Insane Civ IV System Requirements announced

This may have been mentioned already, but just wondering why anyone will ever make/port a mac game ever again (because of BootCamp)? If people are willing to upgrade RAM or a graphics card for a few hundred dollars, they will probably be willing to shell out for Windows, as distasteful as that sounds.

In terms of playability below minimum requirements, I finally decided (after trying out official and unofficial fixes) that Civ4 for PC was not playable on my not-too-old mid-level laptop, although I could sometimes play for a couple of hours in a row without a crash. Of course, it was brutally slow and I couldn't see any terrain graphics!

Most of the early PC problems seemed to have to do with accomodating a bazillion different kinds of graphics processors and drivers, which shouldn't be as much a problem for macs. I'm not computer-savvy enough to know whether different CPU's (g4vsg5) are different enough to cause qualitative performace problems (won't run) vs qualitative problems (speed and bells&whistles). Also, here's hoping that either a patch will come out that will make it backwards compatible with G4 processors, or that some brainiac here can program something like that to be posted as a mod, once we know where the incompatibilities lie.

Even if I were prepared to shell out to W Gates for his so-called OS, I'm not willing to reboot my Mac just to play a game - or to do anything else. I multi-task my activities way too much for that, probably demonstrating that I am not a serious gamer. However, I'm sure there are lots of people willing and able to manage their time better than me, and to dedicate long perods to a game.

Don't hold your breath for a third party piece of magic to make C-IV run on a G4 if it doesn't do so out of the box. If Brad doesn't do it inside the code I'll be willing to bet it's not feasible from outside.

bio_hazard said:

This may have been mentioned already, but just wondering why anyone will ever make/port a mac game ever again (because of BootCamp)? If people are willing to upgrade RAM or a graphics card for a few hundred dollars, they will probably be willing to shell out for Windows, as distasteful as that sounds.

Click to expand...

For anyone but a serious gamer, Boot Camp is far too much trouble for gaming. OTOH, any serious gamer who's still on a Mac at all is typically there because they're seriously attached to the OS.

So, for the people who might consider doing it, generally they really prefer to use the Mac OS, so Boot Camp isn't terribly attractive. I mean, let's face it. Most people for whom Boot Camp would be a really good option simply aren't using Macs any more.

Beamup said:

For anyone but a serious gamer, Boot Camp is far too much trouble for gaming. OTOH, any serious gamer who's still on a Mac at all is typically there because they're seriously attached to the OS.

So, for the people who might consider doing it, generally they really prefer to use the Mac OS, so Boot Camp isn't terribly attractive. I mean, let's face it. Most people for whom Boot Camp would be a really good option simply aren't using Macs any more.

Click to expand...

I agree. I bought an MBP 2 weeks ago and loaded Boot Camp and C-IV. I turned off my old PC (which has integrated graphics but still ran C-IV with somewhat lower graphics). I am now rebooting every night to play. I will most definitely be buying the Mac version when it comes out.

ancestral said:

Certainly disappointing as Brad Oliver early on suggested you could probably run it just barely on a Mac mini PPC.

Click to expand...

You can run Civ4 on a PPC Mac Mini. It'll get pokey during the end-game for sure, but it certainly runs. There is some graphical corruption on the zoomed-out globe view due to the low amount of VRAM on these Macs, and there may be some other graphical quirks as well. The video card was low-end enough to make the game mostly work, but not enough for it to be something we'd want to support.

Those integrated Intel graphics chips in the Intel Mac Mini and the MacBook, however, are not up to the task and it's not worth trying on those Macs.

AlanH said:

I also note that the Mac Civ4 description doesn't include an SDK. Are Mac users going to be second class customization citizens again?

Click to expand...

We haven't had time to roll in the SDK, but the goal is to support it. It's only code.

imadork said:

Or maybe he's just insanely busy....

Click to expand...

Bingo. It's been the longest 6 weeks of my life trying to wrap this thing up.

awb said:

Here are my feelings: Civ 4 should run on Macintoshes made in the past 2 years, not just on computers made in the past 12 months.

Click to expand...

For Civ4 to work well, you need two things: a fast CPU and a non-sucky video card. You can of course have a fast G4 and a high-end Radeon and probably have a nice Civ4 experience if you tone down some of the eye candy.

But for Civ 4 not to work on newly released Mac Books is pitiful.

Click to expand...

The video chip in the new MacBook is pitiful, so there you have it. Run it at your own peril.

Thanks for taking time out to come here and respond, Brad. It' much appreciated.

md2112 said:

Post a demo version (plays 20 turns) so that we can all at least try it out on our systems.

Click to expand...

The problem is that there is no PC demo (that I've seen - I've been in a bunker the past few weeks), and producing a Mac-specific demo is problematic for many reasons.

yellow_roast said:

What would be most helpful however, is a statement saying if us G4 (and Radeon 9000) users are locked out altogether, or if the specs are only a suggestion only.

Click to expand...

The game won't forbid you from trying to run it, but you will be warned. And you should expect that it'll run poorly. Your CPU is pretty pokey and worse yet, the Radeon 9000 is not up to running modern 3D games well. It also likely doesn't have 64 MB of VRAM, which is really the minimum that Civ4 needs to avoid corrupted/missing textures.

Brad Oliver said:

The problem is that there is no PC demo (that I've seen - I've been in a bunker the past few weeks), and producing a Mac-specific demo is problematic for many reasons.

Click to expand...

A local announcement from November last year:

http://www.civfanatics.com/news2/comments.php?id=589

OK, lots of talk about the requirements here, so it's time to try to answer some questions.

Yeah, they're high alright, probably a bit higher than necessary. We had to nail down the requirements a while back for the boxes and other legal junk, so we went with what felt right based on the current Civ4 builds we had at the time. As it turns out, we were able to squeeze a bit more out of the Mac port since then, and I'd say we're in the ballpark of PC performance on similar hardware, but low-end Macs and crappy video cards really should not try Civ4.

32 MB video cards (the Radeon 8500/9000/9200 class, also the card in the PPC Mac Mini) do not have enough VRAM to run Civ4 without graphical corruption. Worse, driver bugs on those cards as well as a few others caused us to raise the bar a little higher than we would have liked. That said, it's playable on my PPC Mac Mini in the early going (with some oddball textures here and there) but it bogs down quite a bit at the end. When it became apparent that the graphical corruption on these cards was a deal-breaker, we opted not to support these Macs and cut our QA time on these Macs accordingly.

As Beamup said, the specs for Civ4 aren't really out of line for modern games. The shocker is the gulf in specs between Civ4 and Civ3. Civ3 is really a Luddite in this regard - it was all 2D, and was a 256-color game at its heart.

As Glenda said somewhere else, we opted to go conservative with the Mac specs. The PC specs are generally regarded as a bit low, and given the high performance of Civ4 and our deadlines, we felt it was better for our customers to aim high on the specs rather than try to sell something that would probably be a disappointment on less-powerful Macs. I'm pleased that we've been able to wring out some more performance since then, but I would still think long and hard about buying Mac Civ4 if you do not meet our posted minimum specs.

The Mac version is current with the PC 1.61 patch. I haven't even looked at the SDK code yet, but certainly that will be on my TODO list once this thing ships. Although confusing, keep in mind that our "alpha" milestone is what everyone else in the entire world calls "beta". I know there was a reason why we decided to rename all our milestones, but I couldn't tell you what that reason is. So with that said, Civ4 is currently very deep into what you guys would call beta. I suspect we'll be putting out a press release soon to update this.

As for the Civ3 patch, I believe it was decided to wait until Civ4 ships so I can return to it and finish it so we only have to do one patch ever for Civ3. I have not touched Civ3 in a few months now because of Civ4's death march of a schedule. Of course now that I've said that, watch us release a patch next week and prove me wrong.

AlanH said:

A local announcement from November last year:

http://www.civfanatics.com/news2/comments.php?id=589

Click to expand...

Wow, I totally missed that! I'll get in contact with Firaxis and see what we can do. Obviously if we do a demo, it will post-date the Civ4 Mac release at this point.

Keep up the good work, Brad, and make sure to get a good night's sleep every night. Don't want you getting into an accident or something because you're sleep-deprived.

Oh, and to reiterate: Am I ever glad I waited to buy a new iMac. That Intel iMac with 2GHz processor, 2G RAM, 256MB VRAM is going to run Civ IV splendidly (crosses fingers)!

Gatekeeper

Great to hear from you, Brad. It's always very much appreciated. Hopefully you can get back to a more reasonable schedule in the near future! Maybe even a vacation - sounds like you really deserve one at this point.

Brad Oliver said:

32 MB video cards (the Radeon 8500/9000/9200 class, also the card in the PPC Mac Mini) do not have enough VRAM to run Civ4 without graphical corruption. Worse, driver bugs on those cards as well as a few others caused us to raise the bar a little higher than we would have liked.

Click to expand...

While some versions of the the Radeon 8500/9000/9200 class are 32mb cards, the retail ATI release of the Mac 8500 and 9000 cards come with 64-128mb of VRAM. (Not to mention all of the flashed PC variants with plenty of VRAM people have running in their Macs. But that's a different story.) Are the driver bugs still going to cause graphical corruption issues on these cards with enough VRAM? Are the bugs in Apples video drivers, ATI's retail drivers, or both?

JoAT

JoAT said:

Are the driver bugs still going to cause graphical corruption issues on these cards with enough VRAM? Are the bugs in Apples video drivers, ATI's retail drivers, or both?

Click to expand...

I don't believe we tested Civ4 on a config with a 64M retail Radeon of that class, so I don't know.

I also don't know that we ever got a definitive word on if it's an Apple bug or an ATI bug. I could see making a case for either: GL doesn't report failure on any card when you create a pbuffer that is too big for VRAM, but the other cards do seem to cope more gracefully with the situation.

Beamup said:

Great to hear from you, Brad. It's always very much appreciated. Hopefully you can get back to a more reasonable schedule in the near future! Maybe even a vacation - sounds like you really deserve one at this point.

Click to expand...

I probably will be taking a break from Civ4 once it ships. That means that yes - you won't hear from me on this forum (or any other!) for a while once again. Burnout is always a problem after a project ends, and I'm anxious to work on anything but Civ4 for a while.

Brad Oliver said:

For Civ4 to work well, you need two things: a fast CPU and a non-sucky video card. You can of course have a fast G4 and a high-end Radeon and probably have a nice Civ4 experience if you tone down some of the eye candy.

Click to expand...

Wow, thanks for all the posts, Brad. So do you think a 1.67 Powerbook w/ 128 MB Radeon 9700 and 1.5 GB of RAM should run it OK? Or is it going to bog down in the end, due to the slow CPU? I really do not care about having all the settings on low; it's a turn-based game after all.