1.49 Woes (tech tales from the great white north)

[Cipher7071]

Well, it's finally happened. I can no longer find game in SEIV version 1.49. I knew it was going to happen. The only question I've ever had was whether it would happen before the release of SEV. With that question answered, and to those of you who are now looking at me in puzzlement and pity, I must relate the most recent chapter in Tech Tales of the Great White North:

Don't get me wrong. I love the great white north. It's simply that at times, I've had cause to ponder just why that is. Case in point, my current dilemma. You see, I live 4 miles north of a village of 2000 in upper Michigan, and 70 miles from any real sort of shopping mall. So naturally, given the current price of gas, and the 2 1/2 hour round trip, excursions to that mall are generally not undertaken at a moment's notice. But what can that possibly have to do with SEIV version 1.49 problems? If you lived here you'd already know where this is going...

It all began with a perfectly innocent post regarding a question on slow combat graphics in which I happened to mention that I was still using version 1.49. That generated a response asking whether I realized that the 1.94 patch would remedy this sad state of affairs, guide me from the outskirts of the SEIV community, and place me squarely within the mainstream. "Gadzooks!" said I. Can this be true? I was confidently assured of its veracity, and that all I needed was to download said patch from Strategy First.

Rendering my profuse thanks to the individuals involved, I proceeded to do just that. So far, so good. At first I downloaded the less-than-2MB version of the patch, obtained through a link from Malfador. This turned out to be the wrong one. Cursing my own ineptitude, I went directly to Strategy First in search of the correct version. Aye, there's the rub. The correct version of the patch is a relatively hefty file of 73 MB. Internet connections in my little corner of the great white north are either satellite or dial-up. Care to guess which I have?

Being that it was roughly 9 PM on a Wednesday evening, I decided to give the overnight download a try. No luck. I tried again Friday morning. Again, no luck. I'll probably make another overnight attempt tonight, but I don't hold out much hope for it.

So... okay, I can still do this. I have a friend that does a whole lot of business on the web. He has a DirecWay satellite connection and a CD ROM burner. Only trouble there is the guy barely knows which side goes up on the CDs, let alone have any blanks to burn. And given that you can hardly buy a pair of pants in the nearby town of 2000, what do you suppose the odds are I can drive 5 miles and buy a CD that doesn't already have music on it?

I haven't exhausted all the local possibilities yet, but it gives me pause to wonder whether I might be able to obtain the 1.94 patch on CD through the mail?

And Atrocities gets worked up over Sci-Fi Channel scheduling.

[Suicide Junkie]

I have a solution for you!
Grab a BitTorrent Client.

Then download this 23 kb torrent file

Open the file with your BT client, and it will download the patch for you.
Stop and restart at any time.
Each little piece of the file gets checked for integrity as it comes in.

Seeing as your modem is going to be the bandwidth chokepoint, you should get full speed.

[Cipher7071]

Gadzooks! Can this be true? Thank's for the link. I'll download it.


You know, I once had a similar utility. It was a Netscape product, and I lost it during a software crash several years ago. When I went looking around for it this week, my search began turning up info on how Netscape installed spyware on the very thing I was looking for. I don't like companies who install spyware, so I decided not use their stuff.

[Baron Munchausen]

Yep, that's how I managed to get the 'Deluxe' patch downloaded on my own dialup connection. Not only is it dialup, but being a 'budget' ISP they have a 2 hour time limit per connection! (Ok, 4 hours on weekends...) But Bittorrent can resume partial downloads, so I was able to get around even that obstacle and have long since burned my copy of the patch to a games CD along with a bunch of other goodies.

[Cipher7071]

Okay. I got the download while fixing supper. I'll let you know how it works out- hopefully in a game forum. Thanks again.

[Slick]

Word O' The Day: "Gadzooks"

(also spoken as "Great Horny Toads" in certain parts of the country)

[Strategia_In_Ultima]

That Torrent file, Standard to Deluxe 1.94, does it also work for Gold?

[Ed Kolis]

It should, since it's the same patch...

[Fyron]

Yes.