..::Final Thought::..

Arite everyone listen up. This is not a random flame to criticize EA for producing many unsatisfied customers, however, it is imperative to emphasize the frustration and "severe" stress this game is causing. I for one, have this "jerkiness" with the game with a high end system. I have seriously attempted almost every possible solutions presented by multiple forums, and none have worked for me. Time, money(new RAM, and SCTB sound card), and efforts have been spent in vain and Im left to ponder whether I have a reason to be mad with EA. Surely, there arent many games that causes so much problems in so many different systems but at the same time have such a high demand. This is clearly a huge mistake, and it will become even a bigger issue if this problem is left unanswered. Those that have gotten the game to work, you are very fortunate. However, know that there still are many who are eager to play the way it was supposed to be played. Any comments?

[Cpl. Reynolds]

Originally Posted by MachoDcho

Those that have gotten the game to work, you are very fortunate. However, know that there still are many who are eager to play the way it was supposed to be played. Any comments?

My feeling is that the majority of folks who purchased the game have gotten the game to work and gotten it to work well. Certainly you see alot of posts asking for help, but of COURSE you should expect that. People with problems are going to post alot for advice. People with no issues are not going to post. That is a fact with any game or any piece of software as any helpdesk individual can tell you.

This is a game that requires high end hardware and software, and that makes it difficult to say it if will work on any particular computer or not. Someone might think because they have a P4 2 ghz system with 512 mg of RAM and a GeForce 2 mx card it should work fine, but the hardware could be crappy, their system could be overloaded with software, they might have .dll conflicts that screw things up, the video card might be junk, etc. PC's aren't all the same, there are thousands and thousands of hardware and software combinations that can screw things up. Folks can recommend general troubleshooting ideas, but that doesn't mean that all of them or any of them will work.

I do NOT have a high end system. I have an older AMD Athlon 950 with 256 mg of DDR Ram, and I started out with a Radeon 7200 video card (I did just get a new one for the heck of it, not because I really needed it to run the game). And the ONLY problem I had was the 'chipmunk' effect on my AC97 onboard sound, a known problem since the demo's came out that was cleared up by installing the latest drivers. In fact, most of the 'buggyness' about the game people mention are cleared up by installing the latest drivers or getting the proper hardware, or cleaning up their own systems (defragging, unloading programs that are taking up too much space, setting up virtual memory correctly, and so on). They aren't bugs, they are simply the high demands that this game - and more games to follow - require to work right. Software marches on and this game is no different then many previous ones that put a high demand on users to upgrade or fall behind.

I suggest that when folks have a problem they should do the following to get the best possible results from folks here:

1) State your problem in detail. If your system is crashing when you're loading a specific map, say it is, don't just say "it crashes." Say "it runs fine until I try to load Tobruk, then the program crashes back to desktop with no error message, and my desktop resolution is set differently."

2) List your system in detail. "I have a p4 2 ghz with a Geforce 2mx card" isn't detailed enough. "I have a p4 2ghz on an Asus model XXXX motherboard running 256 mg of SDRAM, 2 40 gig 7200 rpm hard drives, a chaintech GeForce 2mx card with 64 mg of DDR, and the game is running on Windows 2000 Pro, with the latest service patches installed" is much more informative.

3) Make sure you have ALL the latest drivers for your system BEFORE posting about problems. Sound card, video card, monitor drivers, etc., flash BIOS updates if they are provided, DirectX 8.1, and so forth.

4) And for goodness sake, contact EA and Dice as well as post here! If they aren't hearing about these things, then they can't help come up with some ideas on how to fix them. I'm not a programmer, I can't do proper debugging to determine why a copy of the game may be crashing all the time, but EA can. Yes, I hear their customer service isn't great, but it's better then nothing.

I know exactly what you mean. But my system IS indeed a great computer. I mean, how often do we have a computer game that causes THIS MUCH frustration and stress when I have a computer considered "powerful" and which also runs all the other popular games on highest resolutions? My spec & problem in detail is:

athlon xp 1700, KR7A-133 motherboard, 256DDR RAM(it was 512 but didnt do a thing so i returned it and got SCTB sound card), BIGGG HD, Gforce4 MX 440(what a load of crap this is) and WIN XP.

Ok.. the demo of this game worked wonderfully and that is why i freakin got this game!! My jerkiness seems to go away when im standing still, but as soon as i look around quickly, or strafe(kix up dirt), it lags badly to a point where I wanna see how far I can throw my entire computer out the window. I have tried BIOS settings, DXDIAG settings, DETONATOR settings, Defragment, in-game settings, YOU NAME IT!!!! Not a single one of them was my solution!!! Isnt that incredible or wut. But then to my amazement, it works well when Sound is DISABLED.. I originally had sound blaster LIVE! and i completely wiped that outta my comp, and bought a nice brand new Santa Cruz card.. It didnt do a single least unit of change. Did anyone else have it as bad as ME???? I swear Ive tried everything to get this game going, but I have not had a single luck.. NOW this is what I mean when I say "frustration."

[Cpl. Reynolds]

Originally Posted by MachoDcho

But then to my amazement, it works well when Sound is DISABLED.. I originally had sound blaster LIVE! and i completely wiped that outta my comp, and bought a nice brand new Santa Cruz card.. It didnt do a single least unit of change. Did anyone else have it as bad as ME???? I swear Ive tried everything to get this game going, but I have not had a single luck.. NOW this is what I mean when I say "frustration."

I'm not trying to belittle your experience. There are plenty of other folks who have issues they can't seem to resolve, and this happens with every piece of software.

Obviously you've narrowed it down to sound. And you DO have it going, just not with the sound running. If you've "tried everything" then I guess you probably bumped the sound down within the game from 44 to 22 to 11 to see if any of those worked. My next suggestion would be to completely reinstall DirectX 8.1 to see if the sound card starts working properly. Also make sure you have the very latest sound card drivers. Just because you bought it new doesn't mean the drivers in the box were new, it could have been sitting on a shelf for a month or two, and when it was packaged the most current drivers might have been several months old already.

So... install most recent sound card drivers, then reinstall DirectX 8.1. See what happens.

Obviously it would be more helpful if I could sit down at your system and look at things, but I can't. I know this is frustrating you, but hopefully someone here with a similar setup can help you out more directly then my suggestions.

[KrazyKevin]

Capt Reynolds, I know what your saying. There are many people who have got this game to work with a lil tweaking here and there, and there is some who has not had problems from the get go. But, like stated above, my machine is an Athlon XP 1900+ with 512M of DDR memory, and a 7200 rpm 40 gig hard drive. My machine runs every game made to date, smoothly, with all settings turned up, with out a single problem ever. This includes Quake III, II, I, every EA sports game since 98, Nascar Racing 2002, and Nascar 4, Falcon 4, IL-2, Ghost Recon, Rogue Spear, Rainbow Six, Medal of Honor, Wolfenstein, Counter Strike, Dungeon Seige, and Operation Flash point to just name a "few". Like I said, I have never ever had any problem with any of those games. And while surfing around the forums of those games, I have never seen so many people who cant get a game to work. I know how your thinking, but I know it isn't my machine. Some of these folks probably do have something wrong with there system. But, I, with a fact, no that my machine isn't the problem. You shouldn't have to defrag your hd to get a game to work. There is a problem with this game, and until there is a patch that fixes it, people will still be having these problems.

[Dr. Boom]

I have a AMD 1.7G 256mb ram, ATI RADION 8500, onboard sound. My game ran really bad until I disabled my antivirus while playing the game. As soon as I did that, I was able to crank up all of the video settings. I still use the 22hz setting on my sound card. I guess give the antivirus thing a try if you have not already.

[Cpl. Reynolds]

Originally Posted by KrazyKevin

But, I, with a fact, no that my machine isn't the problem. You shouldn't have to defrag your hd to get a game to work.

Believe me or not, that's up to you, but I've been doing this for 10 years and have a pretty strong clue what I'm talking about. I'm MCSE and CCNA certified and working on my bachelors in CIS. I'm not going to say outright there are not game issues - perhaps with Athlon XP's or Windows XP - that may be the root cause of these problems, but until you go through all the troubleshooting steps to make sure it's NOT your computer, you can't say it isn't for sure.

[Hustler]

I very much understand the frustration that's why I'm trying to give back to the ones who need help still also. My feeling is the game is definitely not finished and will require updates/patches like any other game. The game wasn't in a finished state to be put on shelves without addresses a few issues to the public. The amount of tweaking I had to do in my BIOS shouldn't have been necessary but it became unfortunately.

You shouldn't have to disable Antivirus, you shouldn't have to defrag, but these are things you should be doing anytime you play a high performance game. The difference is those of you who choose not to defrag and have one f#@#$cked up drive are playing ALL of the games loaded on your computer at a slower pace than your machine is capable of.

I never would have known about the shitty AGP implementation VIA undertook had it not been for this game. It boils down to politics at EA, nowadays game developers are on fast paced target dates for releases because of the immense number of games being produced nowadays. EA made a bad move and they have lost sales from people who have taken their games back. Hopefully they are fixing these issues so that the game can stay on track.

MachoDcho, You need to look at every aspect of your system for possible solutions. Its not going to be black and white, changing cards, adding more ram etc. At this point I would start looking at basics. Obviously with two totally different sound cards that are rumored to be compatible not working I would look at possible an IRQ conflict within your system related to the sound card and another device.

I troubleshoot computer problems all day being a system/network administrator myself and I found this game's ability to reveal all kinds of problems very frustrating. You are seriously goona have to know your system inside and out. You will have to slowly take out possible culpret cards and features of the equation to find the answer. Do any of your other games show the signs you are getting? You may be wasting your time waiting for someone in here to find your answer. If you have purchased the game call EA, they have your money at this point, give em hell. If you have the Demo then you are stuck with us and our volunteered advice.

I will say outright there are loads of game issues. Issues within the game itself and issues with hardware compatability. Their implementation for AMD/VIA support is lacking big time. It takes too much tweaking on the userend to get their game to work. Not every Joe even knows what a BIOS is let alone being capable of modifying it. But I also take it in stride knowing Dice was obviously put in a corner to release for EA. Let the Dice Developers try to fix what they were probably working on before EA told them to shutup and ship it. We will get patches but I think the voices need to call EA, not post on forums which I finally have realized they don't read. Hopefully EA learns from its mistake. I love their sports line of games and this game will rock once issues have been addressed.

[KrazyKevin]

Well, I'm sorry I disagree with you Cpl. Reynolds. But, it shouldn't take a CNA or some being Bill Gates to get this to run. Yes, I agree those are some good troubleshooting ideas to try. But, honestly, defragging has never helped me any. If you have proper system specs, I don't think any amount of fragmentation could cause this kinda problem. My only point is this and I'm sorry for repeating this in all my posts: If I have purchased 30 or so games, and all of them, I telling you every single one of them have worked perfectly out of the box, and this one, BF1942 is the only one giving me problems, then it is not my computer. If I have to turn down hardware accel in sound or video, its the game problem, not my computer. If I have to disable sound, its the game. If I have to turn off firewall or antivirus, its the game. If I have to install "OLDER" drivers to get it to work, its the game. All these things people are saying to do are fixes for some, but the game is still broke. Cause half the time you make all th ese changes, then the next time you want to play another game, now you have to change all this sh*t back. Its all Bullsh*t. Everything on my computer and everything I have ever bought in the last 2 to 3yrs works fine. I'M TELLING YOU, ITS NOT MY COMPUTER. EA NEEDS TO FIX THEIR GAME.

[Foxtrot]

Cpl. Reynolds, I dont understand why you defend this game so much. I like it alot myself, its a great game, its just full of bugs, admit it! I have never seen a game release cause a stir like this. Not this many problems that have such a difficult time being solved. This is inexscusable. It is shoddy programing obviously.
I have barely played the game in the last few days because of the choppiness and lag. Also the poor aiming system, you put your crosshairs on a guy standing dead still and it doesnt even touch him, several times!!! I have tried so many different possible solutions with only one or two of them even remotly helping, but not fixing the problem. Those were d/l new sound drivers and fooling with in-game configuration. I will not defend this game on the issue of how badly it runs because doing so would be defending the publishers and programmers who had to release a PATCH ON THE DAY OF RELEASE that alone should tell you something. I myself am fed up and am waiting for a patch. If that doesnt come or doesnt fix it then this game is going to be used as a trade in on another new title that actually works. Great if the game works for you, but Reynolds do not defend this game you will incur the wrath of those who are fucked over!!!!!

[Pred@tor]

Yes like alot of the people (most of them) I can't run battlefield 1942 smoothly and I think that it is wrong that so many people will be updating their PCs just so they can play this game smoother because look at Unreal tornement the graphics on that are fantastic yet it can run on nearly any PC i think u are just trying to kid yourself I mean I love the game but i hate the high specs needed it isn't that this game has graphics that are so brillant that everyone needs to update thier PC it is that the developers or EA have badly designed the game

I totally agree with Kevin. THAT was my point. My computer might not have been suited for this high and mighty king of all games BeeF1942, but it really should be that THIS game should have been SUITED TO MY COMPUTER. What if a complete newbie of PCs purchased this game, and found out this game isn't working, but it sure as hell loox fun! I mean, its ridiculous really. If it was a small tweakin that might have fixed the problem, its totally fine, but solving this one is out the scope of my knowledge on PCs. I do not think every PC owner knows about their hardwares inside and out, and as the game developer you have to assume that. But unfortunately, I REALLY like the game, and I WANT DESPERATELY to get it to work...

[Red MEat]

So every game to date that you have played or purchased have not had issues or problems? Please list the last 10 games and I can point you to forums and other public message boards that will say otherwise. NO and I mean NO company can test against every conceivable combination of hardware and software installations you do your best and fix problems that come up later. A couple of weeks before the release of this game people were pissing their pants because of rumors that there was a delay… my GOD people you want you cake and eat it too!!! You bitch about a publisher if they delay a game due to problems and then if they do release a game with a few problems you just their case on it.

Please will one of you mental midgets please point to a current game (released in the past 6 -8 months) that was bug free? I DARE YOU!!!! But hey I’ll be going home tonight and playing the game smoothly online and the only worry I will have is if I can get on a server that is beefy enough to run it with a free slot… I really want to bitch slap the idiots that set up a BF server running 128mb ram and a Celeron CPU via ADSL… “Ohhh looky I’m running a game server” there should be a 200 random answer test about networking and system configuration one must take before the installation programs will allow the person to install the server side portion of games.

Boy that felt good to vent.

PS. The less of you morons playing the better for the ones that love the game.. return the game or trade it and buy a console system.

In the immortal words of Dennis Leary

“life’s a bitch… get a helmet”


-Red MEat-

[Foxtrot]

That was a rather ignorant comment Red Meat, seriously man. No game is bug free, but how many are this bug ridden. I would have been more than happy to wait longer for a game that ran decently and didnt have to be patched on the first day of release.

Simply put, this game is the first in my eleven years of PC gaming that would run so poorly on a high end machine and run great on a low end machine.

I can't think of another title I have ever bought that has resulted in the level of hardware lag I see in this title. Hardware lag is not based on CPU or Video specificaly. but more on resource conflicts. As ambitious as it is, it is technicaly flawed on various levels. Optimization and QA testing appears to be two areas.
Ok, I have 8 machines running from Duron 800 with G2 32MB 384MB PC100 SBLive and up to Dual AMD 1.4 G3 64MB 1Gig SBLive. I decided to see if I could find why there was such a high rate of problems. After allot of tweaking, each machine is capable of maintaining solid frame rates and is stable. This is not the kind of tweaking your average computer buyer is able to do.

Having seen all the variables that can vary from machine to machine, a slower machine really can end up having smoother performance. This includes making BIOS and OS tweaks as well as installing older drivers. In some cases there is little rhyme or reason as to why one is better than the other.

To close, the game produces nemerous .con files that detail sound and video and other performance tweaks not mentioned in the game menus. Experimenting with these can help (Only after backing up your originals).
So upgrading is not the best answer. It could actualy cause more headaches.

best of luck and hopes that Dice can release the patches needed to allow people to play the game on capable hardware.


richcz3

[Hustler]

I agree with you meat on the server issue. It seems like any jackass with a dsl or cable connection thinks their pile of shit upload rate is capable of sustaining more than 4 players. Last night I joined a server and as soon as 6 people joined it lagged like hell. Stupid ass NEWBS! God its dumbshits like this who are making people think the game is more fucked up than it is. Morons I swear. To top it off the guy was hosting it while playing. Atleast 2/3 of the servers in the list are dumbshits who are running a server and playing it on the same computer. Get a clue you morons! Then you have all these people bitching about lag etc. I'm sorry for the rant but EA failed again by not informing all these ONLINE NEWBS about bandwidth requirements. Grrrr. All the dedicated servers are packed and half of those are run on peoples dsl/cable lines GRRRRRRRRRR! Looks like I'm just goona have to run a server on our T1 at work tonight. I can't get on servers because they are all full or allow more players than their bandwidth allows making the game suck.

Thanx for calling me an idiot RedMeat you fuckin idiot. Just because it runs fine on your machine doesnt make this game a great purchase ignoramus. There are LOT more people who have probs with this game due to their lack of knowledge on tweakin this and that. Other games have bugs too, but they arent as nearly as bad as this one. Im saying, so far, all the games HAVE worked with few bugs but very satisfyingly. On this game, it was unplayable straight outta the box.. I mean, THATS messed up man..

[KrazyKevin]

Ok, here it goes Dog Meat:

1. Medal of Honor - graphics kicks bf1942's ass, no lag, no probs, 1 patch I think

2. Return to Castle Wolfenstein - Same as above, no probs, maybe 1 patch

3. Madden NFL 2003 - runs great outta the box, no patches, no probs

4. Nascar 2002 - great game, maybe one patch, no probs whatsoever

5. Rogue Spear - in its prime, none better, I think one maybe 2 patches, ran fine on my machine, worked great outta the box, patches were for minor glitches

6. Ghost Recon - favorite game, graphics rock, 1 patch, ran great outta the box, patches fixes cheats, etc, runs fine

7. IL-2 - fantastic game, works great, think theres 1 patch, ran outta box no probs at all.

8. Quake III - awesome game. ran fine outta the box. there are patches, don't know what they fix. My machine ran fine.

9. Dungeon Seige - another great game. They just released a patch about a month ago maybe. I've never had any problem whatsoever. Don't know what the patch was for.

10. Operation Flashpoint - another good game. FEw patches are now, none fixed anything major, ran fine out of the box on my machine.

11. Rainbox Six - the game that started it all, never had any problems with this game.

12. Sub Command - I think theres one patch for this one. Game kicks my ass so I don't play it much, steep learning curve for me. Worked out of the box

13. Half Life - many patches I think, none fixed major probs. Worked out of the box.

14. Nascar Racing 4 - loved the game. Worked out of the box. Maybe 2 patches. No problems.

Flip Side

1. BF1942.- fun game. Don't run out of the box. 1 patch out on release day. cant play single or mulitplayer without crashing to desktop after 10 minutes.

There is 14 games, that me, myself purchased, installed on my machine. Clicked the icon, and they worked. No turning off FSAA, turning down hardware accel, hotwiring my sound card, disabling sound, putting on old video drivers, and not defragging. Yes, I know somewhere out there, there were people who had problems with these games. Yes, and I mentioned, just about all of these games have patches. But, every game ran out of the box, and patches were for minor problems. Most of the patches just made the games that were good, into great games. Some patches tweaked latency etc. I have no problems with companys holding back titles to make them better. I also dont' have a problem with companys releasing patches to make games better. But, I have never seen so many people have these crash to desktop problems and auto reboots. Most games are gonna have problems, but none as serious as we have here. My system has components that should have been on there test systems. Lets see, I have a XP 1900+ processor, that should have been checked. I have a Asus Nforce mobo. Second only behind VIA , I think they should have checked that. Soundblaster LIve audio, I think this is pretty common. Windows XP, duh!!!!! Nvidia graphics???? I don't know what components they used for testing, but if they didnt' test any of these then there idiots. Theres only a few major companys in each product catagory.

I'm not on here to argue with anyone. I know my system. I built it myself and I have never had a problem. I have no CNA or CCNA, or CCCNA for that matter. But I do have a degree in common fucking sense, and its telling me that this shit isn't gonna fly. I can take every game mentioned above, install them with out applying any patches and they will run without a hitch. No tweaking my whole system over to get the damn logo screen to come up. Just pop in the cd and go. Now, you tell me that something dont' seem right.

[Cpl. Reynolds]

This is getting flamey, so I'll just say the following:

1) This game ran perfect WITHOUT having to install the patch on my system. No bugs. I had to tweak my system to get Quake III and Return to Castle Wolfenstein to run properly. So much for the "it's the game, not my system" theory.

2) You have to take your car in for routine maintenance... so why won't you engage in maintenance for your computer? 99% of the problems with software people get are easily corrected just by routine computer maintenance and software updates.

So go ahead and bitch and moan... the game worked fine for me and most other folks right out of the box, so frankly I don't think it's any buggier then any of the other ones. If you ask me, RtCW was pretty buggy considering all the tweaks I had to do!!! Oh wait... nope, that was just my system that needed fixing. Go figure.

Oh, and I NEVER got Medal of Honor to run right, I had to take it back. Boy, that was one damn buggy game!!!!! *ROFL*

To add a little light on Machoman's post I have pretty much exactly the same system as you, I bought down the graphics and sound quality. Theis bought down the lag quite abit although exactly like you mentioned I do still get it.

Have winxp 1.7Mhz, 387 RAM, Geforce 2 MMX, Soundblaster Live. latest drivers for all excepth Soundblaster as this was giving me "develr" errors but the plain xp one is fine. Direct X 8.1

ok Im going to have to say I agree with Cpt Reynolds here i think he has been quite helpful on this forum in quite a few ways helping resolving people problem's I myself work in Technical Support so I will back him up in what he is saying I feel is quite correct.

A Quote from Ctp Reynolds "I'm not going to say outright there are not game issues - perhaps with Athlon XP's or Windows XP" I will say he has hit it on the head here. I did think it was put down to soundblaster but then reading Machoman's post mentioned he has changed his soundcard and it is all ok brings me to belive the other option was more now looking like it was the one causing the problem.

WINDOWS XP - I know someone who tested it on 4 machines it run ok on 98 and ME but did not run ok on 2000 or XP - Most people on this forum with problem have XP - I feel as Windows XP is still a new operating system and is proven still to have many bugs within it as there is over 60 MG is service packs already. That when creating Battlefield they can only produce it to how they are told of how windows XP runs and not aware of the bugs (why later on did they bring out a patch for the demo)

Also windows XP and 2000 have a whole di