Entire Game is a bug

[zeeter]

Way most of us are too impatient to wait for the patch to buy the game. Besides - if we all did that then they wouldn't know what to patch come patch time.
However, I used to work tech support for years. There was NEVER a problem that couldn't be solved one way or another. Either by a workaround or directly fixing the problem.
As someone else stated, there are way too many configurations out there now to test for everything. First you have to test on processor A with video card B and xxxMB ram, then you have to use processor B witht he same config. How many different processors are there? Between AMD and Intel there's at least twenty or thirty depending on your GHz. Then theres all of the video cards. GeForce. Compaq integrated on the MB. Intel video. Radean (or however it's spelled). Then they each have to be tested again with different amounts of ram. Not to mention the thousands of different .dll files out there. It's literally impossible. By the time they got done all of these companies would have new hardware out and they'd have to start over again.
Maybe I'm just feeling high and mighty because I got the game to work. Perhaps if I couldn't then I'd be whining just like everyone else.
One thing, though: $400 on a video card? Heck - I just spent a hundred on one today that works great (!) and I'm getting $20 back!

 

[Agrajag]

Neomega. During my time in the business we tested for just about everyone out there (I sold the company in 1996). Of course we tested many of the most advanced games out there. More than 10,000 products went through our labs over that time. As far as the URL, are you saying you cannot figure out how to deal with a paren?

And as far as being calm, I'm not the one who's using expletives. I'm quite calm. That doesn't mean I'm happy about the situation. What I do not appreciate is being sold something as finished that, to anyone with any experience (and most people without), it's obvious the product is not finished.

On the one working system where I've seen it working it isn't even right. A friends system has it running and aside from other problems there are obvious signs of rushing. Going into Options/Graphics/Resolution, he shows literally hundreds of bogus, corrupted resolution entries. How did that not get caught? How did they not realize that CD1 is the Play disc? How did they not have enough support staff to be able to answer the phone calls? How did they develop a game the requires drivers released on the 12th of this month?

Again, I am quite calm. I'm just not satisfied.

With regard to the phone call situation (Krik), that's an incorrect assumption. I never had a chance to provide my particular technical problem. I called, got a voice prompt saying that I'd be connected to the next available representative. I then got another recorded response that all agents are busy and that I should call back in 24 hours. When I called later I got the same initial response, then I got further by getting another recording saying that they're still busy but I'd be connected to the next available person. That repeated 10 or so times on this call and 20 or so on the next call and both ended with the plea to call back in 24 hours. Still later I got yet another new response from a male voice saying everyone was busy and to call back in 24 hours. Unless their voicemail system is psychic, they have no way of knowing what my particular issues are.

I also have absolutely no doubt that everyone there is working VERY hard to resolve all of these issues. Again, that is BESIDE the point. They wouldn't have to be running around like maniacs right now if this product was released when it was fully worthy of release. Excuses like asking customers to be willing to accept buggy releases or to simply ignore all releases until patches appear, is ridiculous in my view. Some products NEVER get patched (EA is notorious for that, among others).

Again, I find it reprehensible that consumers would spend hard earned money and then sit back and accept excuses as to why what they purchased wasn't what it should be. You wouldn't accept such excuses for other types of purchases and software should not be able to weazel out of this commitment simply because it's software. Try doing hardware development for a while and see how serious they take their releases. If they screw up it often means hideous losses in recalls of hardware, etc. Thus, they take their time to make sure their releases are as stable as possible and if they aren't, in many cases, heads roll.

I should also point out that I absolutely feel sympathy for today's QA professionals. They have a daunting task. HOWEVER, do not kid yourself that it's exponentially harder to test software today than it was 15 or 20 years ago. In many cases things have become far more standardized than they were back then. Back then you had variable degrees of "standards" and had to test dozens of sound cards, hundreds of video cards, hundreds of motherboards, a dozen different operating systems, variations of mouse drivers, memory managers, caching systems, joystick interfaces, etc.

Take sound for example. Today you have several standardized platforms for sound. Until John Miles wrote the Miles API in the mid-90's, there was no such thing as standardized sound. Every card did things differently and every product was expected to work flawlessly with most of them. Today you do DirectSound and possibly EAX if you're into that. If it doesn't work then, chances are it's a driver bug.

But again, I got out of the business in 1996 for several reasons. One of them was that Windows 95 made QA testing more difficult from a cost standpoint (not from an iteration standpoint).

Zeeter is also right. It's like the people who keep telling everyone to "search" a database for all answers. If everyone did it, there'd be nothing to find! Another thing to not kid yourself about is that patches will always come no matter what. Bull. If there isn't pressure to provide a patch, costs are too tight to provide one. Patches come as a result of other pressures, like angry customers flooding your support queues. <grin>

 

[oldStatesman]

Maybe I'm just feeling high and mighty because I got the game to work. Perhaps if I couldn't then I'd be whining just like everyone else.

I will respectfully say that that is a poor characterization of a lot of us.

Everyone is not whining - we are trying to get our problem solved. We are frustrated, angry and annoyed. A lot took time off of work, and adjusted their lives around this release. Most diligently checked to be sure that their hardware was up to snuff...it is not our fault that the specs may be wrong.

We are not to blame. The OP has a right to feel that this game may have been released too quickly. To a lesser degree, I agree with him.

Civ should not have these issues - it is a TBS game for heaven's sake. The graphics should not be so intensive as to eliminate a large percentage of past users at one blow. Where the blame for this lies I really do not care at this point - finger pointing on one hand, and blind defense of Firaxis on the other will not get those of us who are having issues playing the game any sooner.

Information exchange will. And that is what most of us are doing - posting our symptoms so a cure can be found. We are not being intentionally negative - though the situation itself is a negative one; no help for that.

We don't want to be spending our nights reporting bugs and trying one fix after another. We want to play the game. Have a tad bit of sympathy for us, okay?

 

[zeeter]

Sorry - didn't mean to say everyone is whining. Just meant what seems to be a heck of a lot of people.

 

[zeeter]

Rich - I've kinda gotta disagree with you a bit. 1996, when you sold your company, coincided with the release of Windows 95 - the first step towards the wave of other manufacturers equipment. Before that, games simply said VGA or SVGA and Soundblaster compatible plus a 486 or better and something like 8 Megs of ram. If you didn't have an Intel chip you didn't get support from most software companies. IIRC, Windows 95 was ONLY tested on Intel chips. If you didn't have soundblaster their response was to get soundblaster and "sorry - I can't help you until you get it." VGA and SVGA were standards. You had to have your card up to that standard if you wanted to say VGA on your box. Monochrome? Fahgetabout it.
If anyone is to blame, it's Microsoft, for allowing other manufacturers to use their hardware with MS software.
Not to belittle your company, because I'm sure you worked your arses off, but today's testing companies have a much more daunting task.

 

[oldStatesman]

Sorry - didn't mean to say everyone is whining. Just meant what seems to be a heck of a lot of people.

No problem. Apology accepted. MY apologies for going off on you.

I had to rant a bit.

(This is not referring to you zeeter) I'm not sure which extremist view is bugging me more - the Firaxis haters who are having a field day or the Firaxis sheeple who are blindly defending them. Both are drowning out the real issue - we need a fix. (OT - Hmm, this seems to be a mirror of the US society today - divided right down the middle with no apparent middle ground...distracted by BS while the real problems go unfixed.) Lordess, I pray, let me find a safe middle ground...

More OT: Rich - I did enjoy your blog - book marked it.

 

[TylerDurdon]

I'm just wondering why people always gets "Oh my god!! the games been rushed blah blah blah, this is unacceptable, I've been sold an unfinsished product, I feel like they **** me real bad"

Does anyone honnestly know a game that was finished on the released day?!!! Of course they rushed it... they always do... !!! No matter what company... no matter what game.... they get rush.. need to be patched and update!!!
Why is it always like its a surprise?

It's a way to make money NOW before its over to finished it for real... they havent stop working on it!!! the hype was enormous!!! (just has too read in civs forums to see it). They maybe wanted to get it out before chrismas, but I dont feel like Civ is much of a chrismas game anyway... not childish, a little complicated for kid in general. And grown up people DONT wait until chrismas

Anyway!!! I almost got caught in the hype myself... but I'm gonna wait a little... anyway I just started a new C3C game and kicking ass so... I might just finish this one and see!!!!

Thx and dont worry... time solve everything!!!

 

[civzombie]

"I think RichHeimlich does have a point, its clear that this is a rushed product and thats why i didnt order at the first place, i would wait until the first patch"


Smartest thing in the whole thread. Coincidently, that is similar to what I am doing. Specifically, before I buy civ4 I expect to see:
1) A patch fixing technical issues; and
2) A patch to balance some exploit/unblanced area that we all know we will find.


Civ3 ended up being a really good game after the balancing patches. Unfortunately, by the time it was all fixed up I had nearly played it to death. This time, I am waiting until it is ready so as to avoid ruining it for myself.

 

[Neomega]

Neomega. During my time in the business we tested for just about everyone out there (I sold the company in 1996). Of course we tested many of the most advanced games out there. More than 10,000 products went through our labs over that time. As far as the URL, are you saying you cannot figure out how to deal with a paren?

As an owner of a QA company, surely you knew that many problems were quite fixable, and quite easily, and that no software product was ever released in perfect condition.

Your first post was far from calm. As a former owner of a QA company, surely you know that when a product is released, there was no way to test every possible configuration, and surely some things would simply not work on people's computer, due to firewalls, driver issues, LSP stack problems, conflicting softwares etc etc....


If you did not know this, then you sold your company before things got really hot, and there were 1000's of more softwares, and complexities.

And as far as being calm, I'm not the one who's using expletives. I'm quite calm. That doesn't mean I'm happy about the situation. What I do not appreciate is being sold something as finished that, to anyone with any experience (and most people without), it's obvious the product is not finished.

You, and a couple of other hundred people, are having issues, out of the I am sure, already 10's of thousands of copies sold. Probably less than 2% are havign the ATI problem. It will be corrected, and you know it will. Firaxis is a reputable company, and you know it is.

How did they develop a game the requires drivers released on the 12th of this month?

What's your point... the drivers were released 2 weeks ago? Have you never played a 3d game in your life?

Again, I am quite calm. I'm just not satisfied.

You are not calm. You are acting like a great tragedy has been committed. Civ IV is a game of the highest calibur. You were unlucky enough to have an incompatibility.


I also have absolutely no doubt that everyone there is working VERY hard to resolve all of these issues. Again, that is BESIDE the point. They wouldn't have to be running around like maniacs right now if this product was released when it was fully worthy of release. Excuses like asking customers to be willing to accept buggy releases or to simply ignore all releases until patches appear, is ridiculous in my view. Some products NEVER get patched (EA is notorious for that, among others).

Again, I find it reprehensible that consumers would spend hard earned money and then sit back and accept excuses as to why what they purchased wasn't what it should be. You wouldn't accept such excuses for other types of purchases and software should not be able to weazel out of this commitment simply because it's software. Try doing hardware development for a while and see how serious they take their releases. If they screw up it often means hideous losses in recalls of hardware, etc. Thus, they take their time to make sure their releases are as stable as possible and if they aren't, in many cases, heads roll.

1. Reprehensible.... please.

2. That's hardware!!!! Are you sure you owned a QA company? Hardware cannot be "patched". Of course they have more stringent QA standards. They also sell alot more units for much different, but similar task. SOftware must bind all these similar tasks machines arranged in different ays, and provide the end user a flawless experience.... it is not possible to test everything. Where I work, we released our flagship product over 4 years ago... and we still need a QA and techncal support department for all the different ways people find to bust our software.

In many cases things have become far more standardized than they were back then. Back then you had variable degrees of "standards" and had to test dozens of sound cards, hundreds of video cards, hundreds of motherboards, a dozen different operating systems, variations of mouse drivers, memory managers, caching systems, joystick interfaces, etc.

Whatever dood... now you are just being ridiculous. How do you figure things have gotten "more standardized" Dozens of soundcards? How many different models do you suppose are in world right now? There are hundreds of everything, running millions of different computers. That's why they are called PC's. Because they are very personalized.

....like angry customers flooding your support queues.

I thought you were "calm". Obviously you are not. You could be, and you can say you are, but obviously you are angry, and frankly saying a lot of stupid things.

so calm the fart down.

 

[CurtSibling]

Why Abgar? Why should I have to do that???? Why didn't you wait?

When you pay your rent, do you wait outside for a week just in case the landlord wants to work on something?

Al, I'm with you! I still have RRT and Master of Orion on my system though I haven't been able to get them running in some time now (at least not with sound).

I purposely bought this over Fear, Quake 4 and Call of Duty 2 because I figured I'd get more mileage out of it and that it would work more reliably than the others as well as take much less resources. Surprise!

I can tell you are frustrated.

You can be assured that few games can cover the wide range
of PC configurations these days...And sadly, you are correct...
Too many game products are under the gease of publishers
and their demands also...

Probably the card problems will be solved soon...
I doubt the developers are happy about this either.

Suggestions on your CIV4 problem:
You either wait for a patch or take it back to the shop. Simple.
Ranting like Davros and getting stressed won't solve the issues.

 

[Shigga]

so calm the fart down.

That's just the sort of calmness and courtesy we all want to see

Well I'm with Rich in questioning how this major ATI issue could get by QA. Questioning mind you, is not equal to whining nor flaming.

I also get the destinct feeling that things got a little rushed, for whatever reason. But that's just me.

I thought I was having bad luck when amazon changed the date to 3rd of Nov, now I'm happy bc chances are there is a fix out when I finally get it.

 

[Mazruk]

The entire game is not a bug - otherwise it wouldn't be working as sweet as a nut on a lot of systems.

However, it is obvious that the combination of this game and certain configurations of systems have problems. That still doesn't mean that the game is at fault. Anyone who knows anything about 3d in todays world knows that bios settings, video drivers and all sorts of stuff completely unrelated to the game, can have a serious effect on game stability.

Just recently I upgraded my graphics card. My rock solid system became extremely flaky - until patched with a working combo (not necessarily the latest) of bios and video drivers. Its now stable again.

At no time was game software needed to change - ergo the game software wasnt the problem.

There are effectively an infinite set of combinations in peoples PCs that it is impossible to test them all. For example, my new graphics card was a 6600gt - there are about 20 different manufacturers of this card, and each manufacturer probably goes through a few iterations of the card layout too. Then nVidia have about 50 different drivers for that card. Thats about 2000 combos right there for supposedly the same card! Then there is memory, sound cards, CPUs, cooling systems, motherboards, bios, etc etc. They could have spent 100 years testing it, and someone out there would still have had it crash. That is the reality of PCs.

 

[zeeter]

There are effectively an infinite set of combinations in peoples PCs that it is impossible to test them all. For example, my new graphics card was a 6600gt - there are about 20 different manufacturers of this card, and each manufacturer probably goes through a few iterations of the card layout too. Then nVidia have about 50 different drivers for that card. Thats about 2000 combos right there for supposedly the same card! Then there is memory, sound cards, CPUs, cooling systems, motherboards, bios, etc etc. They could have spent 100 years testing it, and someone out there would still have had it crash. That is the reality of PCs.

Well MY pc is Black! How could they not test it on a black PC? I'll bet they tested on all of the cream colored and grey ones! I'm taking this thing back, darnit, because I can't find any updated drivers for my black PC case!

 

[Mazruk]

Well MY pc is Black! How could they not test it on a black PC? I'll bet they tested on all of the cream colored and grey ones! I'm taking this thing back, darnit, because I can't find any updated drivers for my black PC case!

Just go to your local HW store and buy a can of cream paint. Once you've "upgraded" your system, everything will run fine!

 

[Shigga]

So what about my multimillion-$$ gold-layered case with ornaments made of unflawed diamonds, mother of pearl and a teak wood front-cover? Does that mean I have to paint it??

 

[tecknogyk]

Wow, I come on to check and see if anyone else is having some minor issues with the game and find the usual. Look, I certainly can understand some frustration and dissapointment if it's not running for you. However, for all of the peeps being harshly critical of Firaxis I think you should take a step back and look at the bigger picture. We are extremely lucky that a game like Civilization is even being developed at all. In a world that is becoming more and more dominated by consoles, where the costs of developing are going through the roof, and where the little guy is being pushed out...I find it amazing that I'm getting a new version of Civilization. I'm extremely grateful and so should you be. Are there problems? Yes. Was the game rushed? Probably...but not by Firaxis. Firaxis is at the mercy of their publisher just like any other small developer. Should you be upset? Yes, but within limits.... It's 2k's fault for rushing the release date...but there is still more to it than that. You have to remember that smaller developers AND publishers are in a fight for their very existence with the big boys. In light of that...I don't think we should be spewing so much anger towards them. Let them know your problem....they'll get it fixed I'm sure. Be dissapointed...be upset...but let's acknowledge the fact that we are extremely lucky to even have this game being made.

-teck

 

[tecknogyk]

Almost forgot.... I'm not just saying this without having problems of my own. My game is crashing out to the desktop quite frequently and has even crashed my entire system once. However, the latter I'm quite sure was because of an incompatability with my virtual drives that I've since taken care of. I can play the game but have to reload every so often when it decides to crap out on me. That's better than some, I know...but I think what I said in my previous post holds true.

-teck

 

[Neomega]

Some peopel need to go spend $50 on Master of Orion 3.... then they would see what a terrible game really is.

It's freaking day 1, and people are acting like the sky is falling because they cannot play today. It's actually laughable.

One thread is threatening a boycott because they are not releasing it in Britain for another week!

Oh the injustice.... Rosa Parks, may she rest in peace, would never stand for such hatred!! Boycott! Boycott!

If this were on a playstation, I would understand the outrage, but I just find it unbelievable a former QA company owner is confused about this. There is bound to be flukes on the first day of release for any PC title. It is ABSOLUTELY RIDICULOUS on the FIRST DAY OF RELEASE to be saying "Unacceptable" and complaining about the "customer service".

They released the title today, because 98% of the customers are going to be ok, and you cannot hold up release dates for what if's. From what I see, the lack of posts confirms that the release is actually going quite smoothly for most people. Even in the ATI poll, its about 50% with working games, so that means it's more like 70% - 80%, since if people's ATI cards are working fine, they aren't even over here. These forums are attracting people with problems, but some of them... geez. I'd hate to see what happens when they lose cable TV for an hour.

And I really wonder, how many ATI users have not properly updated their drivers, or installed Direct X, or dorked with thier settings 5 months ago trying to get another game to run. There will be a technical FAQ soon, I am sure.

 

[ValeronSidhe]

Reading threads like this one makes me feel a bit worried as a European. The game is not out yet, but already people are experiencing problems with their game. I own a Radeon X800 XL too, but I have the latest Omega drivers and I read elsewhere that that might fix the whole thing. I would almost just download the game and check if it runs OK. But I'm not tempted to do that, I'll just wait till November 2 when the game is sent to me. Hopefully, in case I have problems too, Firaxis has launched a patch.

 

[happy_Alex]

One thread is threatening a boycott because they are not releasing it in Britain for another week!

Actually most people on that thread were saying what a nutcase (no offence)the thread starter was. Having read this thread I am willing to wait a bit longer for civ 4 to come out in the UK