Mac Civ 4: How bad is it? "Seeking refund" may be the next step.

System: 10.4.7 / Dual G5 @ 2.3 GHz / 2.5 GB / ATI 9600 (w/128 MB VRAM)

I received this game as a surprise gift from my loving wife, so by the time I find out about it's flaws, I've already attempted to install it three times.

Contacting Aspyr support, I followed their directions to no avail - the game still stopped during start up when trying to init. python. Checking the logs - it seems that python can't find a file. My HD file system is case-sensitive, so on a hunch I install the game onto a disk image with a case-insensitive file system. Lo and behold, that works, but very poorly. The game can't remember options, can't remember video resolutions, 90 second re-init every time I start the game up, choppy video, no sounds, sluggish performance at best.

If Civ 4 does require a case-sensitive file system, a fix to this issue is unlikely at best. Anybody that has useful ideas about getting it running, I'm all ears. HINT: acquiring (beg/borrow/steal/buy) access to another computer, reformatting my HD, and re-installing my OS are not solutions for application level issues.

If I can't get this running, I'm hoping Amazon.com ( where she pre-ordered it ) will allow us to return it, as "Case Insensitive File System" was not listed on the package as a requirement. $50 coasters just don't fit with our decor.

Why do you have a "case sensitive" file system?

I've never even heard of that.

It's uncommon, but exists (UFS). Generally not recommended unless you have very specific reasons to do it, for exactly this reason - the standard Mac file systems are case-insensitive, so quite a few apps assume it. All sorts of things won't work on case-sensitive file systems.

Typically the best course, in those cases where it's necessary, is to partition the drive and have only as much as necessary UFS.

So, if you refuse to use a standard file system, you're basically SOL in this case, and many others. On your own head be it.

Seems like there should be a way around that. I would have a second boot drive for "regular" stuff.

Beamup said:

So, if you refuse to use a standard file system, you're basically SOL in this case, and many others. On your own head be it.

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Although I wouldn't phrase it exactly like this, it is definitely a standing support rule at Aspyr that none of our games are supported on case-sensitive file systems.

Zaimejs said:

It's uncommon, but exists (UFS).

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Just as a point of note, my system is HFS+ with case-sensitivity and journaling.

Zaimejs said:

All sorts of things won't work on case-sensitive file systems.

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Civ 4 has been the first one (for me) that hasn't worked, which is what threw me for such a loop. BBEdit, Bang Howdy, Celestia, Civilization III, FileMaker Pro, Firefox, Interarchy, Mailsmith, Excel, PowerPoint, Word, SQLGrinder, Puzzle Pirates, GraphicConverter have all worked. And I haven't run into any Apple app/utility that has issues either. Civilization III, Photoshop, FreeHand, Dreamweaver MX just needed to be put on a case-insensitive partition.

Zaimejs said:

On your own head be it.

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You're right. By using a case-sensitive file system, I'm requiring a developer to maintain consistant filename references. Most did, some didn't.

Zaimejs said:

Seems like there should be a way around that.

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Normally there is, installing on a case-insensitive partition / disk image. I've only had to do that for 4 out of 100+ apps ( Adobe/Macromedia, I'm looking at you ). So far, Civ 4 has been the only one that had issues that can't be addressed by installing it on my case-insensitive partition.

Brad Oliver said:

... it is definitely a standing support rule at Aspyr that none of our games are supported on case-sensitive file systems.

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Too bad. Had I more time to tinker, I probably could have restored functionallity with some aliases, or possibly delving into ln / mount.

So at the end of the day, the game was returned. Not the optimal solution - I was looking forward to playing it - but it's one that I can live with.

Taylorg said:

So far, Civ 4 has been the only one that had issues that can't be addressed by installing it on my case-insensitive partition.

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Your home directory is (presumably) still on a case-sensitive partition, and Civ4 references that extensively.

This is a really, really big disappointment. I just opened my birthday present and now I can't play it.

Where in the home directory does it reference? I can at least create symlinks from ~/Library/Whatever to a case sensitive filesystem.

I really, really hope this will be fixed in a patch, since I'm pretty sure that nobody will accept the game for a refund now that I opened it.

Can't you create another user that you log into purely for this situation? You could symlink that user's Home Directory to a case-insensitive volume.

I can identify the following folders in my home directory relating to Civ4, but I'm not sure how you would make symlinks to copies of them since they don't exist until the game runs for the first time.

~/Documents/Civilization IV/
~/Library/Application Support/Civilization IV/

There's also a Preferences file:

~/Library/Preferences/com.aspyr.civ4.plist

.. and it writes its crash logs to:

~/Library/Logs/CrashReporter/Civilization IV.crash.log

AlanH said:

~/Documents/Civilization IV/
~/Library/Application Support/Civilization IV/

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These locations are going to be the two that are giving problems. The others should be case-sensistive-safe (a phrase I just made up).

Or, rather, the place to which you install the game. So, I made a user named "civ4" with a home directory on an external firewire drive. Already the ease of playing this game has shot way down, especially since this is a laptop.

I can play that game with that user, since I dragged the Civ 4 install folder onto his desktop. It's terribly slow, though, even on my MacBook 2GHz with 2G of RAM. I ran the patch installer, but it said I could install on my laptop hard drive or on my external hard drive. I have no idea whether installing to either of these actually fixes anything or actually applies a patch.

I do know that the game is still very slow after applying it, and has the problem that I thought it would fix: sound and music cut out, excessive delays before turn end.

Does the game need to be installed in /Applications for this patch to work? I know that installing the game under a case-sens Applications fails, even if the user's home is case-insens. Ugh.

I'm not running UFS. I'm running a case-sensitive, journaled extended HFS filesystem. I think I'm going to have to try to return this tomorrow, lest the store think that I've just kept it long enough to copy it.

rjbs said:

It's terribly slow, though, even on my MacBook 2GHz with 2G of RAM.

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The MacBook is not supported for Civ4, and has some pretty bad video hardware, so this should not be surprising. The list of supported video cards is on the back of the Mac Civ4 box.

Just curious, what is the reason for formatting your drive as case sensitive? Do you have software that requires that functionality?

My MacBook is, like the PowerBook before it, my primary workstation as well as my primary mess-around-station. I use it for my work.

I am a programmer. I write code that runs mostly on UNIX-like operating systems, which are almost entirely case-sensitive. If I always plan to be on a case-sensitive file system, I will not accidentally make a case mismatch. I think it's pretty important to support any user who wants to use my software, so I try to make it easy on myself.

Beyond that, I've been primarily a Linux user for the past eleven years, and case-insensitive file systems can be irritating. They are lossy. I want a computer that stores the information I tell it to store, and that includes exact filenames.

So far, in my four years on OS X, the only other program I've had give me any trouble on a case-sensitive system was Starcraft, which was written for OS 8 or 9.

rjbs said:

Beyond that, I've been primarily a Linux user for the past eleven years, and case-insensitive file systems can be irritating. They are lossy. I want a computer that stores the information I tell it to store, and that includes exact filenames.

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HFS+ is, by default, a case-preserving but case-insensitive file system. It preserves the case of all your files, but does not let you do foolish things like create a file called "Readme.txt" and "ReadMe.txt" in the same directory. In that regard, I would not call it lossy.

The fact that you think that having "Readme" and "README" as two distinct files is foolish does not change the fact that is has been standard behavior on all important unix operating systems until Darwin.

Yes, well, *nix does a lot of things that are foolish. Mainly as a result of the fact that it was deliberately designed to be impossible to use...

I have been waiting for a Civ IV port to the mac since I heard of Civ IV a year+ ago.

After the PC version came out, and my friends told me of its wonders, I continued to wait patiently. Even though I had a macbook pro, with bootcamp + winxp pro installed, I waited, preferring the thought of running it without rebooting, or worse as in the past, moving to another box.

Now I find myself reading the above in mostly disbelief.

You're developing / porting for a unix platform. Regardless of the pretty gui, this is meant to be Unix. Regardless of the pretty GUI, it's Darwin, branched from FreeBSD. You might have heard of BSD, Berkley, Unix, etc. An oversight like this is one thing, the response is entirely another.

If Apple by design, didn't allow a case sensitive file system, I could see perhaps some argument. But they do. I checked the box, and reformatted just like many other people I know. I took the extra hour to do so and then reinstall OS X. The only other program I've had this problem with was a plugin for Adium. I can hardly blame the Adium developers, and the plugin just ended up not being used.

The unfortunate part of all this, is that after waiting patiently, for a game, that I've liked soooo much, since Civ I, to be ported to the Mac, I will probably be buying the PC version to run under bootcamp and windows when I do eventually buy it.

If you have some beef with how the Unix file systems work, then I suggest you take it up with Apple, and petition them not to provide said option. Until then, I find arguments to not supporting an Apple provided option, irrational.

The fact of the matter is, there's a bug in the software Aspyr has released, for the platform it was released for.

jcap said:

You're developing / porting for a unix platform. R

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I think this is the disconnect. Despite the Unix underpinning of OS X, and the fact that you use it more like a Unix distribution than a commercial OS, OS X is not unix. Apple did not intend OS X to be Unix. It's more than a GUI slapped on top of BSD.

We don't port to unix, we port to OS X. We use as much non-unix API functionality (cocoa/carbon) as BSD, if not more. So our goal is to support the best range of OS X features and configurations as we reasonably can. The existence of an optional feature in the OS (supporting case sensitive file systems) is not a requirement to support that feature, particularly when it is a feature that is little used by the majority of users. If you are a developer and case sensitive support is a must have in your products, thats very cool. I can respect that from a programmer's perspective. But for a game company supporting mainstream users (90% of which actually probably don't even know unix is hiding under their OS X, let alone have any inclination to use case sensitive file names) it just doesn't make sense.

I know it is extremely important to you, but I can honestly say the percentage of users who request support for case sensitive file system support in our games is so low as to be almost unmeasurable - out of the combined hundreds of thousands of units sold of OS X games I've been involved with, less than a half dozen requests.

I think we can close the book on this topic. We have no plans to add case sensitive file system support to Civ 4 or any other Aspyr game. It's a far from non-trivial task, and just doesn't make sense for us to focus our resources on when there are other features that will effect a much broader range of users.

Glenda
Aspyr

glendaadams said:

I think we can close the book on this topic. We have no plans to add case sensitive file system support to Civ 4 or any other Aspyr game. It's a far from non-trivial task, and just doesn't make sense for us to focus our resources on when there are other features that will effect a much broader range of users.

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Glenda, Thanks for your response. From a business perspective where the prime motivation is profit I can understand your perspective, and why you have to pick and choose your battles. It would be nice if the system requirements on the box might indicate Aspyr's unwillingness to support these options though. In the same way the tell you which hardware options apple offers are not supported.

I also wonder how non-trivial it would be to make sure that the file names you ask your program to make, are formatted the same way when you read from them. I would guess this could easily be spearheaded by grep. Of course I must concede I know nothing of the source, and could be way off base.