Civ IV: Beyond the Sword Info Center

Zebra 9 said:

Hold on, didn't Dale Beta test? That means he has had it for a while.

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True, but I did get myself a retail copy for my collection. I now have unopened vanilla (with Sid's autograph), warlords and now bts.

Dale said:

True, but I did get myself a retail copy for my collection. I now have unopened vanilla (with Sid's autograph), warlords and now bts.

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Hehe, you are privileged, Dale! So, if you don't mind me asking, do you get paid much for your work in the modding? Like, are you hired as any other developer, just remotely? Or is it volunteer work?

The basis of my agreement with Firaxis isan't exactly a talking matter.

Like do you talk about your agreement with your employers?

I can state clearly that my employer pays me, like anyone else. That's our agreement: I do some work for them and they pay me. I think that's all people are asking you Dale, whether you got paid or not. Was this the next Manhattan Project or is it just a game? What's the big hush hush on this kind of stuff...

there are also in Germany some BtS-Player now.

Wow - so Europe seems to be getting it! Yes!! Maybe I will get mine real soon....

OK, Dale, no problem - I understand. I was only wondering if your work is paid or volunteer, and I guess now it is paid.

Just to clarify, some people were paid, some were volunteer. We never discussed it in the test/dev group and I feel it would be unfair on them if I discussed it here. I'm not saying yes or no to the question, just that I don't think it's right to discuss it.

Tested BtS, did a huge map, 18civs, on autorun, all grahpics disabled, got the lategame MAF. So, the MAF fix from NEV to work around 1 MAF has been done by firaxis..the late game MAF is still out there Sights...why don't those people at firaxis use their own autoAI option in the INI to freaking test this bug and fix it?

if there was a beta tester team for BtS, why did firaxis only "hired" people who never played epic games, therefore never get the MAF, and therefore never been able to get to this point where a beta tester could catch it?

and who cares if dale got paid or not, he does a nice job, the rest is none of anyones concern!

anyway, borrowed my copy quickly to test overnight for the MAF, to see if it's gone. Since it's still out there, won't buy BtS! Sorry firaxis and everyone who needs the money to survive, but I don't pay for a bug that's out there since 2years and noone at firaxis is planning to fix. And I'm very sorry that noone ever considered asking people who actually reported the MAF to "test" for it, since obviously only people playing big games get this issue.


oh yeah, and unfortunatlyfor myself, i still can't play civilization The MAF is still out there, I like Big games(which never where a problem under civ3) but big games are impossible in civ4 because of the MAF what a pity what a shame, what a waste of time on this good game. I hope civ5 will fix the MAF and i can finally play civ again

I'd PM Gyathaar about that, taketounwanted. He's the one who's supposed to have fixed it.

I would, if it were his MAF..bit it isn't i tracked down the MAFs very thouroughly. There was on considering the savegames alot earlier in the game, a MAF which persistently occured at 1 point in the game, and you couldn't pass that! Once the ViSa mod included the fix from NEV, that MAF occurance was fixed. And that's also what Gaythaar did, and mailed to firaxis about. The other MAF occurance is not so "hard bound to 1 specific turn"

btw, you could load a savegame and figure out which tile caused that STATIC-TURN-BOUND-MAF and delete any unit that moved on "next turn" to that tile to avoid and bypass the MAF.

but it's not that anymore, firaxis obviously fixed that when gaythaar told them. This fix was done by NEV 6months ago already, just those take2 tech support never forwarded complaints about this to firaxis
now, the second MAF which im encountering is alot later in the game, autorun to get to that point will make you easier to find it! It's not a "STATIC TURN BOUND MAF"! It behaves different from the one that firaxis has fixed! I reported this to take2 several times, but they keep telling me there is no thing as MAF and it doesn't exist

I wonder of take2 tech support has any idea about what's going on in the core of the game..would be nice if i could contact a firaxis person myself and explain how to reproduce it...

the build in autoAI from firaxis will get you to that point, plain BtS will get me on my computer in 7hours there(ok, along time to play! i agree, but i like epic games!!! that's the reason why civ3 and now civ4 are the only games i play)
unfortunatly, the firaxis autoAI doesn't allow you to load savegames..although im sure firaxis would be able to open and look into the savegame and check where it crashes...but take2 is still using the policy:"block and denial" and doesn't forward anything to firaxis
at least that's how it looks to me, but maybe im wrong..but i feel so so . .. .. .. .ed by take2!

I wish the good old civ3 days came back where you could actually contact firaxis, the people whith knowledge what's going on in the game I'm sure it's an easy fix..if firaxis just gets the proper info!!


Damn, i LOVE BIG GAMES!! why doesn't anyone fix the MAF? Why does take2 keep refusing the MAF exists

is it forbidden to play BIG? I don't mind next turns take 3 or 4 minutes...i wanna play BIG! in cov3 it was possible(although next turns there took up to 30 or 40minutes sometimes during war) in civ they fixed that!!! great work, but the MAF is just messing up all game pleasure on BIG GAMES


ADD I uploaded the corrupted savegame(in the hope firaxis sees this post and scans the savegame file to check where it goes MAF..you can't load this of course..the previous savegame, can't upload that one, it's too big for civfanatics

taketounwanted said:

would be nice if i could contact a firaxis person myself and explain how to reproduce it...

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PM Gyathaar (or myself) and we'll pass it on directly.

ADD I uploaded the corrupted savegame(in the hope firaxis sees this post and scans the savegame file to check where it goes MAF..you can't load this of course..the previous savegame, can't upload that one, it's too big for civfanatics

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That is severely corrupted - its only 36 bytes.

I am almost certain that the MAF buf you see is caused by hitting the 2GB memory limit in 32 bits windows (or it could be less than 2GB if you dont have that much memory on your PC.. specially if you have an onboard graphics card that share the same memory)

I would need the save from before the crash to look into it.

Hi Ainwood and Gyathaar, im running a game now with a modified AutoAI from firaxis(using some tricks from jdog, but only a few,
1) to make sureit's savegame compatible and you can actually load the game.
2) don't need all options he offers

on my PC it uses around 1.5Gigs, i have 3,5Gigs of RAM actually, well 4, but because 512MB is allocated to my graphical memory and Win Vista only supports up to 4Gigs max, it means i have 4-0.5graphics=3.5Gigs of RAM left(according to windows)

Most programs support this though, didn't check if Civilization can't use windows 3.5Gigs and only supports up to 2gigs..
pretty wierd though if windows supports up to 4Gigs and now you're telling me civ can only use up to 2Gigs? any reason for that? 32bit according to my calculator comes up to 4gigs though..

ANYWAY, and this has to be said LOUDLY! BTS is ALOT faster then warlords!!! even with events and all extra options, it's just ALOT faster! good job done by the BtS team!


oh, im reading this thread now
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?p=5645745

proposal for big games is buy a 64bit system?

taketounwanted said:

ANYWAY, and this has to be said LOUDLY! BTS is ALOT faster then warlords!!! even with events and all extra options, it's just ALOT faster! good job done by the BtS team!

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Hooray! That's great for me, cause I have only a humble laptop with shared 128Mb graphics, and (1Gb total - 128Mb graphics) of RAM, approx 900Mb.

32 bit windows limits any single program to max 2GB memory...

However.. since you run vista, you can increase this limit to 3GB for BtS by running this command:

- Open a command prompt with Administration rights. You find it under "Programs->Accessories->Command prompt" click right and select "run as administrator".
- Enter "bcdedit /set IncreaseUserVA 3072" (without quotes) in the command window and press enter.

Edit:
You need to reboot afterwards to make this take effect

Did a nice run, plain warlords marathon game took me 2hours for turn 1000, BtS took just around 30mins 18civs, huge map, marathon

damn, they did a good job this BtS team!

statistics:
Turn 1000
16/18 civs alive
map: Huge!
at war with 2 Ai's
Marathon Game
Inventing Railroad(so you know my tech level)
8turns/minute!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

jesus this is performance! I wonder what the BtS guys did, but whatever it was, they did it very well!
I hope this MAF issue can be dealt with by allocating 3gigs, at least huge maps will be playable then,
but, at least, this expansion is worth to buy! just performance and all the options!

switched back to the 2gig instead of 3, guess what, game getting very slow suddenly(1turn/2minutes),
switched back to 3gigs again, game 8turns/minute again

win Vista!!

what does it mean? Civ is fast, memory of our systems isnt good enough to handle the data!
seems to worth to, even if it's just for the performance, get yourself the 3gigs and use this 3gigs switch commented before!
anyway, memory now going over 1.5gigs..no MAF..so, seems this issue has been solved by allowing windows
to use 3gigs, or if you play large mods + large scenarios and large maps, get yourself 8gigs on a 64bit system!

has the 2nd IGN scenarios article been mentioned yet btw?
http://pc.ign.com/articles/806/806223p1.html

Gyathaar said:

has the 2nd IGN scenarios article been mentioned yet btw?
http://pc.ign.com/articles/806/806223p1.html

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Didnt saw it yet, but the "final frontier" is definatly in my style!
phantasy mods not so, they are very well done and cool, but i like to keep playing in the sence of "physical and scientific reality"

btw, my game is still running without MAF

1.75gigs memory usage(the 3gig switch did the trick)
turn 2117!
huge map,
9civs left(others are assimulated)
at war with 2(meaning alot of unit movements at this stage of the game)
next turns take around 35seconds(with war!!)

oh yeah, graphics all maxed out! everything i could set High or enabled or AA to 4, everything is just maxed...

so, i'd say, we finally have a stable, smooth, rocking civ4 on the market!
now we can just hope, this will boost sales, and the money gets at firaxis studios for developing civ5!

oh yeah, and intel and co have to bring out faster CPU's! ROFL

the 2GB / 3GB limit includes any swap usage btw.. so that might be why you see less than 2GB usage

to go past 3GB, you need to use a 64 bit version of windows (64 bit XP, server2003 or vista)... should not have to do anything to allow BtS to support the max memory the windows version support.