BF2 and Folder Redirection

Technology is a pain in the ass! Just when I get off my ass and fix many small problems that have been plaguing me for a while, some developers go and do something that causes me more problems.

More Battlefield 2. I finally got off my ass and enabled folder redirection on my home network. Great. My files are now centralized and on a redundant storage array. (Whew!). Using my machines this afternoon, was great. Click on my documents and all my machines had access to the same data. (As it should be). Okay, evening rolls around. Time to relax and play some Battlefield 2.

Simple, it worked before, why should it not now… Well why, is because the developers of Battlefield 2 decided to dump all the user settings into the my documents folder. Great right? Well no.

The game would not load at all. Okay. I know they were being stupid, so I uninstall the game and reinstall. This properly caches the proper file locations in flat files and perhaps the registry. The game menu now loads; I can reset-up all my customizations to the interface, video settings, etc. I’m breathing easier now, because the game menu loaded the game should load right? WRONG!

Loading the game state for a map, the game crashes to the desktop. Looking the folder structure, they also cached the shader information for the game in the My Documents folder.

Not great and not smart for any developer to do… Why?

Folder redirection. This is a folder that can be redirected to another computer or server. This is by design for document access (and has been around since Windows 2000); this is a folder that has multiple data entries, could be redirected by a network administrator or an end user and they are dumping critical (temporary) files into this directory. (Hello!? Earth to programmers?)

So the game is no longer playable while I have folder redirection enabled by group policy, because I cannot redirect where they store this temporary data. User settings, sure, but shader information. Comon!

My hope is that I can create a local user account on the CPU, which will not get the folder redirection policies, and use that to play BF2, however this step should not be necessary. They should be able to handle folder redirection, and under no circumstances whatsoever should they be storing temporary data in the My Documents folder.

Okay. Local account cleared up the issue, and I can play again. Time to pretend I'm playing with some of the programmers of BF2!

ATLANTA TIME MACHINE

ATLANTA TIME MACHINE

Here is an interesting site showing how atlanta has changed over the years.

Amazon CS Update

Seems that Amazon was being proactive. I just recieved an email from a CS representative who apologized and stated the issues was being corrected.

This is even better than the fast customer service idea. Proactive service. They screwed up, Admited it, fixed it, and moved on. Good enough for me.

Customer Service

Today Electronic Arts (EA) released Battlefield2, a much anticipated game for the PC. Pre-order sales have been strong, and I anticipated this game enough to pre-order it as well with a gift certificate I received for my birthday back in March. They also had a nice promotion to receive a free headset/microphone as this product support integrated VOIP.

I ordered mine from Amazon.com. They tend to get a decent amount of business from me. I know at the time I pre-ordered this product with the “bonus” materials there were no special hoops to jump through… Well at least they did not publish the ones, which were needed.

You see my order shipped on Friday. (Great I may actually get the game on the release date (today)). Well the package did arrive. However, upon opening it, it is just the headset. Okay, maybe they cannot ship the product until today, so I check email to see if there are any status updates.

None, Hmm…

I head to the site check the order. It is completed. No mention of another shipment, no mention the “game product”. Okay, now this a little bit irritating. I click on the link to look at the product I ordered; now I see some text stating,

“This product is the pre-order bonus free Logitech headset only and does not contain the game. This bonus product must be added to your Shopping Cart in addition to the game. See the Special Offer details on this page to find out how to get the game and this free, bonus headset.”

This text clearly was not present before. Okay, time to dig in and contact customer support… And that was not easy navigating through the pure maze of links. All I want to do is email a customer service representative with the pertinent details so they can track down what happened. After about 10 minutes of searching, reading, and clicking links, I finally get to what appears to be the correct area. (Yay!).

Email sent. Now to wait until tomorrow or something. Wait… A few moments later there is an email in my box. Now at this point I do not know if this was a pre-emptive move by Amazon, who noticed they made an error, or a fast-track response from customer service… time will tell if I get an email tomorrow from a customer service representative if this was preemptive.

Either way, it is good. Fast service or better yet positive service, they requested that the order be replaced, and had created a gift certificate to cover the amount of the order including 2-day shipping. As long as there are no shipping delays, I should have the product by Friday. (Alright, so I should have had it today in a perfect world, but we all know this place is far from perfect).

I have chosen to look at the silver lining and say, wow, good customer service from Amazon. Yay! I know of many others companies, who would not have done anything at all in explain what happened or attempt to make it right.

BTW: The demo for this game is Great. If you like first person shooters and have not seen this game yet, check it out. You can download the demo from many places. Or if you still need to order the game you can from here… Battlefield2 DVD