The Political Machine 2008 has arrived!

If you have any problems, please post here. Please include your OS and video card info as well.  The debug.err file located in My Documents\My Games\PolMachine2008 has a print out from dxdiag listing your system information, so you can copy and paste the information from that.

Here are things to try:

#1 Update your video drivers. The Political Machine WILL crash if your video drivers are old. Not might. Will. It absolutely relies on pixel shader 2. This was done so that we could provide good graphics even on older video cards but it does rely on updated video drivers to do it.

#2 XP Users experiencing problems should install and run SmartException, an app that will find the actual address of any crashes you experience. That data can then be sent to the developers to GREATLY assist them in fixing your bug.

#3 When you post a crash or graphical oddity, please include the system specs listed in the top of your 'my games/polmachine2008/debug.err' file. Feel free to post the last three lines in the file as well...pertinent data may be displayed that will help us in our bug-hunting efforts

Update: The game needs a card that natively supports Pixel Shader 2.0, namely:
NVidia FX series and higher
ATI Radeon 9500 and higher
Intel cards: http://www.intel.com/support/graphics/sb/cs-014257.htm

If you do not have a supported card, you can probably find one for as little as $24.99.

If you just want a refund and you bought your copy from a retail store, please read this thread:

https://forums.politicalmachine.com/316509

Update:

Particularly if you don't have a lot of RAM, you should check to make sure that you have enough virtual memory allocated for windows.

To increase the amount of Virtual Memory available to Windows:
 
1) Right click on the My Computer icon and chose properties
2) Click on the advanced tab
3) Under performance, click on the Settings button.
4) Click on the advanced tab
5) Click on the change button
6) Change the initial size to the recommended size and then increase the maximum size.
 
As a note, you should make sure that you have enough hard drive space left for the maximum virtual memory size or you'll start having problems whenever Windows has to allocate more virtual memory. You can get the size of the virtual memory in gigs by dividing the number by 1024.