This is feasible and should happen. It is evident that here at CFC, the Civ community is close among gamers on both platforms and interested in game-play with one another. CFC has gone, and continues, to go to great lengths to incorporate the macintosh platform in the ever popular GOTM and SGOTM.

Firaxis doesn't need to have in-house mac programmers to make this happen. I believe Atari and Quicksilver were able to pull off a simultaneous (PC & mac) release of MOO3 within a week of one another. So, this would be nothing new for the publisher. Also, with this goal from the beginning, cross-platform MP issues ought to be easily addressed. You can't tell me the MOO series is more popular than the Civ series.

I know the mac Civ3 community would really appreciate the PC guys support on this one. Thunderfall has always encouraged this, even directly to Firaxis from what I remember of the old chats he hosted with them.

Share the love! :love2:

:thumbsup: Yes! As long as the Mac and PC versions of Civ 4 are equal and released near simultaneously, I'd *definitely* rather be playing it on my Mac!

Same here, I have both a PC and a Mac and I would defenetly prefer a mac version. We have to make sure they get the message.

Why stop at just PC & Mac? I'd like to see a simultaneous release for Linux as well (the more games that go to linux, the faster I will as well ;) )

I do agree though, that the Mac community needs to get behind this, and ensure that it does happen. :goodjob:

I don't know if this is technically possible. But wouldn't it be good if the savegames could be easyly shared between the platforms?

Originally posted by schmiddi
I don't know if this is technically possible. But wouldn't it be good if the savegames could be easyly shared between the platforms?

They share just fine on Civ3 1.29, so I see no reason why they wouldn't on a cross-platform Civ4.

Put me down for a copy of a MacCiv4. My cheque's written out and ready to send. There's no way I'm going to spend money on a powerful enough PC when I have a perfectly beautiful Mac.

Yes, please, don't neglect the Mac folks! The lack of PTW and Conquests for my Mac has made me sad :( . And made me install Civ 3 on my PC at work :eek: :nono: :mischief:.

Originally posted by dojoboy
Firaxis doesn't need to have in-house mac programmers to make this happen. I believe Atari and Quicksilver were able to pull off a simultaneous (PC & mac) release of MOO3 within a week of one another.

Quicksilver (developers of MoO3) had Mac and PC programmers in-house. That's not to say that your point is invalid, just that MoO3 isn't the best example. ;)

A better example might be Civ3 - we did do some semi-simultaneous development on that, which is why the Mac version lagged the PC release by only 2 months. However, you would most likely need Mac programmers in-house to make sure that things like editors and netplay are cross-platform compatible as early as the design and planning stage.

So this means we must make the presure now... if not yesterday...

It would be great an equal realease of civ 4. Correct me if i'm wrong: it's actually easier with MacOs X to publish a game both for Mac and pc.

If Civ4 expaison packs are made, they need to be made for Macs. Mac users can't do any of PTW and later scaneros.

:lol: :lamo:

Q. NO.1 what is Moo?
Since I realy don't know too much about how all this works I ask how we can be loud and bousterus enugh to make a diferance in the eyes of fairfaxis/atari to help them realise this needs to happen? Do we need to write them letters and e-mail's? How can we do this in a diplomatic construct? Do we need them to realise that it is a necesity or do they already know? Do we need to become lobyist's or boycot the issue? What is the most constructive and positive method we can use to make this happen? will discusing it on cfc make any diferance or is it just, like minded people pating themselvs on the back for the sake of hope, or wishfull thinking? Can we prove to them it will be prophitable for there corporation, or that it will be a smart buisness move for them? do they see it as a risk and there-for shy away from the idea? POSITIVE THINKING POSITIVE THINKING POSITIVE THINKING!!!

"A Master never enters into battle without having already won" a quote from the book of harmony and ballance, on the Tao-te Ching.

Originally posted by President David
If Civ4 expaison packs are made, they need to be made for Macs. Mac users can't do any of PTW and later scaneros. You could come play the Game Of The Month where we have PTW-equivalent civs.

Originally posted by ainwood
You could come play the Game Of The Month where we have PTW-equivalent civs.

Come on, that's no equivalent... most people who bouth civ3 will never play gotm. Otherwise we would have a lot bigger participation!

I want Civ 4 to have the Prussia civ in it.I've admired the Prussian civ because they had good generals and had formidable weapons.And i like the leader too.I think von Stuben should be one of the great leaders.And also it should have scientific leadrs like C3C.And it should have MDI and Ancient Calvary.It should also have the Austraila civ in it. Those are my ideas.

Originally posted by JackA
I want Civ 4 to have the Prussia civ in it.I've admired the Prussian civ because they had good generals and had formidable weapons.And i like the leader too.I think von Stuben should be one of the great leaders.And also it should have scientific leadrs like C3C.And it should have MDI and Ancient Calvary.It should also have the Austraila civ in it. Those are my ideas.

Okay, now this is off-topic. Am I right, or am I right. ;)

Sorry about that.

Oh, how wildly enthusiastic you all are. Aren't you forgetting that Destineer/MacSoft -- who are most likely to be the publisher of Civ4 -- can't walk and chew gum at the same time? (In contrast to Infogrames/MacSoft, who used to let Westlake have some of the gum to chew for them -- and we had Brad who could walk and chew, whether he was being paid or not).

There's as much chance of a simultaneous PC-Mac release of Civ4 as Michael Jackson winning Father-of-the-Year.

For now, MacSoft are in the delightful position of being totally able to exceed my expectations, no matter what they do.

My late entry to this thread is indicative of my new research method on Mac games: I walk into my local Apple Centre on a bi-weekly basis; if there's a game on the shelves that I like, I buy it. Everything else is just hype.

BTW: JackA, I agree with you about the Prussians -- I'd like them as an opponent Civ.

Bring on a Linux version! They have a freeciv game that's basically Civ1 with slightly skewed graphics, and its just not the same! I'd love to have a Linux version of any of them (Civ 1-4), so then I could get rid of Windows.

Is there any reason why Civ has to be platform dependent? Why not separate the code into the game itself and a separate machine dependent layer written for each machine. It would make porting to different platforms; Windows, Mac, Linux or games consoles very easy. New platforms could be added by writing just the interface part. It would save costs later on.

Any updates to the game itself could be applied to all platforms simultaneously because they would happen in the game layer. That would make developing new scenarios etc. more attractive.

Some games do need low level access to the platform: a shoot-em-up game may need access to hardware to animate fast, but Civ isn't like that. The usual arguments in favour of platform independent code seem to apply.

I'd be interested to know how much of Civ3's code really is platform dependent?

It should be fairly easy to create a Linux port, wether it is by Firaxis or by the community... All excecutables are compiled for the same processor architecture, the only problems are:

-DirectX (Replace with SDL or something else)
-Filesystem (The game would have a hard time indeed looking for C:\program files on a UNIX system :)

But anyway, it shouldn't be that difficult. Just look at NWN for example. They did it without much trouble. The only problem was that they were not allowed to inlcude a Linux installer, but when you 'install' it on Linux (ie moving around dirs and files) you use 99% the same files and binaries.

And otherwise there should be enough cross platform possiblilities. Just using a bytecode like language (Java, .NET) would do the trick, just as using just ANSI C++ and libs available to both platforms to make to seperate compiled versions. This would only take the effort to change all absolute paths in the source code.
(And it would be cheaper to produce, since most cross platform libs are open-source and don't require huge license fees)

UNIX BABY! :rockon:

Cross-platform net-plat compatibility: will never happen, at least with commonly used protocols out there. Becuse it would require porting someones proprietary code to the other system. I do not know if there are protocols out there compatible with both systems that are not required to utilize proprietary code in order to fuction. With Microsoft continuing to tie MP ability to utilization of their code I do not know if this is even possible.