People are getting their refund requests denied now. Presumably Valve were being nice to the first few, but shut the door when a lot of people started asking.
The Xbox version does not have SecuROM. But, while certainly a factor, that does not account for all of these issues. I'm guessing the rest is down to insufficient testing on a variety of configurations.
And let's not forget that Chrismas is around the corner. It wouldn't be the first time a release was rushed to make a holiday season.
Personally the game fell off my radar when they confirmed they'd use SecuROM. Hopefully they'll release a non-restricted version in the future. Not to mention a bug fixed one.
I would like to point out that this version of SecuROM has some FADE type functionality in it. That makes it even more difficult to separate bugs caused by the restrictions software gone haywire from the actual game code.
Deciding to never buy titles with SecuROM and similar draconian schemes was the best decision I ever made I think. It saved me from the mediocrity that was Spore, and now from this bugfest.
I'm sorry. I should have specified "me and everybody I have ever known". I can't name a single person I have ever gone to school with that retained pointless trivia memorized for a test for significantly longer than was necessary to complete the test.
It's perfectly natural to archive memories you do not regularly access. The ones that remember "everything" are the exception, not the rule.
I never found having nearly photographic memory to be particularly necessary. I never saw the point of memorizing a lot of junk in school; I know how to read, I own the book, nobody could ever give me a single sane reason why it was worth spending days memorizing things for an exam. We all know it's gone again a few days later, but the book is still there.
I find the same applies to life in general. The important part is to be able to find solutions, and understand them when you do, not being able to recite every possible thing from memory.
If you remember "everything" without any effort, great! I don't. But, luckily, there doesn't seem to be much of a need.
Of course it is a threat to civil liberties. But since the US citizens seem to think this sort of thing is acceptable, who am I to butt in as a foreigner. I'm just glad I don't currently live in the US.
The performance drop I experienced was on High. That made Vhigh rather irrelevant since I had to drop to Medium in Vista to get it playable at all.
I read about the tweaks to get the DX10 effects in DX9 but never bothered with them myself. As long as the graphics aren't distractingly bad, it doesn't make much difference to my enjoyment of good game mechanics. Not that Crysis had much of that, but that's another discussion.
I don't see how you contradict anything I said, yet the way you respond seems to indicate you disagree with me.
1) I did not say DX10 was of general interest. I said it was of interest to me (only reason for that is the possibility of games at some point requiring it). Are you saying I don't know what I'm interested in?
2) I didn't say it hadn't been improved. I said *the last time I tested* it was complete crap compared to XP in the *one* game I tested it with.
Vista is barely slower than XP on hardware bought within the last 2 years. It was fairly slower on RTM for many reasons, but vastly improved drivers & some colossal patches have put that to bed now.
When did this event occur? Last I tested Vista performance on this machine was with Crysis. That would be close to a year after Vista release. I got half the FPS compared to in XP. Half.
Apart from DX10 there is nothing in Vista that interests me that can't already be gotten for XP via third party applications. So far there aren't exactly a huge amount of DX10-only games, and unless the performance issue mentioned above has indeed been sorted it would be a moot point either way.
Most people don't work 9 hrs (in many places it would be illegal), most people certainly do not suffer a four hour commute. And even fewer have no choice in the matter.
I stand by my original point. That there's little reason to claim a teen has vastly more spare time than an adult before you take into account optional activities.
The operative words there would be "take care of a child". Use condoms and that part doesn't happen; you'll have *tons* of free time. If you choose to have a kid, then you have chosen to spend most of your time on that project for the next decade or two, so you don't get to complain.
So, let's forget about kids for a second. Work? 8 hrs a day. Depending on commute, make it 9. Say 8 hours of sleep (not sure I know any adult that actually sleeps that much). You now have a whopping seven hours *a day* to do whatever you want/need.
Workdays are longer than my schooldays were, but there's no homework and I now have plenty of cash to fill the time off with whatever I want. I'll take my professional life over my educational one any day.
I agree with you on chastising parent though. Listing a bunch of optional recreational activities and then whining about not having any time to spare is patently absurd. He basically lists out his choices in life, then finishes with "and try to have a life?". If that life does not suit him, exchange some of those optional activities for something else and stop whining about it.
This looks fun, but not $50 fun. If I remember correctly, it only has 4 levels?
The selling point is in everything apart from the actual physical level being dynamic.
Those 4 levels spread out over 20 maps, so it could be relatively sizeable all in all.
I can see how I'll enjoy an hour of hectic zombiefest many times over a few months time. Which seems to justify the price. I haven't preordered yet but I suspect as the "pre-order only" demo date approaches I'll be sorely tempted.
The only time I write a check is to family members that can't be bothered with electronic transactions.
That illustrates it nicely. Reality here is the exact opposite. Electronic transaction is done in less time than digging out a checkbook would, and transfer is virtually instant. Punch in account number, amount, security token and you're done.
I suspect there's a lack of a centralized system in the US. If every bank would need to interface directly with every other bank to perform a transaction, I can see how it would be both costly and time consuming.
The US seems to be lagging way behind when it comes to technology in banking. I'm in my mid 30s and I've never had a checkbook. In the US that's still widely used, apparently. Some years back a friend of mine took a job for a few years in the US and got his pay literally via physical check. That's unheard of.
As far as security is concerned, I couldn't name a single bank that don't use tokens for online access, yet that too seems very common in the US.
I'm guessing you mixed it up with Left 4 Dead, which does offer both items as far as I've read (discount for sure, and it's a Valve game so I'd say pre-load is a given).
Considering the launch day woes of major titles that didn't pre-load, let's hope more get it/agree to it in the future. It's a lot easier for the content servers to survive customers getting a decryption key for the pre-load, than every customer trying to download the whole thing.
You are a caveman if your bank belongs in the stone age and you don't switch to another.
Any bank with an online solution worth using will have token based authentication per transaction. And those would be impervious to this attack.
I was shocked when I learned a lot of banks actually don't use such a system. It became apparent to me when a lot of people piped up about the World of Warcraft token based login by saying "now WoW has better security than my bank". What the... How are those banks permitted to handle money at all with such lax security routines?
Made even more fun if you kill the guy that puts the bounty on your head within a splitsecond of giving him the reason to dislike you. Somehow he manages to write and deliver the bounty during the split second between you saying "No" and blowing his head off.
It's still fun though. I'll give Fallout 3 a trial run and buy it if that info about avoiding securom is true.
All indications are that it is. Securom is protecting the launcher only, so you can install it by running setup directly, and the same goes for playing the game.
Steam version has no third party DRM, and it appears only the launcher is wrapped there as well.
Oh, my bad then. It's been a while since I played anything from Bethesda (last time might have been Terminator: Future Shock) so I didn't know this was to be expected from them. I guess Witcher went and spoiled me:(
You could always grab it on Steam. It was 10% off pre-release. Buy it early, download it overnight a night or two if you're on a slow connection, and play it at 12:01 AM release day without leaving your house.
Don't spread false information. Fallout 3 did not have a pre-order discount, and it did not pre-load.
For an RPG it has huge immersion breaking holes in it. You can shoot someone's bodyguard right in front of their eyes, strip their store of everything not nailed down, and they'll still greet you with "Oh, hi, you're the new guy! So nice to meet you!" less than a second later.
Save a guy's life? He'll be eternally grateful during the scripted conversation afterwards. Talk to him again immediately after the event ends and he might go "Speak punk, before I put a bullet in you".
It's almost as if Bethesda never made one of these games before. Or never thought of a concept like a state machine for the conversation/reaction trees. I find it quite baffling.
This thing is begging for an enhanced edition like Witcher got. I bet it won't get it though:(
I see a few stumbling blocks between Blu-ray and Linux being licensed to play it.
1. The distro would likely have to rewrite most of the driver architecture to support the required media path protection.
2. It would almost certainly have to go closed source.
Somehow I don't see that happening.
Personally, I'm not touching Blu-ray with a ten foot pole due to the DRM. DVDs were bad enough, but at least they would never tell me "sorry, I don't like your TV so I won't let you watch me". Once region free DVD players became the norm, I was ok with spending money on them. As for Blu-ray.. Until they are willing to sell me a product I feel comfortable buying, I'll enjoy HD content via mkv on my Tvix.
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People are getting their refund requests denied now. Presumably Valve were being nice to the first few, but shut the door when a lot of people started asking.
The Xbox version does not have SecuROM. But, while certainly a factor, that does not account for all of these issues. I'm guessing the rest is down to insufficient testing on a variety of configurations.
And let's not forget that Chrismas is around the corner. It wouldn't be the first time a release was rushed to make a holiday season.
Personally the game fell off my radar when they confirmed they'd use SecuROM. Hopefully they'll release a non-restricted version in the future. Not to mention a bug fixed one.
I would like to point out that this version of SecuROM has some FADE type functionality in it. That makes it even more difficult to separate bugs caused by the restrictions software gone haywire from the actual game code.
Deciding to never buy titles with SecuROM and similar draconian schemes was the best decision I ever made I think. It saved me from the mediocrity that was Spore, and now from this bugfest.
I did. They do. I'm clearly missing your pun. Mind clarifying it for me?
I'm sorry. I should have specified "me and everybody I have ever known". I can't name a single person I have ever gone to school with that retained pointless trivia memorized for a test for significantly longer than was necessary to complete the test.
It's perfectly natural to archive memories you do not regularly access. The ones that remember "everything" are the exception, not the rule.
I never found having nearly photographic memory to be particularly necessary. I never saw the point of memorizing a lot of junk in school; I know how to read, I own the book, nobody could ever give me a single sane reason why it was worth spending days memorizing things for an exam. We all know it's gone again a few days later, but the book is still there.
I find the same applies to life in general. The important part is to be able to find solutions, and understand them when you do, not being able to recite every possible thing from memory.
If you remember "everything" without any effort, great! I don't. But, luckily, there doesn't seem to be much of a need.
Of course it is a threat to civil liberties. But since the US citizens seem to think this sort of thing is acceptable, who am I to butt in as a foreigner. I'm just glad I don't currently live in the US.
Picking out 160.000 people at random, or based on a border guard's hunch would likely have gotten as many hits.
Sounds like a waste of money to me.
The performance drop I experienced was on High. That made Vhigh rather irrelevant since I had to drop to Medium in Vista to get it playable at all.
I read about the tweaks to get the DX10 effects in DX9 but never bothered with them myself. As long as the graphics aren't distractingly bad, it doesn't make much difference to my enjoyment of good game mechanics. Not that Crysis had much of that, but that's another discussion.
I don't see how you contradict anything I said, yet the way you respond seems to indicate you disagree with me.
1) I did not say DX10 was of general interest. I said it was of interest to me (only reason for that is the possibility of games at some point requiring it). Are you saying I don't know what I'm interested in?
2) I didn't say it hadn't been improved. I said *the last time I tested* it was complete crap compared to XP in the *one* game I tested it with.
I did not say anything about hating Vista.
Vista is barely slower than XP on hardware bought within the last 2 years. It was fairly slower on RTM for many reasons, but vastly improved drivers & some colossal patches have put that to bed now.
When did this event occur? Last I tested Vista performance on this machine was with Crysis. That would be close to a year after Vista release. I got half the FPS compared to in XP. Half.
Apart from DX10 there is nothing in Vista that interests me that can't already be gotten for XP via third party applications. So far there aren't exactly a huge amount of DX10-only games, and unless the performance issue mentioned above has indeed been sorted it would be a moot point either way.
You are not the norm.
Most people don't work 9 hrs (in many places it would be illegal), most people certainly do not suffer a four hour commute. And even fewer have no choice in the matter.
I stand by my original point. That there's little reason to claim a teen has vastly more spare time than an adult before you take into account optional activities.
The operative words there would be "take care of a child". Use condoms and that part doesn't happen; you'll have *tons* of free time. If you choose to have a kid, then you have chosen to spend most of your time on that project for the next decade or two, so you don't get to complain.
So, let's forget about kids for a second. Work? 8 hrs a day. Depending on commute, make it 9. Say 8 hours of sleep (not sure I know any adult that actually sleeps that much). You now have a whopping seven hours *a day* to do whatever you want/need.
Workdays are longer than my schooldays were, but there's no homework and I now have plenty of cash to fill the time off with whatever I want. I'll take my professional life over my educational one any day.
I agree with you on chastising parent though. Listing a bunch of optional recreational activities and then whining about not having any time to spare is patently absurd. He basically lists out his choices in life, then finishes with "and try to have a life?". If that life does not suit him, exchange some of those optional activities for something else and stop whining about it.
Pre-orders get access to the demo a few days earlier is all.
This looks fun, but not $50 fun. If I remember correctly, it only has 4 levels?
The selling point is in everything apart from the actual physical level being dynamic.
Those 4 levels spread out over 20 maps, so it could be relatively sizeable all in all.
I can see how I'll enjoy an hour of hectic zombiefest many times over a few months time. Which seems to justify the price. I haven't preordered yet but I suspect as the "pre-order only" demo date approaches I'll be sorely tempted.
The only time I write a check is to family members that can't be bothered with electronic transactions.
That illustrates it nicely. Reality here is the exact opposite. Electronic transaction is done in less time than digging out a checkbook would, and transfer is virtually instant. Punch in account number, amount, security token and you're done.
I suspect there's a lack of a centralized system in the US. If every bank would need to interface directly with every other bank to perform a transaction, I can see how it would be both costly and time consuming.
why don't our banks employ such a system?
The US seems to be lagging way behind when it comes to technology in banking. I'm in my mid 30s and I've never had a checkbook. In the US that's still widely used, apparently. Some years back a friend of mine took a job for a few years in the US and got his pay literally via physical check. That's unheard of.
As far as security is concerned, I couldn't name a single bank that don't use tokens for online access, yet that too seems very common in the US.
I'm guessing you mixed it up with Left 4 Dead, which does offer both items as far as I've read (discount for sure, and it's a Valve game so I'd say pre-load is a given).
Considering the launch day woes of major titles that didn't pre-load, let's hope more get it/agree to it in the future. It's a lot easier for the content servers to survive customers getting a decryption key for the pre-load, than every customer trying to download the whole thing.
You are a caveman if your bank belongs in the stone age and you don't switch to another.
Any bank with an online solution worth using will have token based authentication per transaction. And those would be impervious to this attack.
I was shocked when I learned a lot of banks actually don't use such a system. It became apparent to me when a lot of people piped up about the World of Warcraft token based login by saying "now WoW has better security than my bank". What the... How are those banks permitted to handle money at all with such lax security routines?
and there's a bounty on your head.
Made even more fun if you kill the guy that puts the bounty on your head within a splitsecond of giving him the reason to dislike you. Somehow he manages to write and deliver the bounty during the split second between you saying "No" and blowing his head off.
It's still fun though. I'll give Fallout 3 a trial run and buy it if that info about avoiding securom is true.
All indications are that it is. Securom is protecting the launcher only, so you can install it by running setup directly, and the same goes for playing the game.
Steam version has no third party DRM, and it appears only the launcher is wrapped there as well.
Heh. Actually, Bethesda did make quite a few games before.
That was precisely my point (ie, they have no excuse).
Oh, my bad then. It's been a while since I played anything from Bethesda (last time might have been Terminator: Future Shock) so I didn't know this was to be expected from them. I guess Witcher went and spoiled me :(
You could always grab it on Steam. It was 10% off pre-release. Buy it early, download it overnight a night or two if you're on a slow connection, and play it at 12:01 AM release day without leaving your house.
Don't spread false information. Fallout 3 did not have a pre-order discount, and it did not pre-load.
should be, why didn't they finish the game?
For an RPG it has huge immersion breaking holes in it. You can shoot someone's bodyguard right in front of their eyes, strip their store of everything not nailed down, and they'll still greet you with "Oh, hi, you're the new guy! So nice to meet you!" less than a second later.
Save a guy's life? He'll be eternally grateful during the scripted conversation afterwards. Talk to him again immediately after the event ends and he might go "Speak punk, before I put a bullet in you".
It's almost as if Bethesda never made one of these games before. Or never thought of a concept like a state machine for the conversation/reaction trees. I find it quite baffling.
This thing is begging for an enhanced edition like Witcher got. I bet it won't get it though :(
I see a few stumbling blocks between Blu-ray and Linux being licensed to play it.
1. The distro would likely have to rewrite most of the driver architecture to support the required media path protection.
2. It would almost certainly have to go closed source.
Somehow I don't see that happening.
Personally, I'm not touching Blu-ray with a ten foot pole due to the DRM. DVDs were bad enough, but at least they would never tell me "sorry, I don't like your TV so I won't let you watch me". Once region free DVD players became the norm, I was ok with spending money on them. As for Blu-ray.. Until they are willing to sell me a product I feel comfortable buying, I'll enjoy HD content via mkv on my Tvix.