For a long time, I’ve been avoiding posts with fixes I discover myself but I’ve noticed that people need these fixes and I should make them public. When I started playing Need for Speed Hot Pursuit on the PC, I had a certain issue at times when the game would crash either on the start or when pressing “Enter Any Key” screen.

Criterion has released 5 patches since the launch of the game and none of the patches fix this issue. However, I’ve found the culprit behind the problem and that’s the config files for the game. If you’re experiencing this issue, follow these steps:

1. Navigate to “Documents\Criterion Games\Need for Speed(TM) Hot Pursuit” folder. (Win7/Vista – 32/64 both).
2. You should be able to see a file called “config.NFS11Save“. Delete that file.
3. Move inside the folder called “Save\Default“.
4. You will find another config file called “controls.NFS11Save“. Delete that file as well.
5. Launch the Game now.

There’s really no need to save or backup the files deleted because they will be recreated by the game. It will definitely work. Enjoy.

To explain what’s wrong; Well, it’s probably because the game tries to actively map the hardware configuration IRQs or handlers from these config files without checking if the hardware is actually connected at the correct addresses and thus crashes. Criterion, if you’re reading this, please fix it.

UPDATE: Post updated to reflect the latest version and should work for Firefox 7,8,9.

Here’s a small but useful post for people, who use Internet Download Manager and have recently moved to Firefox 9. The old Firefox add-on that came with IDM is not compatible with Firefox 9. There are alternative solutions on the internet like the FlashGot extension. Anyhow, it’s a simple matter of a new add-on. Download the add on below and install it on your Firefox 9 browser.

http://www.internetdownloadmanager.com/idmmzcc/idmmzcc.xpi

1- Open Firefox,
2- Paste the link to the address bar and Go,
3- Wait for the download,
4- Restart Firefox,
5- Enjoy.

Alternatively, if the above link doesn’t work for some reason or is an older one. Here’s one hosted on my site with the latest version. This works with Firefox 9 as well.

Internet Download Manager 7.3.10.xpi Firefox 7,8,9

Hey guys,

It has been so long since I wrote a technical or programming post. One reason is that I am busy with an awesome social game project at the company I’m working with right now, White Rabbit Online. I’m having a great time with the project but have also been working with Papersteer, more on that in another post.

While working with Papersteer, I created many solutions for the ActionScript world and I learned a lot as well. During this time, I came along a problem which required me to create filled circles using Papervision. Initially, I searched around the net and found Seb’s 3D Circle post. However, that did not solve my problem and I needed filled 3d circles/disks. I looked into Vectorvision for Pv3D as well but the absence of true 3D geometry forced me to trash that as well.

I missed TriangleFan because I’ve used in C# and other platforms. So, I went ahead and tried to simulate a TriangleFan algorithm.  It didn’t take me long and all I needed to do was create a rotated path for the common triangle vectors. Voila, see below:

Patterns? . Click on the snapshot below to view the original image. This one uses 500 segments to draw the circle.

There may be better ways to make this. If there are, do let me know. Download the source with demo here.