patching problems

[startover]

Following our fellow poster's advice, I went ahead and bought the BF2 Special Forces expansion pack so that I can unlock two weapons at each rank promotion including those 2nd tier weapons.

Upon installation I was immediately shocked with the "Patching BF2 to version 1.1" message. I thought it was a joke. Didn't I already have the latest 1.4 patch? I expected to see a "you already have a newer patch blah blah" message but I didnt. Turned out SF did acutally roll back my BF2 version to 1.1!

Fine. I tried to launch SF and was immediately welcomed with a "missing lighting.fx" error. At this point I googled up and found out the fact that our beloved EA people for some reason chose to mess up the game installation with the SF expansion pack and I had no choice but to re-apply the latest patch.

Fine. I have the following patch files on my hard drive: 1.22 Full, 1.22-1.3 and the latest 1.3-1.4. So I started out with the full 1.22 patch. Success. Then I launched the 1.22-1.3 patch and bam, error "This patch requires 1.22 to be installed".

I took a look at the patch log and there were a bunch of "old xxx missing xxx" errors. It seems the entire installation is a mess due to the rolled over patch. Obviously some of the file versions are out of sync and I'm stuck with a bunch of old files mixed with a bunch of new ones.

I'm downloading the 500MB full 1.4 patch right now. Hopefully it can solve the problem by forcing all files back to 1.4. If it doesn't I'll have to reinstall the game from scratch.

I cannot believe EA's programmers wrote their codes this way. They made so many great games for so many years and they cannot figure out a simple rule that rolling back old files = disaster? They could have simply made the SF installation program check for existing version first and if it's newer than the one that comes with the CD distribution, STOP. Either make a web-based updater that goes online and grab the latest update in real time or give a proper instruction to the end user and tell them what to do.

If I didn't already fall for this game and were a first time user, I would have already headed right back to the store for a full refund. One would normally imagine the quality of the game if installation were such a hassle in the first place. EA will stand to lose many sales if they keep this type of problems going in their future releases.

Oh well I didn't really mean to rant so much about this. I guess I'm just bored out downloading that patch. Luckily it's almost done. Yay for broadband.

[Blades]

Re: Very disappointed in EA's software programmers

DL full 1.4!!

BF2 > SF >Full 1.4 patch

Problem fixed. That whole patching back when you install SF is retarded though.

FYI, you could have just had someone play a round on an SF server with your account instead of buying it. That would give you all the unlocks. But there are some good maps in SF.

[Iwantcable]

Re: Very disappointed in EA's software programmers

Yeah pretty funny. You have the latest patch, so you need to patch down to 1.1 then back up to 1.4...

[[Spec-Ops]Bogo]

Re: Very disappointed in EA's software programmers

I think in that case its part user error and part programmer.

[startover]

Re: Very disappointed in EA's software programmers

DL full 1.4!!

BF2 > SF >Full 1.4 patch

Problem fixed. That whole patching back when you install SF is retarded though.

FYI, you could have just had someone play a round on an SF server with your account instead of buying it. That would give you all the unlocks. But there are some good maps in SF.

Yeah I read your post about the trick. But you know what, I'm the kind of "support the game/company you like" believer and that's why I chose to feed my poor $20 to that multi-billion dollar monster.

:salute: :salute: me for being a good boy.
:box: :box: EA for being stupid.

I think in that case its part user error and part programmer.

Nah it's 100% programmer fault.

I did what one would do with "common sense".
Too bad the EA guys did not make any sense.

[zuiquan1]

Re: Very disappointed in EA's software programmers

Dice canada made Special Forces...they also make the patches, Dice Sweden created BF2

Dice canada doesnt know the coding of BF2, they had to learn about it directly from Dice Sweden, than fill in the blanks to make things work.

After a year it still seems as though Dice C doesnt know BF2 inside and out like Dice S does

If Dice S wasnt so preoccupied with other games(BF2142, BF:BC) and they actually supported the game THEY made than we wouldnt be in this mess right now, and BF2 would be in a COMPLETELY different ballpark...a better one....with free hotdogs!

[[Spec-Ops]Bogo]

Re: Very disappointed in EA's software programmers

Dice canada made Special Forces...they also make the patches, Dice Sweden created BF2

Dice canada doesnt know the coding of BF2, they had to learn about it directly from Dice Sweden, than fill in the blanks to make things work.

After a year it still seems as though Dice C doesnt know BF2 inside and out like Dice S does

I always thought that was not the smartest thing to do. Lets build the game and Sweden and patch it in canada, just to add that little extra challenge for the patchers. :laugh:

[kenof2142]

Re: Very disappointed in EA's software programmers

What pisses me off is that they made SF it's own entity apart from bf2...but download/save full 1.4 and you only have to patch once instead of having multiple patches to work through.

[Revoluti0n]

Re: Very disappointed in EA's software programmers

Yeah pretty funny. You have the latest patch, so you need to patch down to 1.1 then back up to 1.4...

No, this is incorrect.
Install SF then the full 1.4, that is all. We all understand how traumatic it can be reinstalling the game...:laugh:

It's 100% user error for not reading before doing anything.

[ImgSunscreen]

Re: Very disappointed in EA's software programmers

Well, if you have vanilla BF2, and are playing it currently with patch 1.4 - and you then decide to buy SF, which is what this guy is saying - you basically have to uninstall everything, then re-install BF2, SF, then 1.4. It's kind of dumb. The fact of the matter is, it takes forever to do all that stuff, and you seem to have to do it way too often.

[LifeCrysis]

Re: Very disappointed in EA's software programmers

Nah it's 100% programmer fault.

I did what one would do with "common sense".
Too bad the EA guys did not make any sense.

Apparently, you could find this website and then this forum, but you have no idea there is a search function.

http://www.totalbf2.com/forums/search.php

Because if you know about the search function, or the SF section for that matter, you would see all the other people that had the same problem as you.

Solution, install SF then patch 1.4 full.

Nah it's 100% user fault.

Well, if you have vanilla BF2, and are playing it currently with patch 1.4 - and you then decide to buy SF, which is what this guy is saying - you basically have to uninstall everything, then re-install BF2, SF, then 1.4. It's kind of dumb. The fact of the matter is, it takes forever to do all that stuff, and you seem to have to do it way too often.

No you do not have to unistall anything, and I do not think he said you had to.

[ImgSunscreen]

Re: Very disappointed in EA's software programmers

Apparently, you could find this website and then this forum, but you have no idea there is a search function.

http://www.totalbf2.com/forums/search.php

Because if you know about the search function, or the SF section for that matter, you would see all the other people that had the same problem as you.

Solution, install SF then patch 1.4 full.

Nah it's 100% user fault.



No you do not have to unistall anything, and I do not think he said you had to.

My real point, or at least what I was trying to say is that it's all too often the solution for problems is to re-install everything, and in a certain order. That seems to be the common solution that you need to excecute in order to have a decently running game. And if it's not followed precisely, you're fooked. O
I'm not even going to get into the various patch errors and shortcomings. Shouldn't be that way.

[Zaltehook]

Re: Very disappointed in EA's software programmers

Following our fellow poster's advice, I went ahead and bought the BF2 Special Forces expansion pack so that I can unlock two weapons at each rank promotion including those 2nd tier weapons.

Upon installation I was immediately shocked with the "Patching BF2 to version 1.1" message. I thought it was a joke. Didn't I already have the latest 1.4 patch? I expected to see a "you already have a newer patch blah blah" message but I didnt. Turned out SF did acutally roll back my BF2 version to 1.1!

Fine. I tried to launch SF and was immediately welcomed with a "missing lighting.fx" error. At this point I googled up and found out the fact that our beloved EA people for some reason chose to mess up the game installation with the SF expansion pack and I had no choice but to re-apply the latest patch.

Fine. I have the following patch files on my hard drive: 1.22 Full, 1.22-1.3 and the latest 1.3-1.4. So I started out with the full 1.22 patch. Success. Then I launched the 1.22-1.3 patch and bam, error "This patch requires 1.22 to be installed".

I took a look at the patch log and there were a bunch of "old xxx missing xxx" errors. It seems the entire installation is a mess due to the rolled over patch. Obviously some of the file versions are out of sync and I'm stuck with a bunch of old files mixed with a bunch of new ones.

I'm downloading the 500MB full 1.4 patch right now. Hopefully it can solve the problem by forcing all files back to 1.4. If it doesn't I'll have to reinstall the game from scratch.

I cannot believe EA's programmers wrote their codes this way. They made so many great games for so many years and they cannot figure out a simple rule that rolling back old files = disaster? They could have simply made the SF installation program check for existing version first and if it's newer than the one that comes with the CD distribution, STOP. Either make a web-based updater that goes online and grab the latest update in real time or give a proper instruction to the end user and tell them what to do.

If I didn't already fall for this game and were a first time user, I would have already headed right back to the store for a full refund. One would normally imagine the quality of the game if installation were such a hassle in the first place. EA will stand to lose many sales if they keep this type of problems going in their future releases.

Oh well I didn't really mean to rant so much about this. I guess I'm just bored out downloading that patch. Luckily it's almost done. Yay for broadband.

That same thing happened to me. I was ticked off and confused for an hour until I found out what to do, had to un-install/ re-install bf2, install SF, then re-patch to 1.3.

Goes without saying but it was a sucky 2 hours of nothing.

[startover]

Re: Very disappointed in EA's software programmers

No, this is incorrect.
Install SF then the full 1.4, that is all. We all understand how traumatic it can be reinstalling the game...:laugh:

It's 100% user error for not reading before doing anything.

First of all WHY would an expansion pack installation roll back a perfectly working up-to-date patch to a buggy old one? The new files are right there, they erase them, and then have the user bring them back with a 500MB download? Whose fault is that?

Secondly, I'd run full 1.4 in a heart beat if I had it on my hard drive. It's a 500MB download, and I already have full 1.22, 1.22-1.3 and 1.3-1.4 with me. So one with common sense would have tried those first. That's the whole point of "incremental patch", to save time, right? But they were not working as they were supposed to be, and that sucks, period.

A well written program should not require the end user to go online and search through the billions of articles before being able to install correctly. And you know what? These guys didn't even hint the user to go search for answers. There is no instruction at all, absolutely nothing. I got a beautiful case with 2 CDS and a manual. Nowhere on the manual mentioned these issues, nowhere on the CD mentioned these issues, and nowhere during the entire installation progress ever mentioned these issues either. I got a broken expansion game right of the box that broke my perfectly working pre-expansion game, how nice is that!!

[imported_rancid_elf]

Re: Very disappointed in EA's software programmers

Following our fellow poster's advice, I went ahead and bought the BF2 Special Forces expansion pack so that I can unlock two weapons at each rank promotion including those 2nd tier weapons.

Upon installation I was immediately shocked with the "Patching BF2 to version 1.1" message. I thought it was a joke. Didn't I already have the latest 1.4 patch? I expected to see a "you already have a newer patch blah blah" message but I didnt. Turned out SF did acutally roll back my BF2 version to 1.1!

Fine. I tried to launch SF and was immediately welcomed with a "missing lighting.fx" error. At this point I googled up and found out the fact that our beloved EA people for some reason chose to mess up the game installation with the SF expansion pack and I had no choice but to re-apply the latest patch.

Fine. I have the following patch files on my hard drive: 1.22 Full, 1.22-1.3 and the latest 1.3-1.4. So I started out with the full 1.22 patch. Success. Then I launched the 1.22-1.3 patch and bam, error "This patch requires 1.22 to be installed".

I took a look at the patch log and there were a bunch of "old xxx missing xxx" errors. It seems the entire installation is a mess due to the rolled over patch. Obviously some of the file versions are out of sync and I'm stuck with a bunch of old files mixed with a bunch of new ones.

I'm downloading the 500MB full 1.4 patch right now. Hopefully it can solve the problem by forcing all files back to 1.4. If it doesn't I'll have to reinstall the game from scratch.

I cannot believe EA's programmers wrote their codes this way. They made so many great games for so many years and they cannot figure out a simple rule that rolling back old files = disaster? They could have simply made the SF installation program check for existing version first and if it's newer than the one that comes with the CD distribution, STOP. Either make a web-based updater that goes online and grab the latest update in real time or give a proper instruction to the end user and tell them what to do.

If I didn't already fall for this game and were a first time user, I would have already headed right back to the store for a full refund. One would normally imagine the quality of the game if installation were such a hassle in the first place. EA will stand to lose many sales if they keep this type of problems going in their future releases.

Oh well I didn't really mean to rant so much about this. I guess I'm just bored out downloading that patch. Luckily it's almost done. Yay for broadband.

1. Its not EA programmers it would be dice.

2. Why blame dice programmers? they have nothing to do with the way the patches work. Next time you do a patch pay attention to what the software is that is doing the patch