worth knowing.

Regards,

- Erik

[Rainbow7]

On my laptop, my workaround is that RftS has to be the first program I run after bootup. If I've already browsed the internet or called up some other program, the game just hangs during videos or main menu. In my case, though, it's likely a video card driver issue.

[matt3916]

Any update on the CTD situation?

[dlotus]

Hey guys,
I see theres no fix to the ctd issues yet, and no one has commented on it for 2 months, so what it appears it has come down to is give us AU$50 and we will give you nothing in return? now im not comlaining about the company or any one in particular but keeping us informed would be a nice thing to do since we did after all buy a game that they (matrix games) clearly thought would work. All im asking for is an ETA on a fix if one is going to be available (yes i know if they cant copy the bug they cant fix it but it appears to be a global bug not specific to one particular brand of CPU, motherboard or graphics card) or for the admins to let us know whats going on with it, come on everyone i hear you all talking about the bugs but nothing is getting done about it, if we all bought faulty goods from a company locally would you just throw it away and forget you ever bought it no we all would complain about it and get the problem fixed, i might be going over the top but something needs to be done about it! I uninstalled RFTS awhile ago because you cant play a game for 190 turns and then let it crash and go ahh well start again now, 190 turns later go well its time to start again assuming you actually get to 190 turns, now ive got a new gfx and it still does it so ive had 2 diff cards 2 diff cpus and it still crashes, come on Erik let us know whats going on so we all know what to or not look forward to, as i said maybe im being a bit harsh but I want to play the game i paid for and its that simple!

[menthar]

I usually cant get past between 85 rounds to 110 rounds then it crashes to desktop. I then reload map from save and some of the territory i had access to is available and eventually i will gret ot a round it wont let me cont. it keeps crashing. I have dl th patch. hope it can get fixed.

[rhondabrwn]

I'm happy to get a status report. I was really feeling ignored.