Official response from EA / Tilted Mill regarding crashes

[Ed.]

I too experience 'crash to desktop' when the city gets anywhere near a decent size (10k pop.) making this game unplayable.

I know an official statement from either EA or Tilted Mill regarding this matter can only be made once they can set expectations and that requires the knowledge of the cause of the problem in the first place. So, given everyone is back to work tomorrow (Mon 19 Nov 2007), given time to reflect on the problem and organise a timeframe for a resolution, we should expect to hear acknowledgement of the bug in the first half of the week and a patch in the following week or two at most that resolves this.

I have also attached my dxdiag.txt file for anyones perusal but I'm convinced it's the codebase. However, suggestions are always welcome.

Update
Please visit the official EA runtime error thread (http://simcitysocieties.ea.com/community/forum/messages.php?threadID=25fa42b823076ee1792b3b07274c dc89&directoryID=214&startRow=1&openItemID=item.214) in the community forum and post your details. It all helps.

[Kiya]

At least this is not 'the usual' reason. You've got a powerful PC, nice processor, enough RAM and nVidia 8800GTS card. I'm getting real worried now.

Hm...windows vista with the very latest drivers? What about a bit 'older' ones? Have you tried those, is it as bad as now? Just a thought.

[Ed.]

My friends machine is a laptop with XP and a mid range ATi card and it has exactly the same problems. I wouldn't worry about your machine and the drivers being a problem if the game runs. The crash is a codebase issue.

[Morpheus121073]

Tried it on different system, with either XP or Vista but on all i have the annoying runtime error, it has everything to do with city growth.

Also they need to look after this annoying memory leak.

[Kuplo]

I know an official statement from either EA or Tilted Mill regarding this matter can only be made once they can set expectations and that requires the knowledge of the cause of the problem in the first place. So, given everyone is back to work tomorrow (Mon 19 Nov 2007), given time to reflect on the problem and organise a timeframe for a resolution, we should expect to hear acknowledgement of the bug in the first half of the week and a patch in the following week or two at most that resolves this.



Not to burst any bubbles but I think you are being overly optimistic. Having a patch in the following week or two at most is overly optimistic in my opinion. Wasn't it several weeks or months before they were able to just find one of the more severe problems in C4 and then several months before a patch was issued? I don't remember the exact time frame but I do remember people being told to be patient while they tried to figure out what was causing the problem and that went on for what seemed like eternity for people that couldn't play the game and which in my recollection was weeks and weeks and weeks before they even had a firm grasp on what was causing the problem let alone how to actually fix it. However in the end I believe they did manage to fix it, only a shame for those that spent their money on the game but couldn't play it for several weeks or months.

Will the game be fixed up? Sure, I believe that it will, but I don't believe it's a matter of a week or two to fix the many differey manifestations of the game crashing since it seems to effect different computers differently.

Unfortunately theres more than the runtime error that is crashing computers at the moment.

[Ed.]

Not to burst any bubbles but I think you are being overly optimistic.Oi!! Leave my bubbles alone. ;)

Yes it is optimistic. Isn't the game engine the same as Civ4 though? Shouldn't this alleviate some of the burden of finding problems?

[tobing]

Game engine is based on that which was used for Caesar IV. Definitely not the same engine, though...

[Tinkerbell]

I believe the reason for the Caesar IV patch delay was that TM wanted to improve many things besides the Trade Route bug et al & not do a zillion patches. Lots of different computer configurations out there.

I believe right now that TM is reading all the posts & making their lists, while "fixing" what they can & improving other things as they pop up.

Patience, please. :)

[Ed.]

I believe the reason for the Caesar IV patch delay was that TM wanted to improve many things besides the Trade Route bug et al & not do a zillion patches. Lots of different computer configurations out there.

I believe right now that TM is reading all the posts & making their lists, while "fixing" what they can & improving other things as they pop up.

Patience, please. :)
I don't doubt TM are reading this board and working on it but patience is a hard attribute to maintain as I get most fun out of the game when the city is big and I'm working towards the goals, just as it crashes. Hopefully, this runtime bug is prioritised over any other gameplay issues as it's a major one. Let's hope it's sooner rather than later.

What would set minds at ease is some kind of acknowledgement. We know the team have posted in this forum today so they must have read the posts here in the support section. Let's hope the 'community' in 'community support forum' isn't used as a cop-out and they let us know where things stand. I, and probably others, would be willing to post error codes, system config details etc, whatever they need to further speed up a fix for this.

There is a tracking thread (http://simcitysocieties.ea.com/community/forum/messages.php?threadID=25fa42b823076ee1792b3b07274c dc89&directoryID=214&startRow=1&openItemID=item.214) for this runtime bug but all suggestions have been exhausted and the problem remains whether it's AMD or Intel, NVidia or ATi, XP or Vista. It can only be the game.

[Tinkerbell]

I'm not trying to make excuses for Tilted Mill, Ed., but this is what I have noticed so far. This is TM's game after all, as the Developer.

I was one of the many lucky users & never got the C4 Trade Route Bug. No problems at all, but others did & they were appropriately very angry.

If you look at the SCS help screens "About", it looks like the SCS QA was done mainly by EA, whereas I recognized most of the tester names in C4 as being TM people (but not employees) & not Sierra.

SCS appears to me to be much more Publisher EA controlled than C4 was with Sierra.

I don't know whether this is good or bad.

[Ed.]

I'm not trying to make excuses for Tilted Mill, Ed., but this is what I have noticed so far. This is TM's game after all, as the Developer.

I was one of the many lucky users & never got the C4 Trade Route Bug. No problems at all, but others did & they were appropriately very angry.

If you look at the SCS help screens "About", it looks like the SCS QA was done mainly by EA, whereas I recognized most of the tester names in C4 as being TM people (but not employees) & not Sierra.

SCS appears to me to be much more Publisher EA controlled than C4 was with Sierra.

I don't know whether this is good or bad.
That can only be detrimental. TM have their name on the game yet EA with their sales objectives do the quality control. It's like asking a dodgy car salesman if the car you like is OK. "Of course is it sir".

I would hope that TM would accept this isn't the ideal way of doing things and since they're liable for this, they'd be aware of the problems. However, my concern is that EA are the interface with the consumer and Tilted Mill are just the contractor given the job of developing the game. In other words. It's not up to TM to speak up over this but EA.

And we all know what that means!

[TheArsenal]

It's not up to TM to speak up over this but EA.


New guy speculates: since there are TM people who are on these boards and currently no one has addressed the patch issue, its fairly clear that even more than "it's not up to TM to speak up" it's more along the lines of "TM are not allowed to speak up."

[Ed.]

New guy speculates: since there are TM people who are on these boards and currently no one has addressed the patch issue, its fairly clear that even more than "it's not up to TM to speak up" it's more along the lines of "TM are not allowed to speak up."You could be right!

[Kuplo]

I hope that they don't decide to use the same approach as the C4 patches in waiting to put out one big patch. Seriously, for the people that can't play the game for more than a few moments at a time that takes far too long to get one big patch to fix not only the crashing but other things as well and or introducing other new things to the game. I do hope they put out patches that work properly and that fix the things that are wrong and if I have to install a new patch every week Im completely fine with that. Afterall, when all is said and done they can certainly put all the mini patches into one large patch if they should desire to do so.

It just really kind of sucks to be told that you must wait and that it could be 3 weeks or 9 weeks or 3 months before they are going to release a patch becuase they want to put everything into one large patch when the people who spent the money on the game can't play what they paid for.

Yeah I admit, I am one of those people that the game crashes on me regularly, anywhere from 10 minutes in to an hour or more and I really don't care to have to wait 3 months or so to be able to play the game that I paid for last week. After all I didn't pay for a preorder full game that I have to hold onto for 3 months before playing it like it should.

Okay, Im not going anywhere with this message obviously Im just letting out some steam on this issue because even though I think the game has some issues in gameplay and lack thereof, I would enjoy to be able to play it for a decent length of time when I have the time (which sadly, was today). Okay, thanks ofr reading or not reading I just had to get that off my chest. I'll try to be a good boy now.

[TheArsenal]

I do hope they put out patches that work properly and that fix the things that are wrong and if I have to install a new patch every week Im completely fine with that. Afterall, when all is said and done they can certainly put all the mini patches into one large patch if they should desire to do so.


Waiting to fix everything would certainly be the wrong approach. I've seen plenty of games with buggy releases - seems to be the norm these days - but never anything quite this broken. And unlike the other buggy releases which work for some and not for others, it appears everyone who plays this game eventually will run into the same problem. I don't know what impact people screaming on message boards that the game is defective has on sales, particularly combined with those voices who had their knives out for this game even before its release (from what I can gather). But any positive feedback about this game is being drowned out. And it will be more so the longer it goes without being fixed. I imagine that would be something they would want to minimize.