I got Morrowind going last night ...

[Walt]

but only just.

I had to set screen resolution to 640*480 and throttle back sound hardware acceleration to "basic" to get through this one scene (the census office) that my machine kept crashing on.

Got through, saved the game, exited, put the screen back to 1024*768, rebooted, loaded saved game, and it works ...

BUT ... still getting either BSOD, or CTD (crash to desktop) every 5-10 mins of game-time.

My, this really is a very sensitive game. They're going to have to release some serious patches to make it more stable. For sure, my machine is not operating 100% rock solid right now, but I've never played a game that has been so sensitive to hardware/driver settings before.

I wouldn't recommend it unless they patch it in a more thorough way.

Stick with Warcraft3 ...

:)

[GeniX]

Stick with Warcraft3 ...

aye aye cap'n!

[Walt]

GeniX ...

You didn't reply to my question in the othe thread ...

Are games going thru shorter beta testing periods these days due to competitive pressures to get the game out in the market? You know, "just get it out, and if there are any problems, we'll just patch it" ...

Grrrrr :rant:

[THOR]

Better idea if you really wanna play games stick to 98 or ME hell even 2000 but don't use XP. I know so many gamers who put XP on and then had to take it off because of BSODs or games wouldn't run or they ran wayyyy slower. XP is a nice stable, secure OS for normal PC use but it blows for gaming.

[Walt]

Yes well I can just make my main machine dual bootable with Win98 ...

But I still maintain that some of these games are prety poorly beta-tested ...

[GeniX]

XP has been brilliant for me! no issues yet...

[Walt]

GeniX,

and your comments on beta testing?

[GeniX]

I replied in that other thread... I think the one with Warcraft3.

Yeah I agree - beta testing can be a little slack. And even with issues showing up in beta testing, a publisher will usually still decide to ship for a particular release date (like before x-mas to get the rush).

Gamers need to take a stand against all this! Seriously! Publishers only listen to *ONE* thing.. SALES!

[THOR]

If developers wait to test it on everything before releasing it the game will be old news, with everything changing so fast in the computer world they will never be able to be sure every game will work on every CPU, RAM, VID CARD, OS system out there and they can only cover as many bases as financially feasible before they release it. How many times have you played a game or read a review that said "woulda been a great game if was released last year"

[GeniX]

Too true, THOR.

Beta testing is not a quick thing. Its not like the game is played for an afternoon, an issue identified and the coders are fixing it the next day. Firstly there are many more 'channels' involved and so delays between bugs being found and reported to the coders can sometimes be measured in weeks (in bad cases). That is unless the beta testing is done in-house, but Im talking here of the publisher having their own beta testing team outside of the developer they are funding.

The worst bugs are often difficult to duplicate. Things like 'sometimes if I have just won a fight, and the next unit I click on is a peasant, the textures get a little messy'. One tends to find that 'sometimes' bugs are 'never' on the development machines and 'sometimes' reproduceable on the beta testers machine.

If a bug could be consistently reproduced, it would be SO much easier.