Test Drive Unlimited (PC)... DO NOT BUY!
Discussion
R1 GTR said:
ThePassenger said:
R1 GTR said:
ThePassenger said:
Thudd said:
These problems can all be solved by running TDU on an xBox360, if you can find one that works.
Maybe. I said to a guy "Go buy the PS2 version" only to discover it's broken.
ting me? Damn dude... that sucks.Look on the bright side, the patch is out erm... <checks callender> now! Can I offer you a tasty deal on this bridge good sir? :/
And whats this about a bridge?
The bridge is in America
Just checked, no further delays announced.
PS. Welcome to my world.
Thing is im not sure if its a faulty disc, game bug, or my system not being good enough.
The fault is when i launch, it does the disc authenticate thing, then opens a window, makes it a bit bigger, then closes!
I suggest my system because the graphics card is "supposedly" not up to it and the CPU is 1.6GHz dual core, again not the best. (this is why i tried the ps2 version first)
Should i try a disc exchange and get a new copy or is it certainly not going to be a faulty disc?
The fault is when i launch, it does the disc authenticate thing, then opens a window, makes it a bit bigger, then closes!
I suggest my system because the graphics card is "supposedly" not up to it and the CPU is 1.6GHz dual core, again not the best. (this is why i tried the ps2 version first)
Should i try a disc exchange and get a new copy or is it certainly not going to be a faulty disc?
R1 GTR said:
Thing is im not sure if its a faulty disc, game bug, or my system not being good enough.
The fault is when i launch, it does the disc authenticate thing, then opens a window, makes it a bit bigger, then closes!
I suggest my system because the graphics card is "supposedly" not up to it and the CPU is 1.6GHz dual core, again not the best. (this is why i tried the ps2 version first)
Should i try a disc exchange and get a new copy or is it certainly not going to be a faulty disc?
Known bug. Try the absolute latest, bleeding edge, beta drivers for your card (i.e. Nvidia or ATi) and it might... might kick in to life. If the disc was shagged it'd fail validation and screw up the install. The fault is when i launch, it does the disc authenticate thing, then opens a window, makes it a bit bigger, then closes!
I suggest my system because the graphics card is "supposedly" not up to it and the CPU is 1.6GHz dual core, again not the best. (this is why i tried the ps2 version first)
Should i try a disc exchange and get a new copy or is it certainly not going to be a faulty disc?
The 'bit bigger' stage is the game trying to go full screen to play the three videos.
R1 GTR said:
Tried the latest driver (not many around for my card, that i could find anyway) and nothing changed. Did roll back though as the new driver caused a 'Stop Error'.
Heh. Now you see why I said get the PS2 version 
I think you're in the same boat as me, wait for the patch. I'd avoid the Atari forums for help; you'll get a 3/1 ratio of people going "It works on mine, you're computers shagged LOL" to "Try this..." until eventually a mod will appear, call you a n00b and ban you for two weeks.
Hopefully it'll be out this week... maybe next... who knows
ThePassenger said:
R1 GTR said:
Tried the latest driver (not many around for my card, that i could find anyway) and nothing changed. Did roll back though as the new driver caused a 'Stop Error'.
Heh. Now you see why I said get the PS2 version I think you're in the same boat as me, wait for the patch. I'd avoid the Atari forums for help; you'll get a 3/1 ratio of people going "It works on mine, you're computers shagged LOL" to "Try this..." until eventually a mod will appear, call you a n00b and ban you for two weeks.
Hopefully it'll be out this week... maybe next... who knows
Perhaps the problem is that PC's are so modular, with so many varients of chipsets for the mobo, gpu, sound etc, it's very easy to fall into the 'doesn't quite work' category - can be very annoying and time consuming to try and sort out, as times!
I just installed Far Cry on our 'TVPC', but upon loading and playing the first level, the scenery was all white! Only after downloading another driver did the game look as it should.
I have had only a few niggles with TDU, but I have no doubt what you have experienced is true, and it definitely needs a patch for the sound problem I experience every now and again.
Even Tomb Raider Anniversary has quite a few annoying bugs - collision detection is awful!
The worst game of late that I have bought for not being ready is Medieval Total War 2, and agter 2 patches, it's still not a 'patch' over RTW gameplay!
chris watton said:
It is odd that it works on some, but not other PCs - a little like some say Vista is great, but others have had many problems with it.
Perhaps the problem is that PC's are so modular, with so many varients of chipsets for the mobo, gpu, sound etc, it's very easy to fall into the 'doesn't quite work' category - can be very annoying and time consuming to try and sort out, as times!
I just installed Far Cry on our 'TVPC', but upon loading and playing the first level, the scenery was all white! Only after downloading another driver did the game look as it should.
I have had only a few niggles with TDU, but I have no doubt what you have experienced is true, and it definitely needs a patch for the sound problem I experience every now and again.
Even Tomb Raider Anniversary has quite a few annoying bugs - collision detection is awful!
The worst game of late that I have bought for not being ready is Medieval Total War 2, and agter 2 patches, it's still not a 'patch' over RTW gameplay!
I'm going to go off on a huge tangent here. Basically, I've proved it's the game several times over Perhaps the problem is that PC's are so modular, with so many varients of chipsets for the mobo, gpu, sound etc, it's very easy to fall into the 'doesn't quite work' category - can be very annoying and time consuming to try and sort out, as times!
I just installed Far Cry on our 'TVPC', but upon loading and playing the first level, the scenery was all white! Only after downloading another driver did the game look as it should.
I have had only a few niggles with TDU, but I have no doubt what you have experienced is true, and it definitely needs a patch for the sound problem I experience every now and again.
Even Tomb Raider Anniversary has quite a few annoying bugs - collision detection is awful!
The worst game of late that I have bought for not being ready is Medieval Total War 2, and agter 2 patches, it's still not a 'patch' over RTW gameplay!
The basic gist of how a program works is that it asks the OS what the capabilities of the system are; in the case of a Windows game it uses various DirectX functions to return a set of values (I can do the same thing in Linux using say glxinfo, a huge list of the OpenGL capabilities of my card will apear and on a 7900 GS it IS a long list 
), once it's got this figured out it can start grabbing resources and generally getting on with providing entertainment to the masses The CPU type, chipset, network cards, SATA/PATA drive types and such are utterly irrelevant to this. You don't talk to them directly, the closest you can get to doing that is to go straight to the HAL (Hardware Abstraction Layer), but generally you'll generally use various API's to do the talking (they save you having to write the interfaces and such). To some degree even graphics card drivers aren't all THAT important, you don't talk to them directly, you talk to DirectX, which talks to the drivers. If you have say Rev1 of a 3D driver that says "No Pixel Shader 2 here" then DX reports this and its up to the game to either drop down or gracefully bomb out, in some cases it can then choose to engage software rendering to assist the 3D card (at the penalty of extra CPU overhead), if rev2 of the drivers does say "Yes" to the PS2 query then off you trot.
That aside Eden/Atari have programmed the game making far to many assumptions about things and not enough double checking, you can see proof of that statement in the wine appdb, look at TDU and then read the bugs, it's assuming an array is 256 long, it's not asking the OS/API how big the array is... it's just blindly going for it and spazing out. Well behaved games work in Wine (Oblivion and CnC3 to name two utter resource whores). The telling 'we're in a rush' programming is the fact that TDU doesn't even fire up on my laptop in Linux, it dies at the exact same point as it does in Windows.
Consoles have always been considered the most stable platform but that is true of PC's, OpenGL and DirectX (to name only two API's you can choose to use for getting some things done) acting as go betweens have made the PC just as stable as a console and you get a lot more capabilities and grunt too boot (seriously, my laptop can out grunt a 360 if it has too), plus its easier to develop for... there's how much documentation floating about?
But consoles out number it so you'll get better returns in that market, meh. Bugs happen. It's an unfortunate fact of life and I've been pretty lucky. Things like dodgy collision detection and the like will always happen, but it's how committed a company are to releasing patches that counts. You can end up with a Neverwinter Nights which is still being updated, patched and generally made better 5 years after its release (they're mainly just tweaks and 'one in a million' fixes these days and have been for the last 3 - 4 years) or you get a Homeworld 2, contract said 1 patch, it didn't fix everything, suck it gamers.
The fact that the PC patch has been delayed until mid-June, the 360 people not getting their monthly car packs, the PS2 version not working with a lot of PS2 wheels and so forth means Eden/Atari (same company different divisions) have put out a shonky piece of work that any professional programmer would be ashamed to see shamble out the door IMHO. It isn't helped by the fact that Atari consider such things as "What week is this patch hitting?" to be business critical and sensitive information, oddly enough their share price being in free fall from $9 to $1.73 when I looked isn't!
chris watton said:
Crikey! I now consider myself educated!
I wonder if the prob is with the online profiles, I did notice on the TDU forum that most of the probs seem to be connected (excuse the pun) to playing online!
By all accounts those problems are due to insufficient capacity (poor planning on Atari's part), they spec'd for 120,000 people. They got 200,000+ the servers are regularly falling over and I suspect they're just plowing on regardless and not doing much verification on the data; you log off, DB goes tits up, you log in... and you're suddenly a woman (or man). Yes, the first thing you'll notice is the sex change I wonder if the prob is with the online profiles, I did notice on the TDU forum that most of the probs seem to be connected (excuse the pun) to playing online!
That and that whole shonky code thing probably extends to their backend as well.
R1 GTR said:
Any news on the patch? I'm getting bored of waiting. I need it to fix the launch problem!
Sorry old bean, the official site's last update was 28/03/07 with 6 new screen shots and the Atari website's latest downloads section doesn't have anything on TDU.Can't tell you what's happening in the forums as the nice moderator deleted my account (and all the support threads I'd posted in) then IP banned me, twice (missing the first time and banning 192.168.0.116 I presume
). TDU...
So much potential. Totally wasted, probably by bean counters/managers.
Had they made it really good/patched/loads of updated material, I'd have genuinely paid monthly to play it online (like WoW) with decent racing leagues, moderators to stop cheating etc.
For what it's worth playing the game as intended is pretty much impossible/pointless due to the fact you can't even find a friend when your the only two people at a given point.
Doh!
Dave
So much potential. Totally wasted, probably by bean counters/managers.
Had they made it really good/patched/loads of updated material, I'd have genuinely paid monthly to play it online (like WoW) with decent racing leagues, moderators to stop cheating etc.
For what it's worth playing the game as intended is pretty much impossible/pointless due to the fact you can't even find a friend when your the only two people at a given point.
Doh!
Dave
TDU work great on my pc. my pc is intel E4300, Geil 2gb ram, gigabyte DS3 with latest bios, leadtek 7950GT 512mb, 19" tft 2x sata hdd.
Sometimes i get graphical glitches making it jerky, lots of artifcats on screen, alt+tab / game restart sorted it out, making it look nice and smooth.
Wheel doesnt work that well on TDU, and i got Logitech Momo Racing. this game is more suitable to keyboard.
My mate has similar problem as you all. He done everything, last thing is bios update... then he did it, game transformed alots. making it very playable. maybe you try latest bios update for your board. worth a shot.
Jay
Sometimes i get graphical glitches making it jerky, lots of artifcats on screen, alt+tab / game restart sorted it out, making it look nice and smooth.
Wheel doesnt work that well on TDU, and i got Logitech Momo Racing. this game is more suitable to keyboard.
My mate has similar problem as you all. He done everything, last thing is bios update... then he did it, game transformed alots. making it very playable. maybe you try latest bios update for your board. worth a shot.
Jay
Mr Whippy said:
TDU...
So much potential. Totally wasted, probably by bean counters/managers.
Had they made it really good/patched/loads of updated material, I'd have genuinely paid monthly to play it online (like WoW) with decent racing leagues, moderators to stop cheating etc.
For what it's worth playing the game as intended is pretty much impossible/pointless due to the fact you can't even find a friend when your the only two people at a given point.
Shock, I actually agree. I was hoping for something very much more than what I've got (hypothetically speaking, you under stand, all I've got is three videos followed by a big black nothing), I'm sure its a very fun and enjoyable game, but it could have actually been really good rather than just 'average'. Instancing I can understand for the races but I fail to see why if EVE:Online can have thousands in a single solar system, TDU can't have all 200k roaring around the island, tinker with the roads a bit to make room and you're away. Sorry, but it's a no brainer decision. So much potential. Totally wasted, probably by bean counters/managers.
Had they made it really good/patched/loads of updated material, I'd have genuinely paid monthly to play it online (like WoW) with decent racing leagues, moderators to stop cheating etc.
For what it's worth playing the game as intended is pretty much impossible/pointless due to the fact you can't even find a friend when your the only two people at a given point.
vrooom said:
Sometimes i get graphical glitches making it jerky, lots of artifcats on screen, alt+tab / game restart sorted it out, making it look nice and smooth.
If you're 100% sure the GFx isn't over heating and your drivers are puka... TDU's not doing something it should.vrooom said:
Wheel doesnt work that well on TDU, and i got Logitech Momo Racing. this game is more suitable to keyboard.
A keyboard.... on a racing game???? I agree with what you're saying but am I the only one that thinks it's a trifle stupid?vrooom said:
My mate has similar problem as you all. He done everything, last thing is bios update... then he did it, game transformed alots. making it very playable. maybe you try latest bios update for your board. worth a shot.
Sorry Jay, flashing the BIOS is the last act of a desperate person. You can very easily brick the whole system and void any remaining warranty. I'll assume your friend had issues totally across the board (i.e. Windows was freaking out, drivers throwing hissy fits and such) which is the time to break out awdflash. One game not working, is not a BIOS flash situation, the game shouldn't even be looking at the damn BIOS!Well, my profile went wrong the other day.
Became a bald guy, all my roads went like 50% 50% driven on, lost some cars and houses, decided I'd just become a Champion and all sorts of weird stuff.
Anyway, decided to start again, but thinking I may upgrade the PC first then play it with nicer graphics as it was a bit pants on a 9800 pro vs what it would be like on a dogs danglies machine.
Also, apparently the patch is out, RS4 and R34 Skyline, long time, shame there are only two cars, but better than a kick in the nads!
Dave
Became a bald guy, all my roads went like 50% 50% driven on, lost some cars and houses, decided I'd just become a Champion and all sorts of weird stuff.
Anyway, decided to start again, but thinking I may upgrade the PC first then play it with nicer graphics as it was a bit pants on a 9800 pro vs what it would be like on a dogs danglies machine.
Also, apparently the patch is out, RS4 and R34 Skyline, long time, shame there are only two cars, but better than a kick in the nads!
Dave
Just d/loaded the patch.
Quick flick over the readme and -
TEST DRIVE UNLIMITED PC-DVD PATCH NOTES
• Anti Cheat measures implemented throughout the game
• Fully reworked save system. Profiles can not be corrupted anymore (note: players will not be able to load a corrupted savegame.)
• Fixed crashes and improved stability everywhere in the game
• Fixed bug when a 'New game' is created with an online profile (remanent information)
• Improved online code (better management of lobbies, optimization of freeride sessions, “isolate” feature of the free ride improved)
• Fixed various bugs in drive in (linked with scores and cars)
• Fixed traffic cars flying around
• Fixed bug on multi-threading code
• Fixed some crackering/stuttering sound issues
• Fixed bugs in photo mode
• Fixed some corruption on car graphics
• Improved volume balance and bass power
Will see if it works now!
Big fingers crossed, as it did find beforehand!
Quick flick over the readme and -
TEST DRIVE UNLIMITED PC-DVD PATCH NOTES
• Anti Cheat measures implemented throughout the game
• Fully reworked save system. Profiles can not be corrupted anymore (note: players will not be able to load a corrupted savegame.)
• Fixed crashes and improved stability everywhere in the game
• Fixed bug when a 'New game' is created with an online profile (remanent information)
• Improved online code (better management of lobbies, optimization of freeride sessions, “isolate” feature of the free ride improved)
• Fixed various bugs in drive in (linked with scores and cars)
• Fixed traffic cars flying around
• Fixed bug on multi-threading code
• Fixed some crackering/stuttering sound issues
• Fixed bugs in photo mode
• Fixed some corruption on car graphics
• Improved volume balance and bass power
Will see if it works now!
Big fingers crossed, as it did find beforehand!
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