Technical problems with THE HORROR: downloading, installing, and running it

[leaths]

I found the AP story. link

[Dizzymental]

I am going to post this here since I am not sure where it should go.  I was on my isp homepage this morning and thy run scrolling news stories.  In the entertainment section they had a story about Sims 3 and there was an acknowledgment from EA about the piracy and they had this to say-

"EA said the pirated version "is a buggy, pre-final" version of the game.

"It's not the full game. Half of the world _ an entire second city _ is missing," said spokeswoman Holly Rockwood in a statement.

Not sure what to make of it but I haven't heard anything else like this yet so there you go.

Thanks, this is what I've been trying to get across. I'm positive the torrent version has problems, both in the crack and the version. The replacement (the crack) for the TS3 file is, in my opinion, dodgy. I could be wrong but only time will tell. We'll all know for sure in a week or two.

[Gelina]

I found the AP story. link

The article keeps referencing June 3rd as the release date - isn't it June 2nd in the US?

[Jelenedra]

Video game stores are notorious for that, release date is X, but the stores don't release until the day after because they don't get their copies in until after 5 pm on X. Sometimes. Happens a lot to the Gamestops here. Either they get it a week early, or it is a day late.

[Kyna]

I am going to post this here since I am not sure where it should go.  I was on my isp homepage this morning and thy run scrolling news stories.  In the entertainment section they had a story about Sims 3 and there was an acknowledgment from EA about the piracy and they had this to say-

"EA said the pirated version "is a buggy, pre-final" version of the game.

"It's not the full game. Half of the world _ an entire second city _ is missing," said spokeswoman Holly Rockwood in a statement.

Not sure what to make of it but I haven't heard anything else like this yet so there you go.

Thanks, this is what I've been trying to get across. I'm positive the torrent version has problems, both in the crack and the version. The replacement (the crack) for the TS3 file is, in my opinion, dodgy. I could be wrong but only time will tell. We'll all know for sure in a week or two.

See other comments about the second city.  It was never going to ship with the game, and at this late stage it is too late for EA games to recall all the games (which are probably sitting in the back rooms and warehouses of computer stores) to add it to the game as it is shipped.

I think we'd all like to believe that this leaked version wasn't the real one, based on what we've heard about it so far - the bugs, the problems, the flaws, the removal of some of the best aspects of game play, etc.  Unfortunately claims that it's not the "real" game are based more on wishful thinking than on the available evidence.

The bugginess isn't an argument in support of your point of view.  The base game for TS2 WAS this buggy - just ask Pescado, who was the first to find and fix many of those base game bugs.  Some of the EPs were even buggier and should never have been released in the state they were when released.  Over the last few EPs in particular, EA's playtesting & quality control seemed to consist of: "let's release the game/EP, and we'll find about the bugs when the paying customers find them and tell us."

As for RELOADED doing a dodgy crack: you probably aren't aware of the fact that RELOADED have a good reputation in the pirating scene, and I doubt they'd tarnish that reputation by deliberately creating a dodgy crack.

[jriggs]

Kyna- The post you have quoted isn't the opinion of someone who wishes it were a beta version.  It is a quote from an EA spokesperson claiming that the game will ship with a second city and that the leaked game is a beta version.  I haven't claimed any proof that the bugginess proves it is not a final version.  EA is now making statements that this version is beta and that the final version has a second city that is not in the game that has been leaked.  This was not found in a forum somewhere but was a story that is being circulated as an Associated Press News release. 

Until the game ships all we have is our speculation and statements from EA and while I have read everything that is being said here and elsewhere about the game so far this is the first real statement about the leaked version of the game form them.  It is the only thing so far that is official and not speculation so far.  Whether or not it proves to be accurate or not we won't know until the game ships but your statement seems to put this into the category of more community speculation which this doesn't appear to be.

[Sigmund]

Kyna- The post you have quoted isn't the opinion of someone who wishes it were a beta version.  It is a quote from an EA spokesperson claiming that the game will ship with a second city and that the leaked game is a beta version.  I haven't claimed any proof that the bugginess proves it is not a final version.  EA is now making statements that this version is beta and that the final version has a second city that is not in the game that has been leaked.  This was not found in a forum somewhere but was a story that is being circulated as an Associated Press News release.  

Yes, but I think Kyna was pointing there is a problem with the info in this article. EA has repeatedly stated that this second city would be available for download, and never claimed it would ship with the game. Indeed, it is entirely possible they changed their minds about it months ago and never announced it, but it is an odd inconsistency. Why wouldn't they announce it to their potential buyers? I think it's this disparity that casts some doubt on the claim.

[jolrei]

So this is an official statement from the same EA whose spokespersons suggested that TS3 would not have Securom?

[Papercut]

Well, I've had it installed for a few hours and have had several random crashes. Granted, my rig isn't fantastic (GeForce 8600, hobo ram), but I know it well - all signs are pointing to a software issue rather than a hardware one - no locking / lagging / glitchtastic behaviour ... it's like the game simply decides to shut down periodically and dump me onto the desktop. Interestingly, it seems to happen when attempting something for the first time. The first time I switched to map view the game crapped out on me, the next time it was fine. The first time I called a sim, the same thing happened, the second time it was fine, etc. 

Given this new EA announcement propaganda, I'll be interested to see if the mystery crashes are rectified in the June release. I highly doubt it though.

[Dizzymental]

I am going to post this here since I am not sure where it should go.  I was on my isp homepage this morning and thy run scrolling news stories.  In the entertainment section they had a story about Sims 3 and there was an acknowledgment from EA about the piracy and they had this to say-

"EA said the pirated version "is a buggy, pre-final" version of the game.

"It's not the full game. Half of the world _ an entire second city _ is missing," said spokeswoman Holly Rockwood in a statement.

Not sure what to make of it but I haven't heard anything else like this yet so there you go.

Thanks, this is what I've been trying to get across. I'm positive the torrent version has problems, both in the crack and the version. The replacement (the crack) for the TS3 file is, in my opinion, dodgy. I could be wrong but only time will tell. We'll all know for sure in a week or two.

See other comments about the second city.  It was never going to ship with the game, and at this late stage it is too late for EA games to recall all the games (which are probably sitting in the back rooms and warehouses of computer stores) to add it to the game as it is shipped.

I think we'd all like to believe that this leaked version wasn't the real one, based on what we've heard about it so far - the bugs, the problems, the flaws, the removal of some of the best aspects of game play, etc.  Unfortunately claims that it's not the "real" game are based more on wishful thinking than on the available evidence.

The bugginess isn't an argument in support of your point of view.  The base game for TS2 WAS this buggy - just ask Pescado, who was the first to find and fix many of those base game bugs.  Some of the EPs were even buggier and should never have been released in the state they were when released.  Over the last few EPs in particular, EA's playtesting & quality control seemed to consist of: "let's release the game/EP, and we'll find about the bugs when the paying customers find them and tell us."

As for RELOADED doing a dodgy crack: you probably aren't aware of the fact that RELOADED have a good reputation in the pirating scene, and I doubt they'd tarnish that reputation by deliberately creating a dodgy crack.

It was RELOADED who released the crack for TS2 that disabled or prevented build mode from working. I remember it well. So you are absolutely wrong. I'll give you another example: Godfather PC. The original crack released caused a bug in the game which meant that the player could not get out of the doors in cars or enter cars (can't remember which now). Anyway, the bug was fixed when somebody released a decent crack for the game.

[Soggy Fox]

I've never had a problem with RELOADED or ViTaility cracks for my sims 2 stuff - I'm not sure how many reloaded to vitality I've had, I think its mostly been the latter, but both have a good rep to my knowledge.

And everyone can make a mistake, that doesn't mean dodgy, it means an error was made - dogy means came with viruses and the like - big difference.

[Dizzymental]

I've never had a problem with RELOADED or ViTaility cracks for my sims 2 stuff - I'm not sure how many reloaded to vitality I've had, I think its mostly been the latter, but both have a good rep to my knowledge.

And everyone can make a mistake, that doesn't mean dodgy, it means an error was made - dogy means came with viruses and the like - big difference.

Just one example:
Area 51 No-DVD Crack By Reloaded Doesn't Work ... http://fileforums.com/showthread.php?t=82607

And anyone remember this? ... http://www.cdrom-guide.com/forums/showthread.php?t=274994

So you see, people who are quick to jump on me and tell me I'm wrong don't know what they are talking about.

I rest my case.

[Dizzymental]

Fuck you. You don't quote my evidence I notice. Can't take it to be wrong. Up yours. You think I give a shit about defending a fucking pirate called Rewanked or whatever. I got better things to worry about. Take your head out of your mother's ass.

[Lorelei]

you're trying to claim Reloaded is shit and doing it on purpose.

Of course, there are also at least two dozen MATYzens who are using RELOADED right now, successfully.

Anyone with a working game who did NOT use RELOADED? Raise your hand.

[TashaYarrr]

Reloaded release installed, keygen'd, cracked exe performing as expected.

Would be interested in seeing dxdiags from people who are having crash-to-desktop, but that would probably take us outside the intended usage of this forum.

[Gelina]

Would be interested in seeing dxdiags from people who are having crash-to-desktop, but that would probably take us outside the intended usage of this forum.

I have some of those, where do I look to find them?

[Alexia]

I've been playing the reloaded release 6 hours straight today, following at least 4 hours yesterday. No problems what so ever. It even installed quicker than any other sims game I've legally purchased.
So, I for one do not buy all of this "wonky" crack.exe malarky. Sounds to me like some of you troopers may have got corrupt torrents or downloads. All I can say if in doubt, download again.

[TashaYarrr]

I have some of those, where do I look to find them?

Dxdiag is the diagnostic mode of directx, you basically just do start/run and type in 'dxdiag', hit enter. Then click the Save all information button, it writes it into a text file. What I'd be interested in is the first few chunks (system information and display info).

However, and I cannot stress this enough, I'm basically a noob lurker and I don't want to piss off the mods by having this thread fill up with people's pasted dxdiag info.

Basically I'm just wondering if out-of-date drivers or some other hardware trend may be the cause.

[morriganrant]

I'm using a reloaded copy. My crack is just fine, keygen had no problem. I do think that my torrent had a little issue at some point however because I had problems transferring the neighborhood file. That could do with our connection let's been giving us trouble, or the fact that I had the torrent download to a usb hard drive of mine that had previously proven to be a little diva, very touchy. The only issue that has shown is trying to build on one lot in particular. Others appear to be fine. The only crash to desktop issues I had was on that one lot and this one time when I zoomed back and forth between two sims who were on opposite ends of the hood. Apparently something didn't like that. I believe that my drivers are the second from most recent release. The newest drivers gives me issues in Sims2, Fallout 3 & Spore. This game is not worth me fucking with the first two.

[Gelina]

Here's mine.  I don't think I've updated my drivers since my last crash.

------------------
System Information
------------------
Time of this report: 5/22/2009, 17:18:00
       Machine name: xxx
   Operating System: Windows Vista™ Ultimate (6.0, Build 6001) Service Pack 1 (6001.vistasp1_gdr.080917-1612)
           Language: English (Regional Setting: English)
System Manufacturer: Gigabyte Technology Co., Ltd.
       System Model: P35-DS3L
               BIOS: Award Modular BIOS v6.00PG
          Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU     E6850  @ 3.00GHz (2 CPUs), ~3.0GHz
             Memory: 3582MB RAM
          Page File: 2979MB used, 4422MB available
        Windows Dir: C:\Windows
    DirectX Version: DirectX 10
DX Setup Parameters: Not found
     DxDiag Version: 6.00.6001.18000 32bit Unicode

---------------
Display Devices
---------------
        Card name: ATI Radeon HD 3800 Series
     Manufacturer: ATI Technologies Inc.
        Chip type: ATI Radeon Graphics Processor (0x9501)
         DAC type: Internal DAC(400MHz)
       Device Key: Enum\PCI\VEN_1002&DEV_9501&SUBSYS_21981458&REV_00
   Display Memory: 2042 MB
 Dedicated Memory: 507 MB
    Shared Memory: 1534 MB
     Current Mode: 1680 x 1050 (32 bit) (60Hz)
          Monitor: Generic PnP Monitor
      Driver Name: atidxx32.dll,atidxx64,atiumdag.dll,atiumdva.cap,atiumd64,atiumd6a,atitmm64
   Driver Version: 8.15.0010.0183 (English)
      DDI Version: 10.1
Driver Attributes: Final Retail
 Driver Date/Size: 2/25/2009 16:24:13, 2396160 bytes
      WHQL Logo'd: Yes
  WHQL Date Stamp:
Device Identifier: {D7B71EE2-D641-11CF-6F75-9201A1C2C535}
        Vendor ID: 0x1002
        Device ID: 0x9501
        SubSys ID: 0x21981458
      Revision ID: 0x0000
      Revision ID: 0x0000
      Video Accel: ModeMPEG2_A ModeMPEG2_C
 Deinterlace Caps: {6E8329FF-B642-418B-BCF0-BCB6591E255F}: Format(In/Out)=(YUY2,YUY2) Frames(Prev/Fwd/Back)=(0,0,1) Caps=VideoProcess_YUV2RGB VideoProcess_StretchX VideoProcess_StretchY DeinterlaceTech_PixelAdaptive
                   {335AA36E-7884-43A4-9C91-7F87FAF3E37E}: Format(In/Out)=(YUY2,YUY2) Frames(Prev/Fwd/Back)=(0,0,0) Caps=VideoProcess_YUV2RGB VideoProcess_StretchX VideoProcess_StretchY DeinterlaceTech_BOBVerticalStretch
                   {5A54A0C9-C7EC-4BD9-8EDE-F3C75DC4393B}: Format(In/Out)=(YUY2,YUY2) Frames(Prev/Fwd/Back)=(0,0,0) Caps=VideoProcess_YUV2RGB VideoProcess_StretchX VideoProcess_StretchY
                   {6E8329FF-B642-418B-BCF0-BCB6591E255F}: Format(In/Out)=(UYVY,UYVY) Frames(Prev/Fwd/Back)=(0,0,1) Caps=VideoProcess_YUV2RGB VideoProcess_StretchX VideoProcess_StretchY DeinterlaceTech_PixelAdaptive
                   {335AA36E-7884-43A4-9C91-7F87FAF3E37E}: Format(In/Out)=(UYVY,UYVY) Frames(Prev/Fwd/Back)=(0,0,0) Caps=VideoProcess_YUV2RGB VideoProcess_StretchX VideoProcess_StretchY DeinterlaceTech_BOBVerticalStretch
                   {5A54A0C9-C7EC-4BD9-8EDE-F3C75DC4393B}: Format(In/Out)=(UYVY,UYVY) Frames(Prev/Fwd/Back)=(0,0,0) Caps=VideoProcess_YUV2RGB VideoProcess_StretchX VideoProcess_StretchY
                   {3C5323C1-6FB7-44F5-9081-056BF2EE449D}: Format(In/Out)=(NV12,0x3231564e) Frames(Prev/Fwd/Back)=(0,0,2) Caps=VideoProcess_YUV2RGB VideoProcess_StretchX VideoProcess_StretchY DeinterlaceTech_PixelAdaptive
                   {552C0DAD-CCBC-420B-83C8-74943CF9F1A6}: Format(In/Out)=(NV12,0x3231564e) Frames(Prev/Fwd/Back)=(0,0,2) Caps=VideoProcess_YUV2RGB VideoProcess_StretchX VideoProcess_StretchY DeinterlaceTech_PixelAdaptive
                   {6E8329FF-B642-418B-BCF0-BCB6591E255F}: Format(In/Out)=(NV12,0x3231564e) Frames(Prev/Fwd/Back)=(0,0,1) Caps=VideoProcess_YUV2RGB VideoProcess_StretchX VideoProcess_StretchY DeinterlaceTech_PixelAdaptive
                   {335AA36E-7884-43A4-9C91-7F87FAF3E37E}: Format(In/Out)=(NV12,0x3231564e) Frames(Prev/Fwd/Back)=(0,0,0) Caps=VideoProcess_YUV2RGB VideoProcess_StretchX VideoProcess_StretchY DeinterlaceTech_BOBVerticalStretch
                   {5A54A0C9-C7EC-4BD9-8EDE-F3C75DC4393B}: Format(In/Out)=(NV12,0x3231564e) Frames(Prev/Fwd/Back)=(0,0,0) Caps=VideoProcess_YUV2RGB VideoProcess_StretchX VideoProcess_StretchY
     DDraw Status: Enabled
       D3D Status: Enabled
       AGP Status: Enabled

[TashaYarrr]

I think there are slightly newer ATI drivers but it's probably not going to make the difference.

Morriganrant, are you on XP or Vista? And ATI or NVIDIA? (I'm going to guess NVIDIA, because I've heard of other problems with their latest WHQLs?)

I'm on XP with an NVIDIA series 8 (8800 GTX OC), no crash to desktop yet but I haven't been playing that long.

(By the way, I'm not being an EAxis apologist or anything, I'm just a semi-retarded game tech support person in real life and I'm used to these kinds of problems often being on the user's end. But Gelina's dxdiag basically looked fine so my theory of people using older cards/ancient drivers is kind of shot anyway.)

[jriggs]

I am no tech expert but I recently installed a game and it crashed everytime I tried to run it and after checking some help forums I found that since I was running a dual core processor I needed to get a dual core optimizer to get it to run.  I googled it and found what they were talking about and it worked.  I just noticed that Galina's processor is Dual core.  What about the others that are having this problem?

[morriganrant]

I think there are slightly newer ATI drivers but it's probably not going to make the difference.

Morriganrant, are you on XP or Vista? And ATI or NVIDIA? (I'm going to guess NVIDIA, because I've heard of other problems with their latest WHQLs?)

I'm on XP with an NVIDIA series 8 (8800 GTX OC), no crash to desktop yet but I haven't been playing that long.

(By the way, I'm not being an EAxis apologist or anything, I'm just a semi-retarded game tech support person in real life and I'm used to these kinds of problems often being on the user's end. But Gelina's dxdiag basically looked fine so my theory of people using older cards/ancient drivers is kind of shot anyway.)

I am running Xp, with 3gb of ram and an ATI HD 3870 card. Driver version 8.512.0.0. I can Pm you my Dxdiag if you would like. I didn't want to clutter up the thread.

Edit: Interestingly enough. I have a Duel Core, but I had crashing with the Sims2 when I would set it to only one core. Little problem with both.

[DaSpecialone]

Reloaded release installed, keygen'd, cracked exe performing as expected.

Ditto, less then 3 min after downloading it.   I've read a few comments about people trying to go for the non-reloaded version and choosing a borked one because of it though.


That game btw, is running smoothly and I'm playing, surfing the net, and reading threads...so I'd say issues are probably computer related. TS2 is still installed and switching between them isn't an issue, either.

[brownlustgirl]

@ jriggs, in windows theres a process of making the game run on one processor instead of both. Tried finding the thread at INsim, but having a hard time. Once I ran the optimizer and changed the processor to one, Sims 2 ran perfect.

Got my game from Reloaded and followed the instructions, was up and running in a little bit. No crashes, problems installing, applying the no-cd crack. I have a slim form tower and only have Nvidia G-force 8600.  I am upgrading to the 9800GT because it's the most powerful I can afford for my slim form factor CPU.