Ok, I wasn't really dead. It just felt that way. I'm much better now.

3 Apr 06

I'm sorry about last week. Even though there wasn't much I could do about it, I still feel bad. You'd think being sick for a week, I'd get a lot of gaming in. Unfortunately, no. I also had a ton of fatigue and no ability to focus. Essentially, I had no gaming until yesterday.

Yesterday, I spent trying to fight the Rise of Legends demo. I realize it's an alpha demo. I also know that most people didn't have too many problems with it. I did. I think I'm cursed when it comes to this series. Anyway, I had downloaded it without problem. I tried to installed and kept getting a database error. So I deleted it, and redownloaded it from another mirror. This time it installed.

It ran automatically from the installation. Instant lock up. Reboot. Try again. This time I got to the menu screen. Well, that was after the apology screen stating it was an alpha demo. I tried to start the campaign. I choose the campaign. I upgrade my hero. I tell him to go attack the only available province. It started loading all the information. I get to where it should start. It flips to desktop and says RoL has encountered an error and needs to stop. Would you like to send an error report?

Sure, it's a Microsoft game so it might actually help. Great it says. Then I get a dialogue saying that it needs to send some the data in use at the time. The files could be large and take a while to upload. Oh, ok. Maybe if I do this, the retail version will run on my rig. Then my rig appears to freeze. Then it unfreezes. I check the task manager. Error reporting is sucking up all the CPU cycles. Ok, I'll go get a drink while it finishes. Ah, a cool refreshing beverage. What? It's still not done? I go watch that Dr. Who episode I recorded. It's still not done? Oh my, I really want to help them solve this problem, but this is getting ridiculous. Right as I'm about to give up, it finishes. Great. Transmitting report. Great. The bar's not moving. Great. At least I have some CPU cycles now. I can surf. Forty minutes later, it finally finishes. BHG and Microsoft, I really hope that helped.

Needless to say, the next time it crashed, I told it just to send a standard error report. Done in 30 seconds. Of course, that means it did crash again. In fact, I couldn't get it to run at the default resolution. I tried all the options. I reinstalled drivers. Nothing. Eventually, I noticed that at the bottom of the resolutions list were a couple of lower resolutions. No doubt there for debugging or something. I give it a try. It does switch, but the menu does adjust. Most of tabs are off the screen. Fortunately the edge of the bounding boxes run across the top. I'm still able to adjust things. I save my minimalist settings and go back to the main menu. It now has scroll bars. The main menu has scroll bars. Whatever.

I try a quick game. It works. It's not overly pretty with everything turned off, but it works. It takes me a few miserable failures to figure out how the basics of the game work. I finally get off to a good start and am battling for control of the map when the game crashes again. Hard lock up. Reboot.

Just for fun, I try one of those weird mac resolutions. What do you know. It works. Well, for half a game anyway. Then it locked up. It looked much prettier this time. The camera seemed awfully tightly zoomed in, but otherwise it looked good. It really seems like the type of game I'd enjoy if I could get it to work. Oh well, I think I'll spend some time on the Xbox 360. It wouldn't lock up on me would it?

Thanks again for all the kind thoughts and prayers.

Jason