Ubisoft - Is It The Most Bugged?
 

I have Far Cry and Far Cry 2, SH4 - all by Ubisoft and all riddled with bugs.

One of the most frustrating and annoying is when loading a saved game in SH4 (any version) 'Passing Thermal Layer' is repeated every 5-8 seconds. I have to keep opening and closing game until it stops. Just done 3 save loads a moment ago and its still there and every save without pause - 'Weve got damage sir!!' as soon as save loads!


In FC2 a person has to have a charmed life to get through a full game, even falling through the game structure into 'never space'.

Ubisoft must be really bad how come they are still in business??? :/\\!! Brilliant ideas and very bad programming.

edit: ref thermal layer bug - I had to go back to leaving port, the bug is in the save.

Corrupted saves can be an issue for various reasons. What you did not clarify is whether you saved while submerged. NEVER save while submerged as all kinds of weirdness can show up. The instant damage bug is one of them, but this can also occur if you load a save made while using stock and then loading after applying a megamod. As far as Ubi still being in business, they do the same thing EA does; they buy out indie companies with successful products and use executive meddling to flood the market with rushed products and cash in before the public is aware of all the problems. By the time it is discovered, their bottom line is still black.

Answer to the question is "no". That award goes to DW Bradley's "Wizards & Warriors", which beat out Bethesda's "The Elder Scrolls I: Arena" by a narrow margin. SH4 probably comes in about 50 on the all time list of 100 buggiest games, SH3 somewhere around 40. Blame the internet, before the internet was invented the game companies worked harder to remove most of the bugs and didn't post halfassed patches that made the bugs worse since patch distribution was slower and more difficult. SH4 does have less excuse for bugginess than other games since the physics and AI ain't really that complex.

If you save and reload a game, it will reprocess much of the existing info again. For instance, say you had several things damaged, it will repeat that message back to you for each item damage. Seems it did the same thing with torps fired, ect...

Can get irritating, just got to let it process through and your game should be fine...

The thing I've always hated about their FPS games is the inevitable scenario that you must get thru and can't because it's almost impossible. This and their gated save system can put you into situations where the only solution is to restart the game from the beginning.

They probably spent more time and money on DRM than on physics and AI logic combined. My latest irritation is trying to put together a balanced mission, at one point I had 10 Northhampton heavy cruisers ganged up on a single Furutaka. The Furutaka was dead in the water early on, but with 90 eight inch guns against six that thing just would NOT sink. Instead half of the Northhamptons were DIW and the other half sunk after two hours of hammering. "Hit points"? Seriously? Couldn't have come up with better damage assessment than that? :down:

I have never had an issue with with any game from any place being buggy. I have only had issues with mods that were added to them afterwards if they were not ordered correctly or compatibel with each other.

I know some play games where they are linked to web sites like steam or what ever. You can easily get corrupt packet transfers when playing that way and get bugs causes by those. I would not play a game I had to be connected to the internt to play with.

Anything could happen along the data transfer to cause the game to become unstable and if for some reason the line goes out for weather, ISP updates or simply a network card malfunction I can still play anything while those web dependent games could not.

great replies and my thanks.

Saves have been on the surface, I learnt that 'trick' a long time ago.

merc4 - you should be in the guinness book of records and possibly the only person on the planet who never suffers ' bugs'

:arrgh!:

I do not look for games or simulations based on eye candy. I find those with more stable platforms and those who have gracious communities such as subsim and it's wealth of knowledge.

All one must do is read game and mod documentation and previous post and most solutions can be found without asking a single question.

unless its ubisoft :har:

personally i dont mind Ubisoft so much, i just tend to take things with a grain of salt and realize nothing is perfect anymore. as far as i know they have their own specific set of games that i find hard pressed to find anywhere else and i just developed a take what you can get mentality i suppose.

Good points ram; but the key phrase in your post was not perfect ANYMORE. For the costs of these, it bloody well should be! Development costs should also dictate that a company turn out well tried and tested products to ensure maximum retails. I agree Ubisoft do turn out a differnt sort of offering than most, but if its not right, people do not like it, fill forums with posts like these, and have a frustrated and angered attitude. And Ubisoft take zero notice.:arrgh!:

I guess i'm lucky because I never encounter bugs when I play SH4.(Ok I might get the occasional ship spawning in land but it's never anything worse.)

Admiral, what ssytem specs do you use? I am on win 8.1 on my pc and win 7 on my laptop. SH4 is in both. Last night (lqaptop) SH4 crashed 'stopped working' when I just just completled an infiltration into the inner bays of Japan to drop off an agent - now THATS frustrating. :/\\!! This is not the first time it has 'stopped working' either. I am running RSRDC and SH4 is patched.

Whether someone experiences bugs in a game depends on what you play and how you play - example someone who plays nothing but single missions on easy settings would never see the same kind of screwy things that another guy who plays only careers on full realism sees all too often. Phantom unsinkable ships resurrected from ships you sank yesterday, for example, only happen in career mode.

Some things might be more correctly described as flaws rather than programming bugs, like settling on the bottom in 150 feet of water, then accelerating time - the CO2 level should rise, that's realistic, but the battery level should also drop since you're using power for heat/AC and lights even when you're not moving. The compressed air shouldn't drop since you're not using it just sitting on the bottom, and you sure as HELL shouldn't suddenly start rapidly taking severe damage in all systems just from being in contact with the bottom, when you're sitting on the bottom motionless there's nothing to cause damage. Design flaw rather than "bug".

No clue what my system specs are. As for my mod set-up it's TMO+RSRDC+Traveller Mod.

Sniper: I always play career. From 41 - 45.
always play normal setting and try and do limited fuel (but software wont let me) and limited batteries (always had that). I have added limited compressed air but agian, it wont take it. And I still cannot get rid of damned dud torps.

Admiral: what windows you using?

Never saw Vista, Win7 or Win8, but I suspect there's something similar to XP - lower left corner of the XP desktop is a "Start" button that pops up a menu. Lower right corner of the menu is a "Run" button. Click that and a little window opens, type DXDIAG into the Run window and click OK. That should start the DirectX Diagnostics, which will tell you your computer type, CPU and RAM, and the Display tab will have all the dope on your video card.

Red Devil, I hate dice games because I'm an unlucky SOB and always roll snake eyes. :/\\!! Computer games simulate a dice roll for any random element like dud torpedoes, so I turn off the duds even if I have everything else on.

To cheat on this;

\Data\Cfg\GameplaySettings.cfg

Edit in notepad, mine looks like this;

[Easy]
LimitedBatteries=false
LimitedCompressedAir=false
LimitedO2=false
LimitedFuel=false
RealisticRepairTime=false
ManualTargetingSystem=false
NoMapUpdate=false
RealisticSensors=false
DudTorpedoes=false
RealisticReload=false
NoEventCamera=true
NoExternalView=false
NoStabilizeView=false
MPShowPlayerNames=true
MPShowTorpedoes=true

[Normal]
LimitedBatteries=true
LimitedCompressedAir=false
LimitedO2=true
LimitedFuel=false
RealisticRepairTime=true
ManualTargetingSystem=false
NoMapUpdate=false
RealisticSensors=true
DudTorpedoes=true
RealisticReload=false
NoEventCamera=true
NoExternalView=false
NoStabilizeView=false
MPShowPlayerNames=true
MPShowTorpedoes=true

[Hard]
LimitedBatteries=true
LimitedCompressedAir=true
LimitedO2=true
LimitedFuel=true
RealisticRepairTime=true
ManualTargetingSystem=false
NoMapUpdate=false
RealisticSensors=true
DudTorpedoes=false
RealisticReload=true
NoEventCamera=true
NoExternalView=false
NoStabilizeView=false
MPShowPlayerNames=true
MPShowTorpedoes=true

[Realistic]
LimitedBatteries=true
LimitedCompressedAir=true
LimitedO2=true
LimitedFuel=true
RealisticRepairTime=true
ManualTargetingSystem=true
NoMapUpdate=true
RealisticSensors=true
DudTorpedoes=true
RealisticReload=true
NoEventCamera=true
NoExternalView=true
NoStabilizeView=true
MPShowPlayerNames=true
MPShowTorpedoes=true

[RealismPercentage]
LimitedBatteriesRealismPercentage=7
LimitedCompressedAirRealismPercentage=17
LimitedO2RealismPercentage=8
LimitedFuelRealismPercentage=20
RealisticRepairTimeRealismPercentage=8
ManualTargetingSystemRealismPercentage=0
NoMapUpdateRealismPercentage=0
RealisticSensorsRealismPercentage=13
DudTorpedoesRealismPercentage=0
RealisticReloadRealismPercentage=6
NoEventCameraRealismPercentage=21
NoExternalViewRealismPercentage=0
NoStabilizeViewRealismPercentage=0
MPShowPlayerNamesRealismPercentage=0
MPShowTorpedoesRealismPercentage=0

[MiscSettings]
AlwaysAutotargeting=0,0,0,0,0;for warships, merchants, uboats, air and land targets

I changed the values to my personal preference for the HARD setting so I didn't have to manually set them every time I start a new career (which I do often, DID) and edited the 5 cheats for zero renown loss, adding numbers to other settings to make the total still add up to 100.

It's a question of balance, if you're not having fun you're not cheating enough, if you're having fun you're cheating the right amount, if you're bored because there's no challenge you're cheating too much.

If your software will not let you have limited fuel I want to know what mods are you running and are they disabling making the game more realistic.

Even the Stock game allows you to have limited fuel.

I play 41 to 45 always career. I have never seen in years of playing the game an "unsinkable ship". Resurrected shipping issues are most likely new ships of the same class simply spawning to recreate normal shipping traffic in the game. RSRD will create a Nippon Maru and you may sink it but if it calls for another ship of that class to run through the same area 5 days later that isn't resurrection it is another ship.

I have ran the same installation for five years now and the only changes I have made were simply unloading or loading a list of mods.

I see nothing wrong with Ubisoft. I have never played a game they made I didn't like. The first game I ever played by them was {AMI}Air Combat Aces and from there all the way to BlackList I never had an issue.

I have a feeling many issues that some encounter are the fault of installations. While no two OS with any given CPU and Ram will run the application exactly the same there are things one can do to insure a better install.

Never install to your system drive.
Never allows your "My Documents" or "My ANYTHING" to reside on your system drive.

Most do however and that can but not always lead to corruption or read write issues with any OS. My saves never go to my system drive. I have 3 hard drives. One hard drive has nothing but the OS on it. Nothing gets saved to it unless it is OS related or an application that was designed to only run from the system drive.

My internal 2 Terabyte drive and External hard drive host applications and saves as well as all my "My Anythings"... i.e. My Documents, My Downloads, My pictures etc.

Doing this allows my system drive to only do one thing and that is to run the OS. This helps in eliminated many issues that might arise from writing game and other application information to where the system resides.

The only issue I have ever had with the game was mod related and had nothing to do with the game itself and those are few and far between. This is the only game I have ever had that I refuse to quite playing.

Generic Mod Enabler - v2.6.0.157
1_TriggerMaru_Overhaul_2-5
RSRDC_TMO_V502
RSRDC_V5xx_Patch1
Traveller Mod v2.6 TMO
#1 Real Environment mod install
Traveller Mod 2.6 Patch 1 - ISE v3 Patch
Traveller Mod 2.6 Harder Enemy AI Escorts
Webster's Missing Voices
Pacific Sound Mod
Captain Midnights MORE CBS NEWS 1941-42 MOD v1.2
Traveller Mod 2.6 Larger Search Patterns
Traveller Alternate Main Loading Screens
Convoy Routes TMO+RSRD
tambor198's TMO+RSRDC missions pack
#4 Warships retextured
Traveller Mod v2.01 (TMO) Longer Sinking Times patch
New Ships + Yamato AA Fix