Ratchet & Clank Future glitch may halt play

by Ludwig Kietzmann { Oct 23rd 2007 at 8:30PM }

It looks like the early release of Ratchet & Clank Future: Tools of Destruction is not without consequence. Shacknews reports that some American PlayStation 3 owners may encounter a glitch which prevents them from playing Insomniac's latest platformer. Unlike the sudden loss of your arms or a critical lack of money, however, you can entirely blame someone in the quality assurance department for this predicament*.

Insomniac community manager James Stevenson describes the issue, which presents itself during the game's setup, as such: "With specific amounts of free space on your drive, you may see a screen that tells you have insufficient space to create game data even though there is plenty of free space on your drive." He remains decidedly non-specific regarding said "specific amounts," but at least the man provides a workaround. If you encounter the problem, "either delete or add about 500MB of data to your hard drive and the problem will go away." You'll know you've won when you can actually play the game.

*Excluding the unlikely circumstance of an insane QA manager capturing you and lopping off your arms. We've heard stories.

Tags: Glitches, Insomniac, Platformer, Ratchet-and-Clank, RatchetandClank

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 3)

LaughingTarget @ Oct 23rd 2007 8:34PM

Better yet, make the game work before selling it. That hard?

Poisoned Al @ Oct 23rd 2007 8:37PM

That would mean beta testers and they cost money. Better for the public to deal with this shit huh?

ruibing @ Oct 23rd 2007 9:11PM

You guys really are really getting more and more brutal with your posts and comments. Of all the news about the game to post, you chose a small glitch that has an instant workaround. Yes it is a problem, but can't you guys post something positive as well, like, I don't know..., the good reviews?

http://www.metacritic.com/games/platforms/ps3/ratchetandclankfuturetoolsofdestruction?q=ratchet%20clank

why not the LS2/LS7? @ Oct 23rd 2007 9:12PM

Beta testers don't cost money.

In-house testers cost money.

And beta testing is just a method of foisting off testing on the public. Like all the angry people who were forced to test Halo 3.

plyx @ Oct 23rd 2007 9:16PM

Remember a few weeks ago when people couldn't play their copies of Bioshock? That was blown way out of proportion, too.

tbor @ Oct 23rd 2007 10:45PM

Speaking of Bioshock bugs, the PC version is so buggy and unplayable on my rig (and many others too) that with no patch in sight, I had to take it back to Best Buy. (Something I hardly ever do... since as you know it's no easy feat returning opened software to those blue shirted goons!)

gonk @ Oct 23rd 2007 11:17PM

that's why i got the 360 version. guaranteed compatibility. and it was great. i just wish i could'vd taken a screenshot of one spot in the last level

Poisoned Al @ Oct 24th 2007 4:43AM

@why_not: Oh thank you for telling me what beta testing is. I didn't know that, even though I used to be a programmer. Back when I was doing it a beta test was done by ANYONE that wasn't the devs, in house or otherwise. I'm sure today alpha tests are done by rhesus monkeys instead of the design team. Blind me with your deep knowledge o wise one!

playwhutyalike @ Oct 23rd 2007 8:34PM

Phattie, Shags, I need you guys on damage control: stat!

Snatcher (MDF - Halo Ring) @ Oct 24th 2007 1:17AM

Needle in a haystack problem though. You would have to a.) find a PS3 owner, and b.) one that uses their console for games. Tough.

FOXHOUND @ Oct 24th 2007 9:23AM

Snatcher, you sir, have the best SN I've seen on joystiq yet. :]

Snatcher (MDF - Halo Ring) @ Oct 24th 2007 9:49AM

Appreciate it!

F1 @ Oct 23rd 2007 8:38PM

Ouch! Sony's first good game in a while is released and it won't even work! What will they think of next?

Ed @ Oct 23rd 2007 11:19PM

A useless over-rated program that folds proteins.

Rususeruru @ Oct 23rd 2007 8:38PM

Add data? WTF that's got to be the dumbest space calculation error of all time!

gonk @ Oct 23rd 2007 8:38PM

oops

i still remember the speedway bug in spyro 3. if you left the map without winning a race you'd attempted, you'd never be able to collect the prize on subsequent tries. i was halfway through the game when i found that out

Poisoned Al @ Oct 24th 2007 7:09AM

I can top that:

Black & White. Yes, a game you couldn't even finish without a patch has got to be the worst to date.

sheppy2.0 @ Oct 24th 2007 7:37AM

I got one worse for you. A pokemon spinoff game that, while attempting to import your pokedex, will completely erase your entire collection of Pokemon. Good thing they fixed THAT issue before it left Japan.

Crono (NDF - Knight of the Old School) @ Oct 24th 2007 9:19AM

I've got one better better: Elder Scrolls II Daggerfall. Launched with game critical glitches like falling infinitely through dungeons or constantly getting stuck in walls. Save often, and in different slots, because it would corrupt your savegames too. Even after countless patching the game was near unplayable, till Bethesda finally gave up on it and made Morrowind.

gonk @ Oct 24th 2007 10:10AM

well i was mentioning a bug also missed by insomniac...

ScreamingSkull @ Oct 24th 2007 10:11AM

Daggerfall was still awesome though, nothing like wandering around in the thousands of cities, looking for stores to break into at night with a teleport spell.

CaptNink @ Oct 24th 2007 11:09AM

What about the infamous Myth 2 bug, courtesy of Bungie.

Didn't the game wipe your hard drive when you tried to install it?

Shattercross @ Oct 23rd 2007 8:41PM

Sucks that they didn't catch this before the game went gold- meh, a minor inconvenience.

playwhutyalike @ Oct 23rd 2007 8:42PM

Now do I add 500mb of porn or delete 500mb of porn?

Hmmmm. I think I'll try to add first.

F. Rocker @ Oct 23rd 2007 8:50PM

Well... do the right thing... add 500MB of porn.

red_cobra @ Oct 24th 2007 12:44AM

Tsk tsk...

playwhutyalike @ Oct 23rd 2007 8:47PM

Speaking of glitches maybe Joystiq should fix thier post and reply system.

Word of the street(IDF-Digital Ruler). @ Oct 23rd 2007 8:53PM

Meh,I think for them is easier to ban the people who complain about it.

Crono (NDF - Knight of the Old School) @ Oct 24th 2007 9:20AM

LOL.

Word.

tbor @ Oct 23rd 2007 8:54PM

It works for me without a glitch.

Picked it up at Walmart for those who want to get it early BTW.

cc123 @ Oct 23rd 2007 9:00PM

Quiet you! This is a Sony bashing thread and this problem, whether insignificant or not, is going to get blown sky high.

As you can see from the posts above the game doesn't even work!!!

Brello @ Oct 23rd 2007 8:55PM

D'oh. You'd think they would have come across this in testing. "Oops."

arman @ Oct 23rd 2007 8:56PM

Oh oh...I hear Sony Defense Force mobilizing with what few reserves they have to take on another brutal attack by NAF (nintendo attack force) and MAF (ms attack force). Is there no mercy for poor little Sony???

The Horror..The Horror.

B1gC72 @ Oct 23rd 2007 9:59PM

well ill step in for the SDF.

though this does seem to be a little inconvenient, you will notice that most PSN demos are well over 500MB as it is. all you have to do is either delete one or download another (i keep alot of them so no problem there for me, just in case). it might keep you from playing it for a couple hours tops if you have to download but thats about it. plus the reviews are all praising it.....well all except for that damn Gamespot, which is my official X-favorite gaming site ever since that site redesign a couple years back, i finally committed to my secret lover Joystiq after that. i've never been happier with Joystiq.

Gamestop called me earlier so ill be picking it up after class tomorrow. can't wait.

Trev @ Oct 23rd 2007 10:23PM

So deleting the Ratchet and Clank Demo will solve the problem if I have one. Convenient that. Color me unconcerned.

Crono (NDF - Knight of the Old School) @ Oct 24th 2007 9:22AM

yeah, i agree. This isn't that big a deal. There are much worse bugs out there, in the grand scheme of things.

Word of the street(IDF-Digital Ruler). @ Oct 23rd 2007 8:57PM

This has to be one of the weirdest glitches ever.

Zertoss @ Oct 23rd 2007 10:03PM

My thoughts exactly. I'm trying to figure out what kind of bizarre space calculation could cause this error. It should be just as simple as
spaceReq=xxx;
freeSpace = GET(freeHDDSpace);

if (freeSpace < spaceReq) {
"You don't have enough free space.";
STOP;
} else CONTINUE;

Something like that. I'm guessing someone either at Sony or Insomniac made it harder than it needs to be. If Sony did, then other games should be affected, and a firmware update could fix it. I guess if Insomniac messed up, they could patch it, if they can patch the installer.

ill trooper @ Oct 24th 2007 4:05AM

Agreed... I'm guessing they could solve this with a downloadable patch... a big, 500MB "patch."

Dave @ Oct 24th 2007 10:09AM

Zertoss,

If you care, I explain how a bug like this can occur on the next page of comments. It is mostly likely a simple range overflow error, where multiples of some number (most likely 4GB) are treated as 0 because the size of the integer used to hold the free space isn't large enough to hold the whole disk space.

gonk @ Oct 23rd 2007 8:59PM

isn't this supposed to be the ps3's main game for xmas?

why not the LS2/LS7? @ Oct 23rd 2007 9:16PM

It's one of the biggies, yes.

BioShock is also one of the biggies for MS, and it's been patched twice so far.

It's lame, but patching is a way of life now on cur-gen systems (PS3 and 360). Well, unless you have a 360 Core, then you don't really have much space to store the patches and you just might have to live with the bugs they couldn't exorcise before releasing it.

Ethan @ Oct 23rd 2007 10:22PM

In Nintendoland you have to pull the game and replace it (happened fairly recently with the EU release of Super Paper Mario). I think, rather than sloppy Q&A (although this was the case with a few titles when xbox live started) it's a case of the consoles being more complicated. I mean, all of the test machines were probably used for nothing otherwise, i.e. nearly empty hard disk.

And since I'm technically replying to Gonk, I'd agree that Ratchet and Clank is the game to get for the ps3. At least, it's what I'd get.