So yes, GFW Marketplace is broken
yaugin
a lot like Steam in its crazy promotional pricing. But whereas Impulse
and Steam are both functioning pieces of software, GFWM is not.
I decided to give it a try when the service offered the complete Age
of Empires 3 bundle for 10 cents a few days ago. I have yet to see a
payoff from that investment.
The client fails to download the game -- it crashes somewhere on each
attempt. Other people on the forums are reporting the same kind of
error with no apparent cause.
Tim O
wrote:
My guess would be server load. They need to prepare for that if
offering that kind of deal.
Valve has had a few years to get their infrastructure tweaked. I
remember the Counter Strike players going apeshit for weeks about
downtime when STEAM launched.
rms
remember the Counter Strike players going apeshit for weeks about
downtime when STEAM launched.
It was a Steaming load of crap when it first started. Remember the
despairing cobweb-covered skeleton looking at the 'updating Steam client'
messages comic? I've had none of the issues with GFWL that others mention,
btw.
rms
yaugin
>
> My guess would be server load. They need to prepare for that if
> offering that kind of deal.
It would be understandable if downloads were intermittently
unavailable or slow after a big sale. The issue I have is that the
client is crashing, not telling me that downloading is unavailable. A
side effect to this is that it does not gracefully recover from a
crash either; the download is usually corrupted and reset to 0%, which
is why I still have no game to play.
>
> Valve has had a few years to get their infrastructure tweaked. I
> remember the Counter Strike players going apeshit for weeks about
> downtime when STEAM launched.
Fair enough, but Steam was a legitimately new service being run by a
team with no previous experience. GFWM is billed as an extension to
XBLM, which Microsoft has been running for years. I'm sure everything
will be fixed over time, but right now there are parts of the software
that are still alpha-quality. Error handling just isn't there.
yaugin
indicated they were able to fix the crashing problem by
installing .NET Framework 4. This is apparently an undocumented and
unchecked dependency of the GFW Marketplace client (the published
requirements say 3.5SP1, which I already had). Sure enough, after
installing the newest .NET, I have been running the client for a
record 30 minutes without issue, so it looks like that is the real
fix.
The official Microsoft reps are still waiting for an answer from the
engineers. I'm sure they are busy firing off memos that read "don't
change dependencies without telling anyone". While I'm just happy to
be able to download my 10-cent game, the story would be quite
different if I was purchasing a full $40 title. And while I was able
to fix my problem, the nature of it certainly doesn't inspire
confidence in the service. Come Xmas time I'm sure there will be some
more crazy deals and that'll be another opportunity for trying out the
service without risking much in the way of currency.
Tim O
wrote:
>After some more digging in the forums, I found some user posts that
I bought F1 2010 via STEAM when they had it on sale a week or so ago.
This was my first experience with a STEAM game that also uses GFWL,
and it was quite a thrill show watching it go through all of the crap
it had to do to get running.
After the download, the GFWL had to update itself, then I ran the game
via STEAM which gave me a popup of the game key to put in GFWL, which
then updated the game, restarted, updated GFWL again then asked me to
do my GFWL login (a bit of a mad scramble, since I never use it).
It just felt like during this whole half hour process that one
mis-step like not writing down my install key or properly logging into
GFWL would have made my whole install screw the pooch.
Hopefully STEAM reminds you of the security key every time you
reinstall, too.
KCB
"Tim O" <timo56...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:6ohre69q8k7ai4g8f...@4ax.com...
I remember FO3 having the annoying GFWL bs. It's been a while, but I think
I ended up running that without the GFWL crap logged in.
Christian Brandt
After not using it for some weeks I gave it a try and looked into the
running special deals.
So I started GFW... and got a mighty 8723581234whatever error. Oh Lord.
Aunt Google didn't know anything. Bing suggested installing Service Pack
6 for WinNT on my Win7. I am running XP though.
Being a trained psychopath in the arts of computer insanity I rebooted
into my Admin-Account, tried again, now it is a
8723581235youdontwanttoknow error.
If everything fails, update and/or reinstall everything. Microsoft
Update found GFW3.4 in the special section of unsupported updates behind
the warning sign "hungry unhappy lions beyond this point" which have to
be installed using a holy mackarell and parts of a 1987 Ford Accolade
while walking 30 miles in a blizzard.
Three lions later I get a GFW login window WITHOUT AN ERROR. Hail
Microsoft, you are quite the daring saviour, let me enter my account, we
praise you, here is my password, be your generosity upon us...
8723581236yousuck error.
...
...
After replacing my headbutted display I pray to the allknowing gods and
daemons of the interweebs. Bing suggests buying bottled monkeys
featuring a sponsored link to Amazon. Google features 15 hits on raw
squid log files and then a link into the xbox forum - right, you have a
problem with your Games for Windows access and the best place to get
help is the xbox forum. I should check out the bottled monkeys again,
maybe I missed the FAQ about GFW over there.
Inside the xbox forum I find three topics about the problem. Always with
the first post stating "I have an 8723581236yousuck error", a random
number of "me too" and finally "noone got a solution" and then "topic
closed".
Oh wait, the fifth topic gets help. It is actually about "where to get
the AOE3 deal" but someone mentions "I had to accept the new EULA
through Live Messenger to connect with my account, had a funny
8723581236yousuck otherwise" - he was banned within 20 minutes for
posting offtopic, he was asking for that.
Sumup: you have to log into a chat programm (which sucks so big wide and
ugly that you have personally revoked execution rights for that piece of
crap by directly edition the binary data in a disc editor, you actually
learned programming and studied six semesters computer sciendce only to
get rid of it) to receive a message that totally different other program
has changed its EULA, then you have to accept the new EULA inside said
chat client which opens moar info in firefox though firefox fails at
displaying any of the information because it is obviously 7bit-PETSCII
using a rare silverlight based online translation from chinese to
russian to french to bavarian and then to english. I actually have
german as my desktop language but fine with me. Ah yes, it is using
incompatible Javascript as well. By making IE my default browser - which
instantly killed most sentient live five miles around my house - I get
the full EULA.
And guess what happens when I press the "I accept" button. You wont
believe it. This is not happening, cant be, dogs and cats in love. It
works. I can log into GFW.
Let me guess, Microsoft tests the GFW client by typing "hello world"
into a random MSN chat window, ignoring the "you are not connected"
message and then shoting the computer with bottled monkeys to stopp the
smoking power supply from fataly poisioning the user. Resulting in
poison death of the user AND the bottled monkey. Claiming that the
bottled monkey had the experience of his life.
Christian Brandt
Tim O
wrote:
>I remember FO3 having the annoying GFWL bs. It's been a while, but I think
>I ended up running that without the GFWL crap logged in.
I think that was the first game I bought that used it, but like you
said, it wasn't mandatory. Some of the newer stuff I've purchased like
Red Faction Guerrilla and F1 2010 force it on you.
Red Faction won't save your games (or even remap keys if I remember
correctly) if you're not logged into GFWL.
KCB
What pissed me off about FO3 was the different SAVE directories. If you ran
it with GFWL, it would put your saves in Folder_XYZ, but running it without
would put them in _ABC. Imagine starting a game, after playing 90+ hours,
and having it appear that your saved games were gone. Of course, once I
figured it out, it was easy enough to move the saves. I actually started
putting my latest on a thumb drive so I could carry them between machines.
yaugin
a responsible citizen, I had previously changed my client settings so
that the game would install to my game partition (L), which is not my
Windows partition (D). D is specifically optimized to allow for the
OS, pagefile, and about 1GB of breathing room.
So I click Install, and it runs for about 5 minutes. I assume it's
decompressing files as it should. Then it tells me I don't have enough
space -- on D. I go to Usenet and lament the state of the software.
The End
Tim O
wrote:
>Okay, so I finally got around to completing the AOE3 download. As I am
That really sucks, but I'm actually surprised you haven't run into
this problem before. For the last couple of years, most games haven't
been putting their saves in the games root directory. Instead, they go
in the My Documents or My Documents/My Games folder of your Windows
partition.
I do something similar to you, except I put all my games and temp
files on a second drive. Even though no games reside on my Windows
drive, I still have nearly 6 gig of game files/saves in the My
Documents folder. I think the 1 gig you left for overhead on your
primary partition is way too low.
Schrodinger
Wow. MS really go that extra mile to be complete dicks - and succeed
every time!
Tim O
> I have no idea what C is talking about..must work for Micrsoft.
>
>Legion
Brevity is the soul of wit
-William Shakespeare
Etal
> God had I fun with GFW yesterday :-)
>
Thanks for the Lolling good post.
[snip]
... most of the fun hoop-jumping stuff that a publisher put you
through to lock you into being able to use *only* their own products.
>
> Sumup: you have to log into a chat programm (which sucks so big wide and
> ugly that you have personally revoked execution rights for that piece of
> crap by directly edition the binary data in a disc editor, you actually
> learned programming and studied six semesters computer sciendce only to
> get rid of it) to receive a message that totally different other program
> has changed its EULA, then you have to accept the new EULA inside said
> chat client which opens moar info in firefox though firefox fails at
> displaying any of the information because it is obviously 7bit-PETSCII
> using a rare silverlight based online translation from chinese to
> russian to french to bavarian and then to english. I actually have
> german as my desktop language but fine with me. Ah yes, it is using
> incompatible Javascript as well. By making IE my default browser - which
> instantly killed most sentient live five miles around my house - I get
> the full EULA.
Sigh! What a tangled web they intentionally weave.
--
Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit amphetamines.
Marcel P.
> The GFW(M?) client looks a lot like Impulse, and the store is behaving
> a lot like Steam in its crazy promotional pricing. But whereas Impulse
> and Steam are both functioning pieces of software, GFWM is not.
Yea, the cocksuckers at Microsoft forced this shit upon me by making it
mandatory for a few older games I bought and then sneaking the marketplace
into it later.
I never aggreed to those "features" when I installed my older GFWL games.
They even tried to get me to accept their new EULA, which I declined. I'm
betting I could sue them for the cost of all my GFWL games becauese I only
agreed to the old EULA for GFWL and not the new one with the Marketplace
"feature". I smell class action lawsuit if anyone cares to start the
process. :)
Marcel P.
And the nubs are going to trust Microsft with "The Cloud" that will be in
Win8? Mwahahahahaaaa....
Marcel P.
> So do what I've always done. One of the first things I do on a new windows
> installation is to relocate the "My Documents" folder to my separate Data
> partiton. You can even do it after the fact since you are given the option
> to move all of the files in the old folder to the new one as part of the
> relocation.
>
> me/2
I've never done that because it can mess up certain apps that ecpect it to
be in the default location. What I would like to know is why are all the
dumbass game compnaies putting their save game folders and shit in the
Documents folder when Miscrosoft created a Saved Games folder for that
purpose? News Flash to game developers: the Documents folder is a folder
for users to store their "documents" in and is not meant to be full of
fucking game folders you stupid fucking morons.