Email from Infogrames here!!

Hello,

I'm afraid that at the moment we are experiencing an unusual amount of crashing and slowdown issues with the new GP game. Unfortunately though, whilst we do need and expect a patch i can't yet confirm when it will be released

james muir
Infogrames UK Helpline
21 Castle Street
Castlefield
Manchester
M3 4SW

Tel: 0161 827 8060


(erm, crashing and slow down issues, is that all?...don't think so do you!)

what do you expect?

"Sorry, our games was released too early as a test beta and it severely sucks - please refrain from buying it. Play F1 2002 in the meantime until we can deliver a patch"

I think that this mail is a good sign, a very good one indeed. It is a response, some sort of a "first contact". This, however, involves a certain amount of diplomacy. The first thing you'd say to an space-faring alien at the first contact, is certainly not going to be 'Man, you are a pig ugly'. Now it pays that we chose to go on in a more systematic spot-the-bug-and-document-it-well manner.

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REHAB IS FOR QUITTERS

G'day all...

I too agree this is a very positive thing. I sincerely thought ur subject line was a joke, but i was happily proven wrong

I think with the number of bugs in the game the patch might come sooner than later. Or maybe we'll have 2 patches rather than the 1 like with GP3

My ass. How can they say that at the moment they are "experiencing an unusual amount of crashing and slowdown issues with the new GP game".

That's bullsh!t. They must have known when it was released that they were having these problems.

Still, good work canveyboy.

At least now we have a contact name.

Sign our thread for a petition against the release of a beta version on a separate thread please.

hi vader,

yeah sure, thats not what i expected them to say, but u know how we all feel, just majorly let down. lets all pray that the patch arrives soon!!!

canveyboy.

Here is another email re crashing when game starts with black screen and drop back to desktop, verbally I was told "We cannot test the game on all platforms before we ship." - I have PIII 1.0GHz and GEForce3 - VERY RARE SETUP - NOT !!! :

This is an issue we have encountered a few times already with the new release of Grand Prix 4. We suspect it may be related to the copy protection measures utilised on the game CD and the firmware drivers used on some makes of CD/DVD-Rom Drives.


We are currently working on a viable solution to the problem. We are gathering system information to pinpoint possible hardware conflicts with GP4, obviously the more information we receive the easier it will be to resolve problems.


With this in mind, If you could send us brief description of the issue and some PC specifications we will endeavour to provide the fix as quickly as possible



For the necessary PC info. please do the following:



Click Start
Click Run
Type "msinfo32" in the open section
When the System Information window opens click on File
Click Export
Choose to save the information to your Desktop
In File Name type "GP4msinfo"
Click Save


This will save a text file to your desk top. Please then attach this text document to this e-mail or forward it on to support@uk.infogrames.com



james muir
Infogrames UK Helpline
21 Castle Street
Castlefield
Manchester
M3 4SW

Tel: 0161 827 8060

for additional support try our website

PIII 1.0GHz Abit SA6-R MSI GEForce3 512MB SBLive5.1 Win98SE/XPPRO dual boot Mirrored IBM 7200rpm UDMA100 disks Guillemot Ferrari FF Wheel

Quote: "We suspect it may be related to the copy protection measures utilised on the game CD and the firmware drivers used on some makes of CD/DVD-Rom Drives. "


Sounds very reasonable since GP4 uses SafeDisc. And SafeDisc is famous for being very hard on certain CD/CD-R/DVD drives. I would advise people to use the Decrypted No-CD patch that can be found here:

<www.grandprixgames.org>

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It's only after we've lost everything, that we are free to do anything.

Ive had many of problems with SafeDisk. Its stupid also becuase its probably the one thats the easiest to crack (possibly)

I had this problem with black screen and game refusing to load and spent about 8 hours frigging with it. Infogrammes were no help at all - they said wait an unknown amount of time for a patch !

IT IS NOT SAFEDISC related. It is video related.

1) The safedisc check completes and the Safedisc logo goes away.

2) Then a black box goes to top left with approx 80% of screen blacked out. Then res changes and screen blacks out 100% then res changes back and game exits to normal correct resolution desktop.

3) "Nocd" decrypt patch fails exactly the same way.

THE FIX for me was uninstall again (for like the 10th time !!!)
Then FULL install (not Minimal without videos) and now it loads every time.

Then like everybody else I spent 2 hours setting up the options with yet more black screens and restart failures (fixed by restoring f1gstate.bak over f1gstat.sav) Then there was the lockups needing power off/on and menus flashing and scrolling after calibrating Guillemot Ferrari Wheel (fixed by going into menu options and exiting again)



PIII 1.0GHz Abit SA6-R MSI GEForce3 512MB SBLive5.1 Win98SE/XPPRO dual boot Mirrored IBM 7200rpm UDMA100 disks Guillemot Ferrari FF Wheel