Problems with 10.5.2?

[imadork]

I tried coming back to Civ yesterday after playing other games for a few weeks. In the interim, I upgraded to 10.5.2 on my new MacBook with the GMA X3100.

After starting a new game, the first thing I usually do is turn on the map grid lines. But every time I do this, whether I click on the icon or use Cmd-T, the app crashes. The report seems to indicate a SIGFPE Divide-by-zero exception was caught in the X3100 video driver. Alan has asked for crash logs from people in other threads, so I'm including the first part of it here. (I can provide the rest if anyone is really interested.)

Anyone have any thoughts? Does Aspyr even support playing Civ on a X3100? Or, if it really is the driver, should I actually be Sending this to Apple?

Thanks in advance!


Process: Civilization IV Warlords [566]
Path: /Games/Civilization IV/Warlords/Civilization IV Warlords.app/Contents/MacOS/Civilization IV Warlords
Identifier: com.aspyr.civ4warlords
Version: 2.08 (25430)
Code Type: X86 (Native)
Parent Process: launchd [67]

Date/Time: 2008-02-23 20:42:08.338 -0500
OS Version: Mac OS X 10.5.2 (9C31)
Report Version: 6

Exception Type: EXC_ARITHMETIC (SIGFPE)
Exception Codes: EXC_I386_DIV (divide by zero)
Crashed Thread: 0

Thread 0 Crashed:
0 ....AppleIntelGMAX3100GLDriver 0x32e2e138 glrModifyTexSubImage + 424
1 GLEngine 0x31991e3c glCompressedTexSubImage2D_Exec + 492
2 libGL.dylib 0x90aee06b glCompressedTexSubImage2DARB + 155
3 com.aspyr.civ4warlords 0x00042af0 IDirect3DTexture_Mac:ownload(unsigned long, void const*, int, int) + 714
4 com.aspyr.civ4warlords 0x00043115 IDirect3DTexture_Mac::UnlockRect(unsigned int) + 235
5 com.aspyr.civ4warlords 0x00040982 IDirect3DSurface_Mac::UnlockRect() + 66

....

 

[AlanH]

Check out this thread for a similar report from a MacBook Air owner. You're not alone

 

[imadork]

Sorry, I forgot that the Airs had a X3100, too, or else I would have posted there....

 

[AlanH]

No problem ... I left your post here as the other thread is Air-specific, and Aspyr's resopnse to it didn't highlight the graphics in particular, just its general "stripped-down" build So the two cases *may* be relating to different issues.

 

[Darren Jones]

Hey Guys,

I seem to have the same problem, although i'm using an iMac Early 2006, 2Ghz Core Duo, 2GB ram, and an X1600 256MB Graphics :/

Darren

 

[cathyy]

Darren, what graphics settings are you using? I also have a very early Intel iMac -ordered the day they were announced- with the X1600 with 256 meg of video ram. I can play at 1344x840 with all the other settings on high, and the gridlines turned on. No crash. Running Leopard 10.5.2.

As far as the X3100, well, I blame Microsoft and their failure to license DirectX. It's probably been hard lately for Aspyr to keep up with all the new videocards Apple has suddenly been putting into their machines. It would help if there was better information sharing between Apple, the videocard programmers, and the game programmers.

 

[Darren Jones]

Thanks for the reply Cathyy,

after i got this message i delved a bit deeper, long story short i did and archive & install, repatched my machine and civ 4 now works. No idea of what caused the problem, but everything is back up and running, thanks for your input

Darren

 

[cathyy]

Glad you got your game working right, Darren. I hope the OP has similar luck with theirs.

 

[Manoa Chris]

I'm having real bad problems with Civ IV (both by itself and as warlords, both patched and unpatched). Basically, after it's been running for a few minutes, whether the game is open or just the menu, everything goes black.

I'm running 10.5.2 on a Mac Pro (8 core / 3ghz) with an X1900 video card driving two 30" displays.

Any ideas on how to fix this problem?

 

[AlanH]

Hi, welcome "wavey:

Is this in windowed mode? If so, is it just the Civ4 window that goes black, or the entire two screens?

 

[Manoa Chris]

I use full screen mode. Only one screen is used by civ -- the other is black, but returns to normal when I quit civ.

With this bug, both screens turn black, and stay that way even if I try to quit. Background apps like itunes will continue to run, but I can't do anything -- even force quit does nothing.

 

[AlanH]

Force quit probably does do something, but you can't see the Force Quit dialog because it's hidden behind Civ4 in full screen mode.

What happens if you play in window mode?

 

[mikeyredk]

when i press cmd + option + esc the game will automatically quit atleast on my system don't know how you are trying to pull up the menu.

 

[AlanH]

when i press cmd + option + esc the game will automatically quit atleast on my system.

Yes, that works here as well. I never run Civ4 in full screen mode, so it's never been an issue for me.

Usually, if you hit Cmd-Opt-Esc you get a Force Quit dialog. When it appears it has the front-most app highlighted, and you only have to hit Return to cause Force Quit to operate on that app. Aspyr must have done something extra to cause Civ4 to abort immediately.

 

[Manoa Chris]

when i press cmd + option + esc the game will automatically quit atleast on my system don't know how you are trying to pull up the menu.

That's exactly what I am doing -- cmd + opt + esc. Usually pressing this twice quits frozen applications -- doesn't do anything with this hang. When an application hasn't frozen, pressing this brings up a dialog, which pressing return twice will force quit the foremost app. So I've tried cmd+opt+esc plus two returns, and it does nothing either.

 

[Manoa Chris]

Just tried it in window mode -- seems to be working fine. Is there a way to add resolutions? The highest res it will give me is 1440x900 -- would love to fill up more of my 2560x1600 display.

 

[AlanH]

Have you looked in the in-game Options -> Graphics screen? Any more resolution options there?

 

[Manoa Chris]

No, that's the biggest option it gives. Lot of smaller ones, though....

 

[imadork]

Well, it's been a while longer since I've played Civ, and it's all due to that bug (which still isn't fixed, as far as I know.)

I recently got a bigger hard drive for my MacBook, and instead of cloning the old drive onto the new one I reinstalled OS X from the system disks that came with my MacBook, used the Migration Assistant to copy over all the files from the old drive, and updated to 10.5.1. After all that hassle, I can play Civ again! So, it was definitely 10.5.2 that was causing the problem. (And now that I have a time machine drive I can sync to whenever it's plugged in, I can make sure I sync before applying future updates, so I can revert if I have to.)

However, the reason I got a larger drive in the first place was to run BootCamp with XP Pro for some work-related applications. So once that's set up, I'll be tempted to just buy the Windows copy of Civ IV and run it that way. I'd like to support Mac native gaming, and it would be a pain to dual-boot, but when the Mac games don't work, what can I do?