Soback

Does this even deserve a reply?

Oh, by the way, how does the rebate for BCM work. When I pre-ordered at EB, I asked about the rebate and they said that the game will come with some ticket that I send inn someplace and get a check for $10. Is that right or were they wrong?

Thanks to all, but as I have posted in the other thread the game works great and with the dx8 with the startopia.exe cracked file. It was that damn safedisk that was preventing me from playing with the ORIGINAL cd. Eddited for spelling. [ 09-03-2001: Message edited by: Soback ]

Thanks for explaining. That was indeed very helpfull.

What's a reflection map?

OH MY GOD. YES BABY YEEEES. HAHA. It worked. In their face. It's not my computer or my cd drive, it's this stincking safedisk. It woks, movies, sound, everything and I don't even need the cd. I have never cracked or copyed a game in my life and now only because of a copy protection that is supposed to let the legit players play and I couldn't I cracked it and now I can. That is backwards. What should I do now? I think I will just go and exchange the game and keep the one I have on my HD. My agravation, trips to EB and COMPUSA, wasted gas, money, time. My killer headache that I have now, and red eyes, not mentioning 3 reinstalls of windows and trying to get rid of dx8. And I had to pay 44.99 for that? OH GOD, well, the way they paid me I will pay them. In their face, safedisk and everything else, like it's supposed to prevent copying. Instead it gave me a reason to.

Here, read this ---> http://www.eidosgames.com/ubb/Forum8/HTML/000397.html

Read the "What's good" in this forum to find out. No longer need the answer to this question though.

Ok, looks like one more safedisk problem. This is the story. I went and exchanged Europa Universalis for Startopia. Came home, installed. Downloaded the patch, updated. Start the game, the same thing, start up screen then drops to desktop. I couldn't believe my eyes. So I went on the official site, tried all the fixes in the official FAQ, nothing helped, then I stumbled on some files saying that if I have an older card witch doesn't support dx8 then that's the problem because if I have dx8 installed then the card just won't work. What do I do, I try to delete dx8. Yeah, fat chance there. After about 2 hours of tinkering, surfing the net I find a way to take care of that. So now I have DX7. Did that work? NOOOOOO. Well, thinking that I have a bad CD-ROM drive like was mentioned in some other thread, I went to CompUSA and bought a new Creative Blaster CD-ROM 52x for $60. Well, came home, plugged it in, no help here. I reinstalled from the new CD-ROM, it interrupts in the middle of the install and says that the files are corrupt. AHA, I think I have a bad CD. Well, I go back to EB, get another copy of startopia, come home. SAME THING $@#(&^%$#@(*^%^ . What now? I go back to the startopia forums. Do a search on "Doesn't start" and come across a thread that's 4 weeks old saying that if you get dropped to desktop but the game tries to access you CD-ROM before that then it's a safedisk problems and was fixed and confirmed fixed by a cracked startopia.exe file witch bypasses safedisk id at the star up of the game. Now I am just going to look for this file. Hope I find it. End result. I spend the whole day with 1 trip to CompUSA where I bought a CD-ROM which I apparently don't need, 2 trips to EB. 8 hours trying to make this damn thing work. Trying and finally succeeding downgrading to dx7. 3 reinstalls of windows (needed to correct the dx8 "problem") damn official FAQ. And now what? God I feel miserable.

I got a problem. I need to uninstall DX8 and install DX7. When I just try to reinstall dx7 it tell me that a newer version exists on my computer (dx8) so how do I get rid of dx8 so that I can reinstall dx7?

Thank you for all your opinions. It was appreciated. By the way I got Startopia. Downloading the patch for it right now, after that it's install/update/ and PLAY. Will update in a day or two on the status of the game, if it's good or not and ect....

Anything would be better then that Europa Universalis. It caused me so much problems I am still upset, well, at least I got the credits from it.

I need some advice on a new game. I got some credit I need to spend at EB tomorow so I went there today to see what they have but eveything looked kinda the same so I walked away. The only things that kinda caught my eye were I-War 2, Arcanum and Startopia. So, I would appreciate if anyone can tell me anything about those games if they have played them or maybe tell me of something else that's good and I can get at EB. Thanks.

SC, me returning BCM, are you crazy? If I have a safedisk problem I will be bugging you untill you help me solve it and I can play. No way will that stop me, I have waited way too long for that.

The way I look at it,the end result is this safedisk causes more problems than it prevents.

Before you go telling me to go upgrade my computer you need to know what my computer is, so for your information: P3 533 MHz, 133bus 128 RDRam Voodoo 3 16mb (this will be upgraded) and HP CD-ROM So don't tell me that HP CD-ROMs are good because obviously they have some kind of problems with safedisk or it's the coding for safedisk or the game. So guess what happened to those 3 games. Well, 2 of them went back to the store. I just don't think that I should pay for the game, only to find out that this safedisk will not let me play it even though I have the legit copy right in my drive, it just makes me want to call the guy who's idea it was to incorporate this safedisk into the game and yell at him SO MUCH. What makes it even worse is that some guy would just download a program that lets you bypass safedisk, burn the game and play it with no problems whatsoever while I have to struggle with the legit copy, and I know that you can bypass safedisk very easily because I researched into that area after getting wronged like this. It would be the bottom of my day and probably feel like it for couple of months if I install BCM only to find out that safedisk logo and then my desktop staring at me again. Also, don't tell me that it's my system as when I visit the games forums for support I see majority of posts complaining about the same problem that I have with safedisk it's just ridiculous. My latest example is Europa Universalis. It's virtually unplayable out of the box, latest patch is v1.09 but I can't play 1.09 because of safedisk, that leaves me with v1.07 (out of the box). What do you think is going to happen to this game? I am taking it back to the store by the end of this week. I guess if they don't want my money (the legit customer) but rather have some hacker bypass safedisk, upgrade to v1.09 and play it without bugs and no problems then it's their choice.

The only thing I am worrying about is the safedisk. This damn program screws up many games. Personaly I have run into 3 games already where I had safedisk problems, went to the games forums and saw that they were flooded with safedisk problems, majority being people unable to start the game because safedisk logo would come on and then drop them to desktop. I just see it as a ridiculous and unneeded problem. Those who want to copy the game will get around it anyway and those who want to play it legit will just have problems starting the game with it. It's ridiculous.

Come on people, what are you all talking about. This game offers so much and you are focusing on some blood splatter or bodies being ripped apart. What have we come to.

"Perhaps a patch post-release allowing small amounts of blood, bullet holes in body, etc..." LOL, this is like saying, can I cut you? Come on, just a little bit. Oh, Come oooooon.

Yes, I have posted in their support forum. Got advices like defrag your hd, disable antivirus, programs in the background.. the usual. It's that damn 1.09 patch, screws up everything (safedisk), don't know why they even updated safedisk or whatever they did to it they shouldn't have.

This is insane, they have sent me a 1.08 patch. It helps but not really since the problems that I have are fixed in v1.09 patch. All I have to say is I am happy that SC is making BCM and not some other company.

Ok, finally, got an e-mail from them today. They sent me a file what looks like from v1.08 update. Well, at least I can play the game now.

Try playing Fantasia scenario. After about 150 to 200 years there will be this continuous noise so it will be just impossible to play any further. Then there's about 25 other bugs that apply to other scenarios. v1.08 patch fixed those, but then it either created new ones or just didn't fix all of them because v1.09 fixes about 30 more bugs. So from v1.07c (what I have, from the original cd) to v1.09 there's a total of about 50 bugs. If you can play with them then that's great. I run into those bugs and it makes it just impossible to play and ruins the whole point of the game which is strategy, and them refusing to help me by ignoring my e-mails or posts is just making it worse. And making a patch (v1.09) so that it screws something up with the safedisk is just stupid, (and it obviously has something to do with protection program because the safedisk logo after the patch looks a little bit different and it just prevents the game from starting).

I recently bought Europa Universalis. So after installing and playing the game for about half hour I found out that it's just impossible since it's full of bugs (release version 1.07c). Well, I went on the internet and downloaded the appropriate patch for North America version and guess what? After installing the patch all I get is a safedisk logo and then my desktop (great, instead of fixing problems the patch just won't let me even start the game altogether). Next thing is I e-mail their support and tell them the problem. A day later I get an e-mail stating that I should upgrade my CD-ROM drives, disable the antivirus program and turn off all the junk in the background. I did all of those things and well, it didn't help. So I E-mailed them again. What did I get in response, NOTHING. I went to the Europa Universalis forum, posted my problem there. E-mailed their support one more time. What did I get then? NOTHING. So they are just flat out ignoring me now. Final words. This game is going back to the store. Also, EVERYONE who even asks or starts complaining why BCM is taking so long should be banned immediately. SC is trying to make this game bug free, and supports it's the most precious thing in his life and some jerk comes around and starts talking about why the game is not out yet and ect... Well, I got this to say, go buy Europa Universalis, play it, then try to update it and when you run into problems and get no support don't come here asking why it's taking so long or trying to trash SC's credibility. Long rant, but I am really upset. The least they can do is send me an e-mail saying "We apologize for putting out a game that is full of bugs and unplayable out of the box, and for making the patch that doesn't help at all, but we don't know how to fix your problem" instead of just ignoring me, and to think I was going to buy Empire of Ants. Never again will I buy a game with Strategy First logo on it, no matter how great it claims to be.

Fits my quote perfectly.