I HATE kids computer games (I would probably hate adult ones too, but I haven't had a reason to tangle with them). It's not the content that I hate--most of the parentally-screened games are actually pretty good--its the installation and maitenance that I despise.
The latest game, CrossCountry USA 2, exhibits several frustrating behaviors. The big one is that we can't seem to get it to save. When we enter a filename and press "Save", we get a "Can't Save, Invalid Path Name" error. I tried typing fully-qualified paths, and that made no difference. I even did some research on their not-that-helpful website, and found some possible changes to the programs config file (they weren't in explicit response to my error, it was more of a bank-shot possibility). Of course they didn't work. I emailed Support yesterday and am waiting.
Another major flaw is that when I Alt-Tab toggle--to leave the program running but gain access to Windows--it goes "poof" and shows an error referring to an invalid video mode. This flaw compounds the first problem because it would be the work-around to not being able to save.
Besides those, there are the usual little quirks that nothing works with normal conventions--for instance, pressing HOME in the Save dialog does not return me to the beginning of the line, it does nothing.
I have a nascent theory about games. I hypothesive that, by and large, the people who are attracted to game development are the kind of people who only want to work on the fun, interesting stuff, and have a very low attentiveness to "run, block and tackle" basics. So, rounding out the UI, meticulous de-bugging, etc, are given short-shrift. (I freely admit this theory is based on little first-hand experience and is definitely born of snarkiness.)
1:05:56 PM 
|
|
