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Author Topic: My two cents about this demo. The dreaded BSOD!
LiquidClown 
Posts: 8
Registered: Sep '07
Date Posted: 9/17/07 3:25am Subject: My two cents about this demo. The dreaded BSOD! - Date Edited: 9/21/07 10:26am (1 edits total) Edited By: Sheyla
Before I start my rant here are my system specifications.

Amd FX-55 (2.67 Ghz)

Asus a8n-sli deluxe (with latest bios and chipset driver)

BFG 6800gt OC 256mb PCI-X graphics card (at BFG stock speed)(with latest driver)

1 gig Corsair xms pro memory (Running in dual channel with 2.7 latancy)

Western digital caviar 120 gig 7200 rpm hard drive sata

Western digital Raptor 74 gig 10000 rpm hard drive sata

SoundBlaster audigy 2 ZS platinum (with an old driver but still works for bioshock so meh)

Windows xp professional SP2

Ok now on to the rant.

I have been playing games for a number of years now, and I have bought MANY midway games. Even Area 51 with that crappy starforce protection scheme that slowed down performance on my computer, but thanks to a patch, that was rectified in a short time. Back to the topic at hand. I saw that the stranglehold demo was released on gamerhell, like many others out there, I thought, hey this demo is going to rock my face-hole. I just finished Bioshock with all the settings on high while playing 1024x768, so my expectations for stranglehold were already high. Therefore, I decided to get the demo for stranglehold through gamerhell. After waiting for 32 minutes just to be able to download the demo, I had to wait 5 hours just for it to be able to download at 101kb/s. 5 hours later I came back to my computer, sat down and installed the demo which ate up another 15 minutes of my time.
Finally, I thought, time for some John Woo action packed goodness. So I waited 5 minutes at the bullet-casing splash screen, SWEEET LOOK HOW AWESOMELY REALISTIC THE BULLET CASINGS LOOK, I thought. Then it got to the loading screen with the controls, JUST A FEW MORE SECONDS!!!!!!! The bink video played, and I salivated like a fat child one step too far from a Baskin-Robbins.
Then the video stopped and I was left with a black screen. I waited for another 5 minutes in total darkness whilst setting at my computer glaring at the monitor, just hopping that Chow Yun-Fat, a.k.a Tequila, would come running out of the darkness guns-blazing. However, all I ever saw was my cursor blinking in, and out.
Not a problem, I told myself, maybe a simple re-boot will fix the situation. After another five minutes of waiting for my computer to re-boot, I gave the demo yet another try, but to no avail did it work. I didn't even see the bink video that time, just a black screen with my cursor blinking and stuttering worse then a Parkinson Patient on a paint mixer. So after waiting another 10 minutes in the dark, hoping that the problem was just the program trying to optimize the game engine for maximum efficiency, it still didn't let me play.
After all that I kept my cool, told myself everything would be all right, and dredged through the forums looking for a viable solution to the problem, I found just what the demo’s big blank screen offered me.......nothing. Sure there were a few people who got it to work, but I sincerely doubt three purchases of 49.99 will hardly constitute a return-profit of the millions of dollars that was probably put in porting this game to the PC.
So I looked at another forum, and someone had stated they had luck with the US version, because they had downloaded a UK version which didn’t work. So I sarcastically thought, that's odd…. does the demo change the voltage from the American 120v standard to the 220v European standard on the graphics card, making it give my monitor a black screen? So I thought what the hell, I will give it another go. I completely un-installed the gamershell download (which was installed to the drive with the windows operating system on it). Then I deleted the bad download in my download folder, so there wouldn't be any conflict there. Afterwards, I proceeded to Fileplanet to obtain the download, and after waiting 32 minutes just to download, I had to wait another 5 hrs and 45 minutes just to get it downloaded on my computer. Finally, I thought I just may have a clean, un-corrupted, download that would work. So I waited 15 minutes to get it installed, then I went to click on the desktop icon, which brought up the splash screen.
After 5 minutes of loading it finally brought me to the black screen of death. After a hard-reboot (as I previously had to do before but didn't mention) I was back again at my desktop after waiting 5 minutes. Infuriated I came back to midway forums, registered, just so I could tell you how crappy the state of gaming has become, and how good business sense no-longer is the order of the day.
The demo (business wise) is equally a debacle like Shadowrun announcing it would be Vista-only. Not only did Shadowrun not have good game play, (stated in many online reviews), but it alienated the windows xp consumer base. That alone could make many people speculate if Gates had a hand in making the game Vista-only to further gag pc gamers with the crap that is Vista. It doesn't end there however, recently I read that current direct-x 10 cards will be obsolete with the up-and-coming version of direct-x 10.1. So my conclusion about Vista, Gates, and Shadowrun... not worth my time or money as a consumer. This brings me back to the demo. It is time for big business to wake up and realize that their consumers aren't as mindless, or rich as they would like us to be to fall for their BS and buy a defective product. In my mind a company doesn't earn my trust through betrayal by putting out a product, then coming out with no solutions for their loyal customers to garner their continued commitment in buying the company's future products. This demo makes me wonder if John Woo really had a hand in making it.... I bet it was more likely the brainchild of Uwe Boll. After all, don't most the crap Uwe has put out over the years make us wish we were staring at a blank screen? So maybe it was made by Uwe. Maybe Midway has saved us some headache, and heartbreak by giving us a blank screen to look at. Perhaps it could be a revolution in gaming. Maybe the blank screen is a create-your-own-adventure technology that is sooooo powerful, we failed to realize it's full potential. Maybe the patch will be Elmer’s school paste and hi-rez still's of the xbox 360 version where we can make our own story on the blank screen by cutting out the images, and pasting them to the black screen.
Sincerely, I played Bioshock all the way through without a SINGLE hitch at max settings with 1024x768. So there should be no problem with this demo. Also if anyone buys the requirements of 15 gigs hard drive space, 2 gigs of ram, core 2 duo processor, and a 7800 Nvidia or higher graphics card, I have some ocean-front property in Kansas for sale.

I hoped my little rant has helped you the reader in some way, and hopefully may in some small way get us a better demo and game (more then likely it won't help). Thanks for reading and have a nice day happy .

 
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BeliyKon  136 posts
Posts: 136
Registered: Jul '07
Date Posted: 9/17/07 6:09am Subject: RE: My two cents about this demo. The dreaded BSOD!
wow, no way im reading this

 
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Jigsaw407 
Posts: 8
Registered: Sep '07
Date Posted: 9/17/07 7:07am Subject: RE: My two cents about this demo. The dreaded BSOD!
BeliyKon posted:
wow, no way im reading this


I DID read all that, and I couldn't agree more.

 
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mephisto123 
Posts: 5
Registered: Sep '07
Date Posted: 9/17/07 12:37pm Subject: RE: My two cents about this demo. The dreaded BSOD!
you are so right about this game. i had problems with the demo and the black-screen-of-death too. hope they will fix many of this problems till release

 
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Dave3d 
Posts: 37
Registered: Sep '07
Date Posted: 9/17/07 6:55pm Subject: RE: My two cents about this demo. The dreaded BSOD!
@LiquidClown

From what I have read about the sys req's, your system is not able to play it.

Dunno, maybe the req's have changed, but your system does not meet the min req.

 
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sinny 
Posts: 28
Registered: Sep '07
Date Posted: 9/17/07 7:00pm Subject: RE: My two cents about this demo. The dreaded BSOD!
people with 1GB of ram have played the game, so those req are wrong...

 
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LiquidClown 
Posts: 8
Registered: Sep '07
Date Posted: 9/18/07 3:31am Subject: RE: My two cents about this demo. The dreaded BSOD!
As one other person mentioned in great-length of techinical detail, it is a problem with the code. Pure and simple. Any game should run on any computer reguardless of the systems spec's. It running smoothly however is another story...

Thanks to those who read this lengthy response. This is just my own opinion. I can only imagine how frustrated some people must feel who buy the game, and are let down when it doesn't run on their system.

 
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swatgodsr 
Posts: 7
Registered: Sep '07
Date Posted: 9/18/07 6:50am Subject: RE: My two cents about this demo. The dreaded BSOD!
i told myself i would not respond to any of the random idiots i saw posting on here but i saw this guys response about any game running on any pc and i had to put him in his place seeing as i am in school for becoming one of the next game developers and his statement was the most blatant pile of horse crap i ever seen in any forum. i can quickly pull up just one damn line of code that can make a game only run on the newest video cards, whys that you say? because games have requirements for a damn reason, if the pc is not up to snuff it wont play the game no matter how bad you want to, like someone said, your pc does not meet the requirements, so if you want to play go upgrade, this is the next gen of pc gaming, either get with the program or stay behind, its up to you, these new games require monster computers to play now and if your pc does not handle it than that tells you something right there, these games have been coming out for quite a while already so you should have gotten the picture a while back, people like you irritate me to no end because you are that ridiculously stupid and you blame devs for this and that and never look to where the problem lies, that being with your system for whats wrong, no game company in the world can build a game for every system, its impossible, so check your system and fix that pos first before you blame others who are not involved, its not a code problem or it'd not work on anyone's system and it works perfectly on mine so obviously thats not a big one. thats MY 2 cents for you guys, if you like more i drop by almost once a day at least i would be more than happy to continue. also, im not a fan boy for any damn console/game i just hate idiots who make stupid remarks that are not true in any amount of light.

 
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LiquidClown 
Posts: 8
Registered: Sep '07
Date Posted: 9/18/07 11:13am Subject: RE: My two cents about this demo. The dreaded BSOD! - Date Edited: 9/18/07 11:26am (1 edits total) Edited By: LiquidClown
LMAO!

....oooooo someone works for Midway raised_brow ....


As for you bashing me for stating that the game should be playable reguardless of specs you are right... to a point.

I don't expect to play this game on a commodore 64, but I should be able to play a game such as this with my specs.... or at least get it to RUN. There seems to be an nvidia infinite loop bug that plagues people within the specifications, and without the specifications. I wouldn't know the first thing about fixing it. But thanks for your critisism. Now give me a great big hug hugs . So I can have the same warm mushy feeling you get every time you turn on your computer LOL.

 
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steve58 
Posts: 3
Registered: Sep '07
Date Posted: 9/20/07 3:56pm Subject: RE: My two cents about this demo. The dreaded BSOD! - Date Edited: 9/20/07 4:03pm (1 edits total) Edited By: steve58
And if your an example of game developers in general, (although I hope not) then no wonder the game industry is in the state it is.

You obviously did not read the entire post's and understand what they were trying to get across.

Best of luck bud, your going to need it with your attitude.

By the way swatgodsr you idiot, the Demo does not work on ANY of the systems in my Sig. And don't imply I don't know what I'm doing, I own/run a computer business and custom build many systems to individual requirements.

swatgodsr posted:
i told myself i would not respond to any of the random idiots i saw posting on here but i saw this guys response about any game running on any pc and i had to put him in his place seeing as i am in school for becoming one of the next game developers and his statement was the most blatant pile of horse crap i ever seen in any forum. i can quickly pull up just one damn line of code that can make a game only run on the newest video cards, whys that you say? because games have requirements for a damn reason, if the pc is not up to snuff it wont play the game no matter how bad you want to, like someone said, your pc does not meet the requirements, so if you want to play go upgrade, this is the next gen of pc gaming, either get with the program or stay behind, its up to you, these new games require monster computers to play now and if your pc does not handle it than that tells you something right there, these games have been coming out for quite a while already so you should have gotten the picture a while back, people like you irritate me to no end because you are that ridiculously stupid and you blame devs for this and that and never look to where the problem lies, that being with your system for whats wrong, no game company in the world can build a game for every system, its impossible, so check your system and fix that pos first before you blame others who are not involved, its not a code problem or it'd not work on anyone's system and it works perfectly on mine so obviously thats not a big one. thats MY 2 cents for you guys, if you like more i drop by almost once a day at least i would be more than happy to continue. also, im not a fan boy for any damn console/game i just hate idiots who make stupid remarks that are not true in any amount of light.

 

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LiquidClown 
Posts: 8
Registered: Sep '07
Date Posted: 9/20/07 8:15pm Subject: RE: My two cents about this demo. The dreaded BSOD! - Date Edited: 9/20/07 8:17pm (1 edits total) Edited By: LiquidClown
I downloaded this demo with internet explorer, and recently I have found that IE has problems with downloads in the 2 gig range. Firefox doesn't however, I just wonder if the browser is somehow corrupting the data in the download. Can anyone who has downloaded theirs with firefox confirm this?

I don't feel like downloading this for a third time....

 
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