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Feedback received (my comments are in italics) Send feedback about Brian Lara Cricket. Douglas Byron said on 18 January 2000 Have you noticed that although you never see stumpings in the game [because of the inability to leave the crease], occasionally you will see st. A Keeper b. T Bowler in the scorecard of a CPU v CPU match? I used to think this was also the case with c&b dismissals, but have just recently been picking up loads of these at Test level.
Philip Smith said on 21 August 1999 Is it just me, or has anyone else noticed a very disturbing piece of programming which is totally ruining the game for me. This 'bug' means that left handed computer batsmen are a complete waste of time in the game. To get them out do the following.
With my version, if you consistently use this tactic, after 6 balls at the most, you will always ger the batsman out, usually bowled. It does not matter what type of pitch you are using, or what skill level you are playing on, this tactic ALWAYS gets the batsman out, hence making the game completely unplayable. Roll on the next version
Rajesh Mohan said on 11 July 1999 In reference to Glenn's Feedback, I would like to say that the menu does not appear every time when you quit while the game is in progress. I just tried it out and I got the menu only once out of 10 tries. It directly get back to the result screen saying match abandoned. :-(
Lee Carnell said on 5 July 1999 I was just writing to you people to so that you could tell your visitors to this page that Codemasters have stated in an email to me that they will not be releasing any more patches to correct things which were meant to be included in the game as stated by them. Such as no-balls, statistical charts as well as no update of squads to world cup squads as they stated was going to be on one of your pages on your website. I think this is plainly false advertising as I paid for a copy of this game after reading on there own website what was included in the game but not all is there. If people feel like complaining about this contact Codemasters and let them know.
Lee Carnell said on 5 July 1999 When chasing a total in a One Day game I can be doing real well but then lose 3 or 4 quick wickets even playing safe shots. This seems to happen to me every time I chase a total. Also when chasing I find that its practically impossible to win against one of the good teams as the computer just keeps getting wickets no matter how safe you play. I was wondering if this is a common problem or whether I'm just doing something wrong. I can bat first in a One Day game against the computer and I usually do real well and never have this problem occur, e.g. on county I can smash 300 easily on a hard track.
Glenn said on 2 July 1999 I have also had problems with the bowler refusing to bowl, but have found a way around this problem, if it happens just hit the space bar and quit the game this takes you to the menu which comes up between overs, if you save your game and then click resume, it should continue with no probs, well it does for me anyway :-)
Peter Wells said on 29 June 1999 Brian Lara Cricket is definitely the definitive cricket game on the market. The much anticipated CWC99 doesn't even come close. The game has various game modes including, test match, test season, friendly, classic match (a famous game in the history of one day cricket), world cup, world series (a triangular one day series held in Australia). But before playing it is important to utilise the practice option because timing is very important. Even though the on the box it says that the game requires 4mb of video memory 1mb is sufficient. Once playing, you find that this game is very realistic, the graphics are great and the numerous stadia in the game are close to the real thing. The game will get you hooked as you play for you favourite team and will keep you absorbed for many many months. Another great touch is the commentating of Jonathan Agnew, and Geoff Boycott, who always is putting his two bobs worth, which helps give some atmosphere, but unfortunately there is not enough of commentary. However there are a few glitches such as the bowler walking through the stumps, dodgy LBW's, CPU fielder letting the ball go to the boundary even though it could easily have been stopped, hard manual fielding, freakish catches, the fielder throwing the ball too late, and CPU fielders always throwing the ball over the stumps. Despite these things Brian Lara Cricket is still a great game.
Rajesh Mohan said on 20 June 1999 I have always been a great fan of Codemasters ever since they have started with the Sega version of Brian Lara Cricket, Pete Sampras' Tennis and Micro Machines. I think they are great programmers of sports games. They are definitely a billion times better than EA Sports even though EA has got such a big name in sports games history. Well let's get to the point, Brian Lara Cricket is one cracker of a game! The game is so realistic that one of my cousins thought that he was watching a LIVE cricket match! The graphics and sound are excellent. The new bilinearing option also makes a big difference to the pitch(After installing the patch). Coming to the downers, Stumpings have been missing greatly, No balls and the inability of the batsman to dance down the pitch. I would have also liked more of Geoffrey Boycott's commentary more than Jonathan Agnew because "Roobish " is just too good. There is one bug I have come across many times. When a batsman is dismissed, all the fielders celebrate the dismissal and then there is no action. The fielders slowly get back to the position and the fielder refuses to bowl. This does not happen when the computer is bowling (I mean it happens only when the user is bowling). I hope Codemasters bring out some patch for this. A patch for the World Cup rosters would also be great. Maybe I am expecting a bit too much! All in all, BLC99 is a great game and wishing Codemasters best of luck for the future.
Najira said on 13 June 1999 I would like to know what happened to the charts and grafts etc. which were said to occur in the game according to the Features section in the Codemasters web page. In the H.O.D.I. Cricket game which is a shareware game there is a superb array of graphs and charts, showing Manhattens etc. I am also waiting for the teams of the world cup squads with the sound files which were promised by Codemasters in the Wish list page. I cannot find any info on their site. It is a super duper game overall but needs a few improvements in a EARLY new release. Statistics in the game is woefully inadequate, and should be improved in the next version. See Cricket Statistics for Windows to see what I mean about player stats in the game. All the teams and the individual performance must have all standard details.
Ngy Tran said on 8 June 1999 Would like to offer some feedback on Shane Warne/Lara cricket with respect to altering the game. First of all with the names and stuff. This is a great tool but I wonder why players such as Stewart of England is not called Stewart...while his name is clearly in wav format he is called something else. He is called Stewaret in the Lara game! Secondly I would like to point out that there are numerous .cfg (config) files in the root dir of the game directory. These you can edit e.g. like fielders default throw speed for what conditions, ball role speed and HEAPS more. It would help if I knew exactly what they were for but am not to sure. Would just like others to know if they would wanna check it out (e.g. fast.cfg). Just open in a note pad or something like that
Tony B. said on 7 June 1999 Re: Shannon Brooker's Patch Problems.... Change your desktop to 16-bit mode before running the patch, that should fix the problem you are having.
Matt Lane said on 26 May 1999 We (the cricket gaming public) should encourage Codemasters to release a SPECIAL EDITION of this years game. With all bugs sorted out, enhanced gameplay with a few more features..I'd be more than happy, so would a lot of other people. Its not like Cricket97 when they released SPECIAL EDITIONS (ashes edition) etc. because Codemasters started off with a bloody good game where Melbourne House started off with a piece of shit and ended up trying to flog it off a few times.. We should BACK Codemasters bigtime, I'd be happy for em to flog off a SPECIAL EDITION, they have got style.
Shannon Brooker said on 26 May 1999 I have had Shane Warne Cricket 99 for quite a few months now and couldn't wait until the patch came out for it but after installing it I was already experiencing problems, First of all I have a P233 MMX with 32 MB SDRam and a 4 meg Voodoo 1 card and after I installed the patch and went into the game the Loading Screen comes up followed by the 3DFX Interactive one and then it goes back into windows and then I have to Maximise Shane Warne Cricket 99 again and then I lose sound and then during the intro to the match in a one dayer there is no sound and then I hit enter to speed things up and the screen starts flashing so I have to do ctrl+alt+delete, So I went and updated my video card and voodoo drivers etc and went back into the game and still crashed, So then I went and downloaded DirectX 6 from 6.1 thinking things might change but no such luck so anyway I was just wondering if anyone knows how I could fix this problem because it pisses me off that there isn't more in the readme about the drivers etc...
Ian Mond said on 23 May 1999 I'm having problems in editing my World Cup squads. What I find is that if I change the stats, the computer will annoy me by picking the 5 players that aren't in the one day World Cup squads. If I change these players, name (Tuffnel) for example or change their states to zero for batting and 99 for bowling, the computer will still pick them (it makes for some funny batting lineups when I change the names to S.Shit etc . . but it is still annoying). Moreover, one of the downloads gives 15 man squad for England. However, when I play using, this squad, the computer goes batshit and only chooses 8 from the 15. Hence, if I want to play a realistic World Cup tournament and don't want to to see Tuffnell and the like appear in the game, what do I do?
Steve Coe said on 21 May 1999 I see you added my feedback about the minimum specs. Just so you know, I have since tried the FULL version, and it works perfectly fine as well, so it wasn`t just a demo thing... WEIRD HUH! The game doesn`t run fantastically well, but it`s MORE than playable. I`ve written to Codemasters but haven`t heard a thing from them.
Steve Coe said on 7 May 1999 After my own experimentation, people may be interested to know that the minimum requirements for the Brian Lara game are HOPELESSLY exaggerated. How? I have a P166, NO 3D card, and only a crappy little 1 meg graphics card, and the demo works just fine and is playable. Quite where the hell they get the "4 meg SVGA card" crap from I've NO idea as its quite obviously wrong. Just thought I'd let you know as the specs were what deterred me from trying it for a long time.
Wedge said on 30 April 1999 I personally have not experienced any problems at all (crashes etc) with Shane Warne Cricket '99, except one incident when I tried to play it while I (unknown to me) had a QuickTime movie running. Other than that, no probs at all. Some slight graphics glitches on the menus (small areas becoming clear blocks, etc) but no crashes, freezes, loss of sound, slowdown, etc. I use 3dfx mode, and have had the game about a month. However, I think there should be a fielding practice, along with batting and bowling, and the patch should fix the wides/no-ball bugs. I like it that the commentators tell you when a player or team reaches a mark such as 50 runs, or 3 wickets, but I think the crowd is very unrealistic. I think it is cool, however, that sometimes it rains for an hour or so during a test match, as this makes it more realistic. My friend said on the PSX version it never rains, which I think would suck. I didn't think it rained in Test Matches unless you had the CATSDOGS cheat on?
Satish said on 24 April 1999 Well I saw lot of messages stating that wides are non-existent in the game. Well actually the umpire does call it wide if you attempt to play a shot at a ball pitched wide of the stumps & you MISS. If you just leave it it wont be called. I just came to know this when I was playing with my friend i.e. a 2 player game as the computer doesn't bother to chase the wide ball even if it needs 30 odd runs in 1 over. The best tactic is to attempt to play a shot late in case the ball is wide & learn to miss it if you want wides. Hope Codemasters rectify this & of course the no ball bug in their patch.
K.Vishal said on 23 April 1999 Got my Brian Lara cricket copy here in India. Must say very disappointing. In the Brian Lara official cricket site, lot was mentioned about the game and its graphics and commentary. 50% seems not to be true. Surely this game is better than Cricket97 but the game is not as good as it was mentioned on the Internet. Game gets stuck very often. For example, 5 of us played the World Series and it took a long time and finally the finals came between India and Australia, then best of three finals was tied 1-1 and then to all our irritations the game got stuck. There seems to be no stumpings, wides and noballs. The stadium list also was not good. Chinnaswamy stadium, Bangalore and Sharjah seems to be missing from the list. Cannot create new players. For example, MacGill and Agarkar are missing. Palframan and Richardson are the keepers for South Africa in place of sensational Mark Boucher. Commentary is disappointing as Boycott's comments are very less. Aamir Sohail is the Pakistan skipper in place of Wasim Akram. Player's tracking and records do not get stored. It does not rain in a test match unless we give the cheat code CATSDOGS. But the disadvantage is that it rains too often. For example, I was able to bowl only 10 overs in 5 days of the testmatch. Tournament options are good but Graphics after a team wins are not there. It just mentions the trophy name and winners whereas in EA sports FIFA98 RTWC the winning team takes a victory lap. The reverse sweep is missing. All the fast bowlers have the same actions and same with the spinners. I hope World cup99 game will be better. I request Codemasters to improve BLC in its next edition by a huge margin. But for now EA Sports is certainly better in its graphics and options.
Ian Mond said on 20 April 1999 A general comment to the upcoming Shane Warne patch - a comment that it isn't particularly original, but I think needs to be said . . . First: I've been playing -- or trying to play AFL '99 -- even with a patch it keeps breaking down. The game simply does not function - a complete waste of money. Shane Warne isn't as bad, however it still has its problems, obvious bugs that need to be rectified, bugs that have already been mentioned. My point here is, why should games need patches? Why can't they come out as good and as perfect as they were meant to be? For me Brian Lara Cricket refuses to function 80% of the time due to the keyboard freezing. Now, I already know the answer to this question and that's why my gripe isn't particularly original. Yes, says Codemasters or EA Sports, we'd love to do what you've said, but we have economic considerations to think of and we don't live in an ideal world. Economic considerations is unacceptable as an excuse. Great. But that doesn't help the person who doesn't have Internet access; don't have access to a patch or tech support. There stuck with a lump of a game . . . just as in the case of AFL '99. So, while I'm looking forward to the Shane Warne patch, I can only wonder why Codemasters et al. don't fix the problems before the game comes out - esp in the case of SW which came out late. And a gripe while I'm here. The test match days should equal 90 and not 75 (and sometimes 70) overs per day. I know it might bore people to play the extra overs, but if you attempt to create a realistic, you should provide a realistic game. My rant is over. (A deep sigh of relief).
Mat Coghlan said on 20 April 1999 I recently got Shane Warne Cricket 99 on PC and found it to be the best cricket game I have ever seen even though I only own a Pentium 133. However, there are a few small bugs in it. If the ball is near the boundary, the fielder will give up and wait for the ball to go over the rope. Another problem is that there are no stumpings (or I haven't seen any). If you use the Generate Innings option you might come across a few but no cricket game I have seen has stumpings in it. Also, when the Shane Warne Editor is released, will it be available for download or will I have to buy it. The Codemasters editor is already available and SWEd when it is released will be available for download almost certainly as freeware.
Glen Hanson said on 16 April 1999 I have used the Brian Lara editor and have had no trouble with it so far, its easy to use and great to update player averages and bowling styles. You can also use it to assign players to there specialised fielding positions etc. Oh year thanks Codemasters for making such a great cricket game, although there is still room for improvement and some small bugs to sort out I have enjoyed playing the game so far.
Jon Rothrock said on 14 April 1999 I wanted to address the whole LBW aspect of the game. It is less than impressive. Far too many times I have sent down a straight ball at the middle/off stump and rapped the batters pads with nary an appeal. One bug I have not seen listed on your site: On three separate occasions I have hit the batters pads, there is a shout for LBW that is turned down, but the ball rolls back through the stumps WITHOUT BREAKING THEM! Also I have seen balls hit straight down the pitch through the opposite stumps without hitting/deflecting off them. It's a great game but it does suffer from many gameplay issues. Thanks for your site.
Chris Gin said on 14 April 1999 Someone on your feedback page was having a problem where the game freezes after the coin toss. I had the same problem too and found it only occurred when I had my digital camera plugged into the serial port! I have this problem and do have a Palm Pilot Craddle plugged in to a serial port. Not yet tried this suggestion but will do in due course. Still a pain to have to remove peripherals just to play a game! I'd suggest if you have any peripherals plugged into a serial port (apart from the mouse of course), try removing them. I found that turning off the music and restarting the game helped with the sound problem. Has anyone noticed weird problems when batting with a joystick? Like choosing to do a leg glance and getting an on-drive instead? I thought it may have been a batting assistant feature, but it doesn't happen when using a keyboard.
Mr Anon said on 13 April 1999 What can I say but great game! We've been waiting for ages for a decent cricket game to come along and here it is. It looks fantastic but most importantly its gameplay is excellent. The wealth of tournaments are a little overwhelming but I can't wait for a county version. Surely they must do a follow-up...? Shame about the wides though. Oh, and by the way, I have a Voodoo II card and have had no problems at all. I had a few crashes with one of EA's games though and upgrading the drivers fixed the problem. Usually with PC problems its the machine at fault rather than the game. I would suggest that anyone with the 3DFX complaint reinstall your drivers or use the sweep option under Display Properties.
Ben Faigen said on 12 April 1999 I have a regular p266 with 3dfx system and I used to have crashes just like everyone else. But by using the: (filtered code), not only does the game improve by over 100%, the game has not crashed once. Seems Codemasters forgot to program it properly and with that simple code all the problems have gone and the game runs like it was supposed to.
Craig Giofdano said on 12 April 1999 Here's something that keeps happening to me that is more annoying than the occasional crash. There is a tendency for the fielders to break in the opposite direction of where the ball is hit. Then after they have tricked you into thinking you can score a run or two, the ball, which is nowhere near the fielder, mysteriously appears up in his hand and the end result is a run out. Just wondering if anyone else has experienced that...So far I've only crashed twice. I've learned to save the game every so often. Especially after an over in which I've taken a wicket. I must say that overall, I am very pleased with the game, and the problems I've had with it do not take away from the enjoyment of it. I have experienced this strange teleporting ball on a couple of occasions. Yes, I need to get a life.
Andrew Milham said on 12 April 1999 BUG! I have noticed recently, that when I have an LBW decision which is turned down the ball is not counted as a valid delivery. In one case I managed 4 such deliveries in one over so managed to have a 10 ball over! Feedback! 1) The LBW decision does not seem to depend upon the location of the ball; but the location of the batman's legs when the ball apparently hits them. 2) Fielding, is always a case of the fielder stopping the ball and automatically having it in the hand, and not stopping/half stopping the ball, and having to fetch it afterwards. As far as I can see this should be able to be determined in the same way as catches. 3) In the case of a mis-timed hook, it always appears that the ball is caught. The ball normally balloons, whereas you would expect the ball to fly in a multitude of directions. 4) Batting seems to be a case that if you wish to drive the ball (normally the on drive) you can continue doing this ad infinitum, with very little risk. Even though the fielders do get positioned to reduce the number of runs this creates you can normally get sufficient runs prior to the happening, and the odd boundary afterwards to ensure a fairly easy victory. Requests 1) Is there any chance to allow the delivery position of the bowler to vary. 2) The square leg umpire always appears to be on the same side, and not dependent upon whether the batsman is left or right handed. 3) The umpire never moves to the side of the wicket when the batsman runs.
Ian Mond said on 11 April 1999 I've been playing S.W. Cricket '99 for about two weeks and must congratulate Codemasters on the product. The game feels realistic, the movements are brilliant, and even on easy, you can't score 150 in 10 over without loosing wickets. In other words, this game beats EA Sports in every single area. But most of all, the A.I. is great. It's hard to get the other team out and there doesn't seem to be any hidden glitches to remove batsmen. (In '97 you get bowl a side out for 0, if you used a legspinner and the wind was blowing hard in a certain direction . . .) The A.I. chooses different team members, the A.I. adjust the fields and the A.I. plays harder depending on the situation . . . I am finding the game challenging. However . . . In the one day matches, wides or no-balls are never given - or very rarely (I have never seen a no ball). In effect you can bowl a ball 7ft outside off stump or leg stump and have the umpire just stand there. Very annoying indeed. Further, the games, as people have noted has this unhappy knack of crashing. I hate that; though I've learnt to save regularly. Also, the field restrictions are removed after 10 over and not 15 in the one day games. I dislike the fact you can't custom set the field placing - though the game offers a good range of field positions. I also, while this is only a small nit-pick, I would have liked if the game had tracked the 6 weaker sides. Aside from these problems, I love Shane Warne 99
Ben Woodcock said on 9 April 1999 In reply to easlier comment - "Just one other thing - a very funny bug - once I played a shot down to deep mid-on, the fieldsman chased and returned it to the bowler, who promptly threw it - underarm - back to the fieldsman at deep mid-on!" This isn't a bug. It just means that your bowler was the one fielding the ball. The fielder returns the ball to the bowler for his next ball. I wondered about this for a bit, too.
Brent Williamson said on 8 April 1999 Yesterday I purchased SW99 My system is as follows: Compaq with Intel Pentium 200Mhz MMX, 32 Meg Ram, 3dfx Voodoo 1 with 4 Meg onboard, 800 Meg free space on HDD & ESS (Compaq standard) Sound card. I can play a one day tournament, (only once however) and practice but when I try to select Quick Start or any other game, other than one day tourny, the game starts without sound and gets as far as the coin toss, once that's finished nothing happens, the captains just stand there waiting. it doesn't freeze and I can end task to get out. What I think is happening is the same problem I experience about 80% of the time and that is when you get to the actual game the keyboard stops responding and all you can do is Ctrl-Alt-Del the application. The game is waiting for you to select heads or tails for the toss. I have mentioned this to Codemasters but again no reponse. What's up, am I missing something, I thought perhaps it isn't registering single player mode and waiting for another keystroke but nothing works, I even used my joystick as the other team, but still nothing. (joystick worked in 1 dayer). Also there is no sound in the menus but all music in the intros plays. In the 1 dayers all sound is fine, fx and speech but there is no sound in practice mode. Thinking it was a software fault I took it back to the retailer, who to my disgust loaded it and ran it perfectly on their machine, which was a Pentium 2 450Mhz with 64 Meg Ram, and a Riva TNT with 16Meg onboard. Therefore I concluded that the game was Ok and my PC isn't up to scratch. I can see three possible problems, 1 - Sound card, - however sound works fine in one dayers, 2 - Processor, - Its an Intel, that's what Codemasters want. 3 - 3d card, - The game has the same problems when playing in "software mode" Any thoughts, anyone? Codemasters haven't replied as yet, I guess they're busy dealing with other complaints. Also I had 3dfx crashes during my earlier 1 dayers but updated my voodoo drivers and now have no problems - thanks to Brett Roscoe for that.
Kush Desai said on 7 April 1999 Hello I have been playing BLC for quite some time now and no crashes so far which is good. The game runs great in 3dfX mode with a very smooth frame rate. My system specs are Intel Pentium 2 266MHz, Diamond Monster 3D2 running at 105 MHz ( no problems at all) and 64MB memory. So far I am happy with it but when the umpire gives an out decision. He just lifts his hand. He has no fingers!!
Chris Cirami said on 6 April 1999 Regarding the crashes with 3dfx: I've found that by saving regularly (I save every over), the crashes seem to happen far less often... it might be the way to go until a patch is released :). Oh, and sometimes a freeze will only last a few seconds (I had one that lasted about 20 before play resumed and I was run out since I'd been pressing <Enter> like crazy ;) ). Overall though, I'm extremely happy with the game. In my opinion, it's superior to Cricket '97 in almost every way imaginable (except for the annoying beeps when you select items on the menu screens!). Mind you I've been generating innings for my opponents so I haven't tried bowling yet :) Most of the graphical glitches (such as players walking thru' things and each other) don't reduce the sensation of "being there" too much. The most important thing in my opinion is capturing the atmosphere of cricket and I think BL/SW C99 does that very well - it's actually fun to grind out a slowish century to rescue an innings! Just one other thing - a very funny bug - once I played a shot down to deep mid-on, the fieldsman chased and returned it to the bowler, who promptly threw it - underarm - back to the fieldsman at deep mid-on!
Andrew Gregory said on 2 April 1999 Well, I just purchased Shane Warne Cricket 99 last night and it wasn't cheap. I had been playing the demo of it for about 3 weeks now and was impressed so I bought the full version. The demo was great but I could see it had a lot of improvement to be had. The graphics are quite good. I am running it on a creative voodoo II card and so far no problems. I played a world series 10 over match for about 2 hrs and no crashes. I am also running a p166 straight Intel chip with 32mb Ram which according to the game is minimum specs. But the game seems to run fine. I am amazed some guys are having problems but If your running an AMD chip, that may be the problem for starters. Its not your video card, its the CPU or faulty software. Try running it on an Intel machine with the same video drivers. The only problem I noticed so far is the fact that sometimes the players get called by different names. Such as Glen McGrath was called Michael Bevan when bowling. I thought that was quite amusing and thought that maybe the commentators were a bit intoxicated. I will continue to play the game and let you know of any faults. Just to let you know also that I only made 39 runs off 10 overs and lost to India by 83 runs. That was shocking.
W Haak said on 1 April 1999 Recently with much excitement I purchased Shane Warne Cricket 99 for my PC, unfortunately confirming my biggest fear the game failed to work at all (Autoplay even crashed) when installed on my Cyrix 166+ Machine, hastily I emailed Codemasters in hope that a patch for this problem could be not too far away but no luck this is what they had too say, Dear Sir Thank you for your email. Unfortunately, Brain Lara may not be compatible with Cyrix PC's as they have not been tested with these CPU's. On the box itself, it does quote an Intel Pentium CPU only as these are the systems that it has been tested with. Unfortunately, at present we do not have any patches to rectify this problem, therefore we suggest you return the game back to the shop where you purchased it from. In the meantime, should you require any other information or assistance please do not hesitate to contact us. Regards Codemasters Caught on a technicality I was and I am sure I am not and will not be the only one, basically all I am saying is that there are more processors than just Intel, surely companies after investing the large amounts of money they do into making games, spending that little bit more to check other set-ups is not going to cost a great deal extra, especially if it will open up the market for more sales, for me all this has done is made me a lot more suspicious of game companies. WARNING: DO NOT BUY THIS GAME IF YOU DO NOT OWN A COMPUTER WITH AN INTEL PROCESSOR. REQUEST: All you Cyrix/AMD computer owners send an email to Codemasters and maybe they will get their act together and release a patch. Saying a game has not tested on non Intel hardware is a pathetic excuse by games companies. An AMD and Cyrix machine is not that expensive and with AMD recently outselling Intel in the States companies have got to get their act together or risk losing sales.
Ben said on 28 March 1999 Having had trouble with my AMD chip, I decided to try it out on my mate Pentium Pro 266....He has a generic (modular technology) 3dFx voodoo 1 card.. He experiences the same problems I do...i.e...crashing in 3dfx mode, lagged speech, and the frozen screen crash while the CD drive goes ape shit. So CodeMasters, (I realise this site isn't CodeMasters related) when is the Patch coming out to fix all these problems? It's too easy for you to blame my AMD chip and tell me I can't have my money back...especially when the same problems are experienced on a Pentium Pro chip. We can barely get through a 10 over match on any m/c in 3dfx. The problems encountered are due to crap coding or lack of testing. Other nasty bugs include :-
I guarantee you that an EA game wouldn't be released in this sort of Beta form.. Imagine Fifa99 in this state, there'd be uproar! Can't wait until WC99 is out and I can make this useless CD into a home made clock or Frisbee. Yours, feeling ripped off.
Matt Lane said on 25 March 1999 Just some feedback on BLC (of course from the demo) DOH!! The Helmet cam is far more advanced than the PSX version and is actually cool. It tracks the ball where it goes so you as the player can make better decisions on running because you're right in the thick of the action. It is almost first-person perspective stuff except ya can't turn the guys head yourself, the camera just 'tracks' the ball. There is still room for a lot of improvement in this 'viewing' option but it is definitely a big step towards making ya feel as if your on the turf. The main problems with the way Codemasters has this camera setup is that the controls are strange in that they haven't been directly reversed for facing down towards the bowler (easily fixed), and like on the PSX version when the bowler is placing his 'circular marker' unless the ball is short the marker falls beneath your line of sight, this is easily fixed too I believe as the camera just has to either track the 'circle' itself before the ball is bowled or when playing in the first-person perspective we should be able 'look-around'. The best way they could do this is by having a button you can hold down (and it could be any of them because this is before the ball is bowled) that allows you to 'freelook' (such is the case in quake style games) when you move around your direction keys or pad. This would give you a good look at where the ball is pitching allowing you to make a decision on your shot then the camera can shift back to looking down the pitch in anticipation for the bowler. Just adding to this freelook idea, from the batsmans point of view it would be cool to inspect the fielders and there positioning. In wrapping up, I'd like to say that the more diverse ways in which you can play a game (especially cricket cos its my favourite sport) the better the experience. The default view in BLC/SWC is great, but the ability to be on the crease is 'bloody' great. Brett Roscoe said on 23 March 1999 I noticed Paul Clarke mentioned 3dfx crashes as well as other crashes in Brian Lara Cricket. I received Shane Warne Cricket yesterday and had the same problem. I downloaded new creative voodoo2 drivers and installed them but still had the same problem. I then looked at the voodoo settings and saw a utility to rename old or redundant glide drivers so they would not cause problems with the new ones.The game has been running three hours without a single problem or crash. I am not saying this is the problem Paul is having but just thought I would share my experience in case it helps anybody to run the game without annoying crashes. Sometimes these things are like looking for a needle in a haystack.
Ben Woodcock said on 23 March 1999 I bought BLC last night, and though I am very pleased with it I have had a couple of small problems. I had 2 General Protection Faults, and one time, the game got stuck because my automatic fielder refused to walk all the way to the boundary to pick up the ball (which hadn't quite made it). Meanwhile, the opposition didn't want to run ???? I, like the other Ben, also have an AMD (K6 233, not K6 2), so I wonder whether it is something to do with this. However, I would like to say that Jay (the guy at Codemasters Support) has been fabulous so far in trying to figure out what my problem is. His response times to my e-mails are startling.
Chris Gin said on 23 March 1999 I got my copy of BL Cricket for the PC on Friday and have played it heaps since then (on Village level), so I thought I'd send you my comments. I've had the Playstation version since it was released and have been playing it quite a lot. I found it an excellent game which had some annoying bugs and lacked a few features which would've made it an even better game. The first thing I noticed with the PC version is the graphics which are much cleaner and crisper than the Playstation version (as you'd expect). After having a quick game, I also noticed a few minor improvements over the Playstation version. Nothing major, but things like:
Some annoying things that I wish they would've fixed:
In in all I think the PC version is definitely an improvement over the Playstation version, but not as much as it could've been given the delays.
Paul Clarke said on 21 March 1999 Since posting my problem with the game suddenly crashing out and returning to Windows , I have received 2 E-mails on the subject. So including Amit Gogwekar, there are at least 4 people with this problem (and the game is only two days old, and how many people have this problem and aren't on the internet...most I would have thought) To summarise, the game just stops dead ,with a black screen (this can be after up to 2 hours of normal play, but sometimes as little as 15 minutes) sometimes the sound effects continue for a few seconds, but any keypress takes you straight back to your Windows desktop screen (which works fine without need to re-boot...it's almost as if the game has disappeared, normally you would expect error messages, and probably have to re-boot..but no..very odd !!) But their is one common factor, their is always a period of intense hard disk access either immediately before or immediately after the crash. You can reload the game straight away, but obviously you have to start again (or from your last save) One technical gripe is that turning the speech off (personally I like the speech, but I turned it off for better playability) makes no difference, you can hear the speech being constantly loaded in from disk (hard or CD, I have tried both install options) even though it is not played, to prove this yourself, turn the speech back on quickly between overs to hear the tail end of Aggers description. Oh and Alan Mullaly must be cheesed off, as when he comes out to bat (only then) he is called Andy Caddick!! Is it just me or can you cart the quicks, and get bowled out in no time against even the most moderate spinner? (the same when you are bowling, Hickey got a six for in the first ever game I completed ..twenty over match..two reloads). Oh and FB4, you can see when a swing bowler is on, but Gough, on a hard pitch, nice and fresh, maximum shortball, tap the FB4, and it doesn't even get chest high, when they say 'tap' do they mean once ? Or are we talking a 'track and field' type of build up? If anyone knows could they tell me? It is my feeling that the game code is fine (as I said before I played both demos to death with no problems at all) but the system code needs a good overhaul, the drivers in particular seem to be the cause of most of the problems , (I still cant play with my 3Dfx card, particularly when batting it just crashes, so for now I'm stuck in software mode, could it be the upgrade to Direct X6 ? I have installed Direct x 6, and all the appropriate drivers for my hardware, then tried putting some older drivers back, in case the new ones were too new to have been catered for, then finally put the newest back on again, I mean what a palarver..I just want to play what seems to be a great game. One final thing..releasing games on Friday, then having no Tech support till Monday is a naff idea.
Paul Robson said on 21 March 1999 Note to Ben & anyone else in the UK. *Anything* sold has to be of merchandisable quality. Unless the box *specifically* states it requires an Intel Pentium you have an absolute right to your money back. You have bought something which does not work on a perfectly reasonable machine. Your feedback also suggests that Codemasters are well aware of this problem, and it is a major one. The softcos try this on all the time; if I buy a car and it doesn't start it is not legal to say "you can't have your money back, wait until we've found out why it doesn't start". Ring them up and bollock them; if that doesn't work contact your local trading standards, or a programme like Watchdog if you really want to put the wind up them. This tallies with my opinion of Codemasters software testers; these programs are full of bugs that scream at you if you play them; a play tester should have spotted these if they have the slightest competence. I had three copies of the Megadrive BLC, all of which crashed (it wasn't the MD itself), regularly and the Playstation version is bug ridden. An absolute disgrace; but given the quality of the product, much as I would expect.
Ben said on 19 March 1999 BRIAN LARA DOESN'T WORK ON A NORMAL PC!!!!!!!!!! I consider myself to have a normal PC - I fear normal PC are normally considered to have an Intel chip in them. AMD K6-2 300 Pro After installing the game I always get the blue screen of death and have to reboot my computer. I have been in touch with Codemasters 6 times and all they can come up with is:- "We don't know what the problem is, its under investigation, no you cant have your money back even though the game doesn't work, we'll phone you and everybody else when we know what the problem is, Thank you and goodbye" ALL, and I repeat *ALL*, my drivers are Microsoft DirectX 6 - certified.... My AWE64 drivers are not certified and I have the latest ones off the Creative site :-( £35 for a CD which does not work....I would advise no one to buy this game until Codemasters have sorted it out. I wonder if this is a similar problem (note I don't consider this an acceptable excuse) to other games that have had problems with AMD and Cyrix chips.
Paul Clarke said on 19 March 1999 - Incidentally I still can not reply to your emails Paul. Interesting to note that you have had comments from Amit Gogwekar that the game just hangs, no error message, no warning. Well I've played it SOLID for 20+ hours, and it seems to hang when windows decides to do some of its background file updates (about every two hours, or more precisely EXACTLY every two hours), Sometimes it doesn't crash, mostly it does, I can't pinpoint a pattern (this particular crash has happened three times so on top of the 3dfx crashes I may add) but I think it might have something to do with the game writing to disk the same time as Windows (so it will crash if a wicket falls, and the stats on the disk require updating..maybe..its just a thought) I've forwarded the problem to Codemasters, and yes...I am back playing ITC, BLC is too frustrating to play at the moment.
Krishna Raghavan said on 19 March 1999 I got my copy of Brian Lara Cricket yesterday and believe me I was waiting for it very eagerly. The game is really awesome but it could be made even better by a few modifications. The graphics are good and the motion of the players very smooth and realistic. The controls take a bit of getting used to but in the end they are pretty easy to handle. Now for some minor modifications. After a batsmen gets out, the fielders do not show a lot of emotion. The commentary is not enough during the game and I think there are a lot of quiet periods while playing the game. On the whole though, the game is far superior than any other. It makes me real happy to see some competition going for supremacy in Cricket games. It is we the customers who are going to benefit. Thanks to Codemasters...
Gau Sura said on 19 March 1999 Received my copy yesterday (3/19/99) here in Des Moines, USA. It does live upto its hype. There are two modes of installation. One takes up 480mb, and the other is standard of 90mb. I got enough DASD, so I installed the full game. It does run a lot smoother than the standard. I have a Monster 3D 2, it ran fine w/o any probs. The gameplay is pretty good. I played a world series (10 overs per match at Village level). Sadly, the AI of the umpire is pretty bad in this level. I started bowling a negative line and won the match. Every ball I bowled for the last 5 overs was a wide, and not one was called (although the ump called called a wide when the batsman played and missed one that was way out). The bowling was hard to control at first, but could be mastered at the nets. Playing South Africa in a test match is pretty tough..even in this game at village level..The stadia are pretty sweet, although the commentary could have been better. The sound effects are pretty good but could definitely be better. I'll do more justice to the game this weekend..I'm sure you folks out there will do the same.
Martin James said on 19 March 1999 I've had the full PC version for a couple of days now and I have to say that it is head and shoulders above the Playstation version. I've lost weeks to the game since it came out on the Playstation and it looks as if the same is going to happen again on the PC. The graphics are great but the main thing is the enhancements that have been made to the gameplay. For example, the keeper is way better and the computer batsmen time their onslaughts in the 1 day matches with more intelligence. Also, you can see the ball spinning when a spinner is bowling (it spins differently too for leg spin / off spin) and it bounces up over the ropes on a boundary....small things but lovely touches! Anyway, I love it... I've been playing it on a Creative Voodoo II card with a 200 Mhz CPU, by the way, without any problems at all. For Paul Clarke's attention....you could try a set of slightly older drivers if you are using brand new ones...I've tried this trick with a couple of other games and it worked..! Remember that the newest drivers might not have been released in time to be checked...Also, there is a software version which runs really well too. I had a quick play with that version and it almost looks as nice....perhaps slightly less pretty but more realistic in a way. Oh, and the teams have been updated somewhat...(Elliot's opening for the Aussies, Kumble has his 10 wicket haul in there...)
Paul Clarke said on 18 March 1999 Brian Lara (for the PC) well, this morning it arrived (one day before the official release, I ordered it from Codemasters direct) and yes it's good BUT. It keeps crashing, apparently it might have something to do with my Righteous 3dfx voodoo 2 card, but halfway through EVERY game I have tried so far, the keyboard hangs up, The computer carries on (taking wickets if it's bowling) but the keyboard just packs up (actually if you hold down a key long enough it 'clicks' so I guess the PC is still reading it somehow) I say it's my Righteous card because it mentions it in the known bugs bit and the nice man on the helpdesk told me, but I've been playing the demo for 3 months now with no problems with the same card so I'm not so sure. I've had a PC for 5 years, and 3 operating systems (DOS 95,98, then back to 95 again) probably 100+ games and demos and have only before had one complete non starter of a game, Colin Macrae rally, from guess who....Codemasters. I hope history isn't going to repeat itself (by the way I have several other brand new, graphically intensive games that use the same hardware and work fine, such as Fifa 99,Thief the Dark Project and Codemasters own excellent demo of TOCA II I think all of these require DirectX6 so I don't think that's the problem) Oh well, maybe ITC gets another go tonight. Matt Lane said on 18 March 1999 I've been playing the PSX version of Warney for months now, I've played 'both' the PC demos of lara now as well. Call me critical but one thing that stood out in the PC demo for me was this. Amongst the wonderful looking graphics via my 3dfx card I found it ironic that (like the PSX version) the names of players could not be made out on the back of one-day outfits. Instead its just that same blurred 'fuzz of a word' sitting on the back of the players shoulders. (Look at the ground scorecard as well. Whilst fuzzy it is clearly not the current match.) With the time Codemasters had, and with the enhanced graphics that come with PC technology I thought it wouldn't have been too much trouble to make this version of the game less 'playstationary'. I hope however there are various enhancements to warrant the PC game 'better' than the PSX version as it would be a shame if it is simply a clone with souped up graphics and a minor addition here or there.
Kris Rajan said on 11 March 1999 I can't believe that Codemasters have set March 19th as the release date of BLC PC version! Championship Manager 3 is being released on the same day and surely Codemasters will lose out..... Just a thought..... My take on this is that fans of both games will buy both and neither should lose out. Codemasters already have another big release (TOCA 2) scheduled for the March 26th so do not want to release 2 games on the same day. To delay Brian Lara Cricket further would be irritating. There are several other big release imminent (not sports) like Civ: Call To Power and Rollercoaster Tycoon.
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