I just baught sid meier's pirates from ebay after watching pirates 3 the other day. I went straight from the theateres to wal-mart only to find they dont have it, so after a six day bid-off on ebay i end up winning the game and finally get it in the mail a week later, only to encounter another delay when the cd-key did not work.

After sorting that part out, i finally get the thing installed and i run into ANOTHER problem! the game is having graphical issues, and the characters all show up wierd and partly transparent. This is not too bad and i could live with it except that i cannot spend more than five seconds on the ocean before the game crashes.

I know its not my video card because i meet the minimum requirements (32MB of video RAM) and it runs more advanced games than pirates just fine and yet it continues to crash everytime i try to play. I've waited so long for this damn game and now i can't play it.

If anybody knows why my game is not working, or has an idea where to start looking, please help me out.

Yeahhhh.

What with the last comment you made here and everything.. the one you were banned for..

Totally not believing the e-bay part. At all.


I vote for further bannination.

Alright, the title was meant purely for smartass purposes, but the game is legit. Im not going to do something that blately against the rules so soon after being banned, it took all of 3 minutes last time for an admin to spot the thread and kick me off, which is a full 7 days faster than even the fastest of any other site ive ever been banned from.

and honestly i dont think ill get the response im hoping for in that time. so to make sure you people believe that i didn't steal this, here:



Thats a picture of the actuall game case as it came from ebay, in front of a newspaper. Though im not sure what good the newspaper does, its a week old as of this point, and really doesn't prove anything. Its just what ive always seen done in movies when you want to prove something is real, and i figured id include it so the picture had more to look at then just my dusty computers.

And its not technically a newspaper either, just an old shoppers guide i found within arms reach of my chair.

Yeah, the paper in the movies is to prove it's a recent picture.

Have you downloaded and installed the latest official patches for the game?

That's a pretty damn small case.

Thats what your doctor said about your wang.

The simplest sollutions are often the best (and the most commonly overlooked when your pissed off).

The game is now running smoothly without any flaws, so far as i have seen.

Thank you lassev! i shall name my boat after you.

I can't help that.

O_____o

I spoke too hastily, the graphical errors are gone, but after about 20 minutes of play the game once again crashed on me.

Something is still wrong...

Your video card sounds like it's gone. What sort of graphics errors are they? If they are messed up textures, it's possible that it's just that the disk is scratched up and your install is screwed up. Do you have the latest video card drivers? The fact that other games work ok, makes me think it could be a driver issue though.

I haven't played the game so I don't know anything about it, but being from 2004 it certainly shouldn't be incompatible with new machines. You could also have a look at the game settings and see if for example disabling 3D sounds or something else would make it run more smoothly.

And of course you should also Google for similar issues people might have reported. Visit some major sites/forums dedicated for the game, etc.

Pirates! is crazy fun. I may not be able to help you out, but have fun with the game! Ahar!:P

Ok, upgrading the video driver did nothing but make the game load slower the first time i opened it afterwards.

As for googling it, i already did that and the results gave me a help site which told me to upgrade the vidoe driver. (...)

later though i found another forum (with google again) that was some kind of fan site and there was another guy on there with a similar problem, though his game seemed to crash at any given time, not just at sea like mine. he had already done all the things i have tried and someone suggested that he turn all the graphics settings UP.

this sounded pretty odd to me, but after looking into it it turns out that this is a newer version of a VERY old game and it has been improved so many times, that the original code is in tatters. apparently whatever in the game is there to lower some settings for slower computers (like mine ) is real choppy and causes problems sometimes.

i maxed out all of the graphics settings and played again, and surprisingly, it has been running for an hour and a half, and though about half of the original graphics errors are back and it runs pretty slow in battles with complicated visuals, it has yet to crash on me.

im sick of messin with it so im going to call this a success. the graphical errors are not that bad, and moving a little slower at times is upsetting, but something i can live with. at least now it runs long enough for me to enjoy it.

thank yoou all for your help, im off to sink ships now.