When I was in Arizona at Christmas time, I picked up some games for my Mac. Since then I’ve been happily playing Halo, not so happily playing Aliens vs. Predator 2 (it’s not a patch on the original) and not playing Unreal Tournament 2003 at all.
I haven’t been playing Unreal Tournament 2003 at all because it wouldn’t start up. After the somewhat lengthy install process, I clicked on the game icon, was presented with a startup screen… and then the game quit. Checking the error log, I found the line “Can’t find file for package ‘ParticleMeshes’” popping up a lot.
I tried re-installing. I tried the online support. I tried scouring the web to find anybody with similar problems. It seemed I was alone.
So I sent off an email to the folks at MacSoft explaining my troubles. To be honest, I wasn’t expecting to get a very useful response. I thought I’d be told that my computer was at fault or that I should take the game back to the shop for a refund.
To my surprise, the response I received was:
“Hi Jeremy,
Sounds like a bad disk. Send me your address and I will ship you a new set.”
I sent my address. The MacSoft Tech Support people in America passed on my address to their British counterparts at Softline UK and they popped the CDs into the post.
The CDs arrived today. Once again, I went through the whole install process. This time, everything went like clockwork. I’m back in fragging business.
I’m impressed. In this age of playing call-centre phone tag and buck-passing, it’s refreshing to find some straight-up real-world bug tracking.
Many thanks to Greg Grimes at MacSoft and Glenn Stokes at Softline UK.