Cannot Talk with Registration Server! Or I Suddenly lost my Activation

[BOSTON]

I have registered with their immune site, sent them an email with the dll, but have not got a response.

[norb]

But why don't you just add the exception to your program?

[BOSTON]

norb wrote:

But why don't you just add the exception to your program?

I'm missing something here! How do I do it from my program? Matter-o-fact I just another email to McAfee with you CC'd a few minutes ago.

Look in PM it's posted there

[norb]

I understand that, but you can fix this by yourself in two minutes if you follow those directions from that link that I posted earlier.

[Greek]

"OK, I am very confused by what I read. All that needs to be done is to open the exception list, add the dll, close it and the problem is over. This really is not our fault, if I have my program start deleting windows files are you going to call microsoft and blame them? Their detection sucks if it gives false positives, we have no control over that. But if you just add it as an exception, this problem is over. That is what is confusing, the solution takes two minutes, but we're still going back and forth on it."

Hey Norb, I feel your pain in your post. I am sure this is all driving you crazy. What appears simple to you is not to me, I cannot get McAfee to exclude "c:\norbsoftdev\scourge of war - gettysburg\work\scpwin32.dll". I can exclude any *.exe program, but am not even given the option to exclude a *.dll, at least not where I can find. I think I've opened every option in McAfee I can find, but there is nothing there to exclude any *.dll. The instructions you posted elsewhere simply are not there on my system. So, while what you say sounds simple enough, my Gateway Vista32 machine and my version of McAfee (from 2010) do not allow me to do what you recommend, they never give me the option for this or for the sound fix for that matter that you gave. Sounds like Boston is having the same issues.

I truly do not want to sound belligerent or complaining, as I realize you are doing the best you can and appreciate all you've done, even if it has not done me any good. Please understand, I loved TC2 (with which I never had any problems) and want to love Gettysburg. But here are my frustration;

1) When I first loaded the game I had bad sound on the muskets and the game freezes if I select "best" on uniforms. Select "high" on uniforms and the game runs perfect. As to why, who knows? As to the sound, you've posted solutions, but with my version of Vista32 and sound options the option you gave does not even exist!

2) In spite of these two items, neither was a show-stopper. I really loved the high quality uniforms (it would sometimes play for up to 1 or 2 minutes) but could accept the next level down. Clearly the quiet musket fire takes away from the game (loved it in TC1 and 2), but the game was still playable.

3) Surprisingly, the game would run, but then after a few days of running fine I started to get the registration error and had to reinstall. It then ran fine. No problem, pain in the butt, but it seemed to happen only after a scan.

3) I then suddenly, started to get a couple of runtime errors! Game crashed, no idea why. Only happened twice.

4) Now, I can't play the game at all unless I turn off my McAfee! Why that is a problem now and not after first getting the game, well, who knows. Maybe a McAfee update changed things, or changes from your copy protection vendor.

5) I think a major issue is the vendor you chose to do security with, and with this I disagree with your position that it isn't "your software". I seriously doubt you would have had this problem if you went with Steam or had used a different copy protection method. My point, and I speak as an executive at a mid-size $200 million business, is a business is responsible for its vendors and their product. It appears your vendor should be developing software that does not conflict with McAfee, certainly a major player in the anti-virus world.

Please undertand, I share these thoughts only if you might want to consider them, and not as a complaint. When all is said and done I have great respect for what you've been able to do in the hours you have and highly, that's HIGHLY commend you for your efforts to work with your customers. I certainly don't pretend that I have the answers, I only know I really want to enjoy the product you've given us and am frustrated by my inability to do so. Although I think everyone posts, "...and this is the only game I am having problems with", I'll not go that far, but will say this is the only game I am having these types of registration problems with. I am tainted by my bad luck of having had a hard drive die with Eagle Storm games, and since I never had a valid "unregister" of their games I've never been able to get those clowns to get my games running again. I admit, that left a very bad taste in my mouth for this type of copy protection. 8^)

Thank you for all you've done, and for all you will do for all of us. Great game, some teethin problems but I am hopeful things can get addressed as we move forward. No disrespect meant. Just know, none of your recommendations have worked for me...yet!


HEY BOSTON, here's a shout out to ya', I'm 72 miles north of ya' on I-93! Boston's one of the greates cities in the US, and I've been to most of the big ones.

[norb]

Greek wrote:

What appears simple to you is not to me, I cannot get McAfee to exclude "c:\norbsoftdev\scourge of war - gettysburg\work\scpwin32.dll". I can exclude any *.exe program, but am not even given the option to exclude a *.dll, at least not where I can find. I think I've opened every option in McAfee I can find, but there is nothing there to exclude any *.dll. The instructions you posted elsewhere simply are not there on my system. So, while what you say sounds simple enough, my Gateway Vista32 machine and my version of McAfee (from 2010) do not allow me to do what you recommend, they never give me the option for this or for the sound fix for that matter that you gave. Sounds like Boston is having the same issues.

Thank you that explains a lot I was wondering why you weren't doing that. So this program, deletes files off of your computer, does not give you an option to ignore certain files, never asks you what you want done with the files. IMO, that is not the way a virus scanner should work and I would look for a new one. Without an exception list you are at their mercy. Reading through their forums it seems that they do this to a lot of programs.

1) When I first loaded the game I had bad sound on the muskets and the game freezes if I select "best" on uniforms. Select "high" on uniforms and the game runs perfect. As to why, who knows? As to the sound, you've posted solutions, but with my version of Vista32 and sound options the option you gave does not even exist!

- I don't hear this bug and no one on the test team reported it. That is not an excuse, it's the reason it was released this way. Most of the solutions were found by other players that found ways to fix it. It's a driver update or some other computer based item. Nothing that we can fix in our code. We are turning up the sound files, that is the only thing that we can do that I can see. If it was a bug that happened on one of my machines I could do more. All I can do is guess until I can recreate the error. It's part of being small, we have most OS's, but not all. The Best freeze is a risk we take. We could make it ugly and make sure it runs on every computer, but we don't. We put in options that are too high, so if computers get faster or people have machines that can handle it, can use them. The risk is that we can crash if the machine cannot handle it. When TC2M came out we had the same issues that we are having here. Now it's old and runs great on most machines, but when it came out very few could run with full settings.

2) In spite of these two items, neither was a show-stopper. I really loved the high quality uniforms (it would sometimes play for up to 1 or 2 minutes) but could accept the next level down. Clearly the quiet musket fire takes away from the game (loved it in TC1 and 2), but the game was still playable.

- I honestly think you should harass VonViper, he's the sound guy. I have been on his case for a while, but maybe if more of you guys got on his case, he would listen closer to your complaints. Say the word and he's fired

3) I then suddenly, started to get a couple of runtime errors! Game crashed, no idea why. Only happened twice.

- There are a few crashes in there and we are working on them. We have been doing support constantly since the game was released.

4) Now, I can't play the game at all unless I turn off my McAfee! Why that is a problem now and not after first getting the game, well, who knows. Maybe a McAfee update changed things, or changes from your copy protection vendor.

- You are using the same exact version of the dll that the game shipped with. We have changed nothing. You can try going in and deleting any of our files, we can't run and we cannot control programs that you run that choose to delete our files. We did not install a virus on your computer, we installed a dll that is legit that is safe. We put it in the game folder. You run a program that likes to delete our file. There are many virus programs that do not have these problems. I've run that dll through a bunch of them and it comes back negative.

5) I think a major issue is the vendor you chose to do security with, and with this I disagree with your position that it isn't "your software". I seriously doubt you would have had this problem if you went with Steam or had used a different copy protection method. My point, and I speak as an executive at a mid-size $200 million business, is a business is responsible for its vendors and their product. It appears your vendor should be developing software that does not conflict with McAfee, certainly a major player in the anti-virus world.

- People would have slammed us no matter what we did. It would not have mattered. I disagree with your conclusion. I think that McAfee should not be deleting files from people's computers. Like I said, if I go in and delete files from your windows folder, are you going to blame microsoft?

Thank you for all your comments. I appreciate it. If everyone only told us what they like about the game, it would never get better.

[BOSTON]

norb wrote:

I understand that, but you can fix this by yourself in two minutes if you follow those directions from that link that I posted earlier.

I reposted this post here in case you missed on the other thread.


Yes, I did what you suggested and looked into this spicework site yesterday. Took note that if I joined it, of course I'd have to give up my email address. The reason it is free, cause it's an add generating site, meaning I would open myself up to be getting bombed with adds all the time. To be an add free member would cost $240.00 a year, times 2 yr. comes out to $480.00. A headache I don't need deleting spam and an exspense I don't want to play the game. There is two years left on my McAfee subscription which costs me zip.

[norb]

I answered there too. I had no idea about the joining thing. I was just referring to the instructions about how to add exceptions to McAfee. But I've been told that those instructions do not work on the latest version. That they actually do not include any support to add exceptions! That is crazy, if you google you'll see that this thing is reporting false positives all over the place. They really should be held accountable for messing with people's programs.

[BOSTON]

norb wrote:

I answered there too. I had no idea about the joining thing. I was just referring to the instructions about how to add exceptions to McAfee. But I've been told that those instructions do not work on the latest version. That they actually do not include any support to add exceptions! That is crazy, if you google you'll see that this thing is reporting false positives all over the place. They really should be held accountable for messing with people's programs.

1. You have to join/sign-in to gain access to their (spiceworld) programs, your right that they don't say what versions of McAfee they can change.

2. When you say; "they should be held accountable ect.", I believe you are referring to Spice world.

3. It's Monday 5am, the start of a new week, I am hopeing that something forthcoming will enable me to get GB up and running again.

[norb]

No, I meant McAfee. I know nothing about Spice World except that they had a page of instructions on how to add exceptions to some version of McAfee. I just googled for anyone that showed how to do it. I am sorry for the confusion. I easily could have found another site that showed how to add exceptions, this is just the first one that I found.