So I’ve been having issues getting CNC4. Not only is it a legitimately bought copy but it was even a pre-order. It didn’t work properly so I filed a support request as you can read in my blog post entitled “CNC4 Fail”. My annoyance was that my details weren’t getting read properly. EA seem to employ many more drones and can’t be bothered particularly reading what I wrote. So I did some more work and I got some progress.

Ok, so I deleted everything in my temp folder, restarted and saw what happened. I saw the cnc4launcherupdate.exe file being created which was funky but then I received the same error message. So I deleted it, relaunched and got the same error message. Eventually after doing this repeatedly the launcher eventually loaded. Clearly you don’t a) check that the file is properly downloaded and b) prompt to redownload in this situation (given that you don’t check it to begin with it would be rather hard to do).

Once the launcher loaded I was stuck on the r1core_data_cnc4.game.rtp file not downloading properly and crashing. I am still stuck at this point.

So eventually got an update to this:

Hello there,

Thank you for contacting EA Games Support,

I sincerely apologize for inconvenience caused to you. I have checked the DXDiag of your computer the drivers are out dated please install the latest driver. In order to know your drivers open the dxdiag file and go to the “Display Devices” and check the drivers under ” Driver Date/Size” You will find how old your driver is. To correct this you have to update your computer driver, I have included the link for your convenience please go through and make necessary changes.

Should you have any further questions, please take a moment to review our Knowledge Base site at http://support.ea.com.

Sincerely,

EA Rep Austin
Electronic Arts

I’m annoyed that they’re apologising and not actually reading my responses. Drivers might be a problem but I initially a) couldn’t launch the launcher and b) the launcher can’t patch properly so it doesn’t matter what version of my display drivers I’m on, I’m not even getting there.

Seriously?

I mean, seriously? Your launcher has a flaw in it that it doesn’t validate that the download has completed successfully (even a simple MD5 sum or file size check should fix this) and then tries to run the app which fails because the file isn’t downloaded correctly.

Problem number two is what appears to be an issue that the launcher when you finally get the damn thing updated hands on downloading the r1core_data_cnc4.game.rtp file. This doesn’t appear to be an uncommon issue looking through the forum.

Don’t worry, I don’t need an answer to this. I gave up. I wanted to play the game and I got a crack. The game runs nicely and I’m progressing through the missions fine. Thanks for not reading my messages. Repeatedly.

The funny thing was that whilst I uninstalled and reinstalled the game I got a CNC4 server emulator downloaded, copied it into place, made the required changes to my hosts file and I started playing the game. It is working perfectly fine. It depresses me that I got what I couldn’t have paid for – I could have illegally downloaded the game and I would have actually been playing it faster than the legal game. As it stands the legal version isn’t still working anyway so in some respects I’m still behind by paying money. So I responded to their message with the text above and I also ticked the ” I no longer need an answer to this question.” I don’t require a response any more because it is working, just not their intended way.

Of course the sad thing is that the game is working fine and I’m enjoying it. It is a different concept that I’m trying to get my head around but it is pretty enjoyable. I haven’t had much time to go through it and I’ve only done the first few GDI missions but I’ll get there eventually. It looks like there are a few glitches which could be patched but since patching the game legally doesn’t work I guess I’ll never know.