Problems

I haven’t received a download link

Download links are sent immediately after the PayPal purchase is complete by an automated system.   If you don’t see an email with a download link within a minute or two of purchasing the software, check your spam folder and make an exception for emails from speedboatsim.com if necessary.

Updater/Patcher won’t finish downloading

If the updater/patcher gets stuck on the first file, it may be due to file permissions settings on your machine. Try right clicking the game executable or desktop shortcut and choosing “run as administrator” from the list that appears.

If that doesn’t work, contact your network administrator to grant the appropriate file permissions on your machine. If you’re playing this at an office you can expect to run into these kinds of file permissions problems. In cases like this your machine could be preventing software from being downloaded or overwritten for security purposes.

I can’t save my boats.

The default DIDI_Boat files found in the “Boats” folder are intended to come with the product and can’t be overwritten.   You can start by loading one of those, then modify and save it in the save/load boats panel by changing the file name.   Press backspace a few times to clear the file name and type in a new one.  Then click “save boat.”

If that does not work, chances are you’re on an office computer where file permissions are set to block programs from writing files to the hard drive for security reasons.  In that case, please talk to your system administrator for help getting Windows to allow the program to write files to your hard drive.  For liability reasons it must be done by someone at your company.

Even if you never save your boats, this is important to address because the update/patcher needs the ability to overwrite the program as development work continues and new releases become available (see previous problem “Updater/Patcher won’t finish downloading”).    Most home computers are not configured by default this way so it isn’t a problem for most users.

Program crashes when running in windowed mode with a force feedback steering wheel while clicking between different windows.

Solution: Please run the program in full screen mode the way nature intended! The only time running in windowed mode is recommended is when waiting for the software to update.

This problem has been looked at several times and appears to be caused by a rare glitch in DirectInput (Windows). When you click off the screen and back onto it, your game controllers have to be reaquired by the operating system. Usually it works ok, but occasionally DirectInput appears to fail to do this properly and it causes the program to crash.

Slow performance or game crashing (especially on laptops)

This software requires modern gaming hardware to run.   Cheap laptops in particular have posed a problem.   A $200 office laptop designed for web browsing and email is not going to have enough power to run this or any other modern 3D game.  The graphics hardware is too slow or doesn’t have enough memory to run it.   If you have a gaming laptop running other high end 3D games you should be ok.   This software is not as demanding as most of today’s AAA games, so if you’re running some of those acceptably, you’ll probably be ok.

Game crashes when pressing “play”