What is wrong with my Pirates!

[Tboy]

Help! Whenever I start up my game, it either quits immediately,or taunts me by working for a while and then quitting. Sometimes, if I am lucky enough to get a save file, when I load it it just quits! Oh, and three of the graphics are messed up: merchantman ships, the dutch person when you are choosing your country, and my character when I am in town (talking to governor, in tavern e.t.c.) I have tried installing patch 1.01, but I get a file permision error. I really want to play this game, as I know how good it is. Please, somebody help!

 

[Stellaaa]

Hmmm, let me guess. You have an intel graphics chip set. I looked for the thread on this but cannot find so I will post the trick (it's the only trick I know)

Try this:
In the video settings options in your game set the sliders controlling World Detail and Object Detail to MAXIMUM (you will not have an option to do this to water detail). You read that right-- MAXIMUM.

That should stop the crashing. Your character will still look like the terminator but you should be able to play the game. The patch is supposed to fix the terminator man thing, but I can't help you with that, as I haven't patched any of my systems yet.

Stellaaa

 

[rupertlittlebea]

The patch is only for the USA version.

If you have the US version, and get the permission error, you are doing something wrong.

Try re-installing the game, then run the patch with disk 2 in the drive.

My run till crash problem was an under-powered power supply with a power hog vid card.

Most on-board graphics have extreme difficulty with this game.

And just for fun, Directx 9c does not automatically install with the game. You may need to jump start it from your Pirates! disk.

Then there is Pirates in safe mode.
(Read the Readme)

 

[jeannie]

Have you tried uninstalling the game and then re-installing it, in case some of the files on your hard drive got corrupted? If THAT doesn't work, then I suspect you've got some bad files on the CDs and you should exchange them where you bought them.

 

[Tboy]

stellaaa: thankyou! my game now works. And yes, the character still looks like a zombie
rupertlittlebea & jeannie: no, I didn't reinstall it for the patch (being the idiot I am). I'm not sure if I've got the US version, how can I tell? Is there a separate UK version?

 

[Tboy]

I reinstalled it and tried the patch again with BOTH disks in the drives (My computer has 2) and I still got the file permission error. By the way, it always goes to disk 1 and it's always about 'pirates.exe'. Anyone know what is going on? and is my game us edition or not? I don't know how to find out!

 

[rupertlittlebea]

Patch with the Play disk in the drive.

If you walked into a store in the USA and bought the game it is the USA version.
Ditto Amazon.com
Ditto Canada stores.

Ebay -> anybody's guess.

Anywhere in the UK -> not the USA version

 

[Tboy]

Drat. If you are right, my patch is useless. Does anyone know where I can find a patch for the UK version?

 

[Darth_Pugwash]

Its not out yet.

 

[rupertlittlebea]

Drat. If you are right, my patch is useless. Does anyone know where I can find a patch for the UK version?

Write lots of "fan mail" to Atari/Firaxis, and keep your sence of humor.

The first two patches released by Firaxis (yes there have been two for the USA) have both been jokes.

No self respecting business person would ever have released such bad software patches.

You can hope that when they finally release a patch for the rest of the world, it won't just be yet another joke.