List of bugs in episode 2. Not happy at all. 25+ crashes before I finished it.

[Yandros]

1. If you skip too many lines of dialog in the embarrassing idol scene you can get an 'audio buffer could not be created' message box which is modal. But the annoying part is that the 3d game window is on top of the message box. So you cannot change to it to click ok to continue the game.

2. The game does not stop the mouse clicking outside of the 3d game window. I run dual monitors and continually I would accidentally click the desktop on my second monitor which would make the game minimize (which takes ages.)

3. After the following sequence of room changes: tv studio -> outside office -> boscos or sibyls I get a memory access exception. 'Could not access 0x000000...' (or in the common tongue, a null pointer error.)

4. Occasionally the game would fail to garbage collect resulting in it taking 350 mb of ram (I had task manager open on monitor 2) this would end up almost crashing my entire PC.

All in all I am rather upset. I had to restart the game at least 25 times to get from start to finish. In addition, even with all the restarting, the game only took me just under 3 hours to complete. It was short, very easy and buggy as hell.

I won't be purchasing anymore of telltales games until you fix your engine and properly test your releases. This software has not be extensively beta tested and it is very apparent.

To recap: Not at all impressed. Crashed 25+ times, posed little if any challenge, and was far too short.

[Evil Penguin]

First of all, I fully understand that you're upset if it crashed 25+ times.

But what was it that happened 25+ times? (Which of the problems mentioned did you run into multiple times?)

I didn't have any crashing problems at all, so I find your situation a little surprising.

[Mishakun]

I was impressed with it not crashing anytime for me. It sounds to me like you've got some really wierd ass configuration on your computer.

[Lapino]

I didn't have any crashes either. I only had the cursor problem a couple of times, but just alt+tab to get back to the game solved it.

[Jordan]

No crashes here either except for the cursor outside the window problem. Occasionally I would click to the side screen to move to the right or left in upper corners, and the game would have a little freeze until i clicked in the center again.

[octochan]

My game crashed an awful lot, but then, Culture Shock crashed an awful lot too. It usually happened when there was a change of scene, and/or a spot where the autosave was supposed to kick in. I figured it was because of my crappy, outdated computer, so I can't blame the game for it.

[xendria]

Yandros, try it on another computer, I think it might be your computer's problem. Maybe your RAM is fucked up, maybe bad drivers, that or you got spywares/malwares running in the background. I've not encounter any problems at all.

[BliztyMighty]

I have a fairly funky laptop setup and I didnt have any probs at all. And you mentioned the game taking up 350mb of ram and crashing your pc....modern games need that much RAM, and usually several times that amount of RAM.

[numble]

Crashed 0 times on my machine--I consider it a low-end machine, though it does have 768mb of RAM.

[Erwin]

The dual monitor problem isn't Sam and Max related, because almost every game loses focus when you click outside the frame, or move your mouse too far to the right. There's certain software (I can't remember the name, but it might be from Matrox) that handles the way your dual setup behaves. You can, for example, completely disable the other monitor, and apply this setting to the applications of your choice.

By looking at the rest of your problems, it seems to me your system is walking on its toes. If I minimize the game, and return, it only takes a few seconds. And I'm only on one Gig of memory!

--Erwin

[Spykes]

I didnt have a single problem with mine.

[pixelat3d]

Originally Posted by Erwin

The dual monitor problem isn't Sam and Max related, because almost every game loses focus when you click outside the frame, or move your mouse too far to the right.
...

Sure, application focus is always an issue if you're running windowed (in which case your statements hold true.) However, i think he's referring to the full-screen issues that arise from having multiple monitors, and that isa problem with the Telltale Tool (on the bright side it's something they can fix really easily).

It's not a big deal in Sam & Max because there's not really any "action" ... i can, however, remember a -very- annoying chase scene in the first Bone episode that was hell because of it. Try reporting this as an actual support issue though. Sitting here and complaining on the forums probably isn't going to accomplish much.

As for the memory leak ... eh.. it happens. I'm guessing a lot of the resource unloading problem(s) were because of your access issues -- doesn't collect correct sizes etc. etc. so can't properly undload... if I don't notice while i'm playing the game i don't care -- so long as it cleans up on shutdown. Like an old boss of mine at EA used to say ... if it doesn't work right, your system configuration is probably "unsupported" = ).

The rest of these bugs ... uh ... no comment. Hop into the support zone and post some specifics (include your system specs, driver versions, windows version, and maybe a dxdiag for good luck).

[Erwin]

I'm talking about full-screen games as well. Most of the cursor-driven games I played have this problem, except for first person shooters. Probably because the pointer works differently. I remember Red Alert 2 having this issue, for example.

--Erwin

[balloftwine]

I got a crash with this and the first episode but rebooting my machine after installation fixed it.

[Hero1]

i had these weird objects coming up across the screen.. like large grey rectangles that were flashing during the sitcom scene

[MarkoH01]

You all should be happy - I didn't manage to start it at all! Crashes after the credits. I reinstalled drivers (both sound and graphics), directx, windows - uninstalled nearly everything...still crash

8 Bucks for nice intro music...episode 1 was great - why did they change so much?

[Yandros]

Look guys, you shouldn't be blaming your system configurations on this. 99% of applications must work on your setup otherwise you would have fixed it prior to this point in time, yes?

I have been running my system for 3 years, played a large array of games on it without any of these problems. (Except perhaps the dual monitor clicking out of the focus rectangle thing.) It is up to the game developers to listen to the complaints and fix the problems - even if it is Microsoft’s, or the video driver company’s fault.

Telltale should be writing PC compatible games. Not [this configuration exactly] compatible games.

I am starting to think episodic gaming won't work because as quantity increases, quality clearly decreases.

[Welshy]

Originally Posted by Yandros

I am starting to think episodic gaming won't work because as quantity increases, quality clearly decreases.

Its probably just a bug that was missed that could be easily fixed by a small patch...i wouldnt go slamming episodic games just yet, seeing as this is only the 2nd episode. Besides many things regarding quality were also improved in this episode such as lighting, facial expressions, and personally i thought the gags were a lot funnier.

[ReverendTed]

Originally Posted by Yandros

Telltale should be writing PC compatible games. Not [this configuration exactly] compatible games.

I don't mean to say that your particular problem shouldn't be investigated (because there's bound to be someone else) but I doubt all of the people in this thread with zero crashes (including myself) all have "this configuration exactly".

Perhaps it's just a "anything but your configuration exactly" kind of problem.

"PC compatible" is a misleading term when individual devices (each growing increasingly complex in and of themselves) can be cobbled together in limitless combinations. It's impossible to test every available combination of hardware, software, driver versions, etc - and despite the myriad of "standards" available for device operations, the prevalence of proprietary functions in various devices makes it increasingly likely that there will be some program that just comes out crooked on your computer. Plus, your system is three years old. I mean, that is SO 2004.

That said, I do hope you're able to get the problem sorted out, because I felt that few hours of gameplay was certainly worth eight bucks. (Less for me, since I went ahead and bought the season pass.)

[bashar]

Well, I have P 4 540 Processor, 1 GB RAM, ATI Radeon X600 256 MB and I had flickering problems with episode 2. I never had any issues with episode 1, and I play much heavier games on the same PC without any problems.

It didnt crash with me, but it sure is resources hungry. Game starts fast, but when I close it, its more than 10 seconds the PC kind of freeze and I can see the process eating up the memory.