A New Dawn Beta Builds

[Afforess]

How on earth do you manage to download 5B of anything with dialup!?

 

[Slammer64]

That's why I stick with Linux, now if I could only get Civ VI with RoM and AND to run under Wine.

 

[os79]

We've taken things off topic a bit far here, and so as to return to topic...I got nothing. Maybe later.

Yeah, off topic, but good for a good laugh after a stressful day . Good story . I will tell that story over a fireplace* to my friends over here at my university .

* Of course, it is too hot for a fireplace now and we don't even have such a thing .

 

[os79]

That's why I stick with Linux, now if I could only get Civ VI with RoM and AND to run under Wine.

HEY! Where did you buy that CivVI!

I know it is a typo .

 

[scribbler]

How on earth do you manage to download 5B of anything with dialup!?

5B are surprisingly easy (I know, it's a typo, like os79 told slammer). 5GB - dedicated phone line, and lots of determination. Think, single, horny guy, who hadn't had a girlfriend or date in something like five years (he was in his mid-thirties). He used to hide the smut in his room, "just in case I bring a girl home," he says, but we all wondered why he bothered.

I was wrong on one detail. We didn't share the dial-up connection. When I got cable net (very soon after moving in) he pretty much begged me to hook him up (which I did, of course, since between him and another roommate they paid for my net )

That's why I stick with Linux, now if I could only get Civ VI with RoM and AND to run under Wine.

Do you seriously want to get me started on why Linux will never take off as anything other than an appliance OS and LAMP derivatives in the general market?

Yeah, off topic, but good for a good laugh after a stressful day . Good story . I will tell that story over a fireplace* to my friends over here at my university .

* Of course, it is too hot for a fireplace now and we don't even have such a thing .

Ah, up here it's just fine for a fireplace. Although the last few days have been beautiful, it's now getting chilly again.

I've got a bunch of funny stories about computer users. When I read places like notalwaysright, I can see my own past experiences right there (especially in tech support, but I've worked service industry too).

 

[Afforess]

5B are surprisingly easy (I know, it's a typo, like os79 told slammer). 5GB - dedicated phone line, and lots of determination. Think, single, horny guy, who hadn't had a girlfriend or date in something like five years (he was in his mid-thirties). He used to hide the smut in his room, "just in case I bring a girl home," he says, but we all wondered why he bothered.

I wonder which came first, the lack of a GF or the pr0n. I would bet on a causation there...

Do you seriously want to get me started on why Linux will never take off as anything other than an appliance OS and LAMP derivatives in the general market?

Lol. I think you should.

 

[civ_king]

Ah, isn't that something to do with recycle bin? Or is it file allocation?

Most operating systems do way more on the disk than just read/write when performing file operations. Updating the file index, for one thing. Still, that does look counter-intuitive.

My own low disk space story is more prosaic (or is it?). Roommate asks me to check his computer -- it's slow and won't let him save anything. I go on the computer and notice right off the bat that his 10GB (this was about 8 years ago and the comp was a few years old) HDD was full. So I ask him what could be taking up all that space.

He tells me he has no idea. I start a basic search for large folders. Find it pretty quick, too. Right on the desktop.

He had 5+ GB of pr0n. Of course, he swore at first that he had no idea how that got there. Then, when he realized just how unlikely I was to believe that, he swore that he didn't know it took up so much space.

Well, the unlimited dial-up connection we had sure got a workout (among other things).

I didn't let him live that down for a while.

(Suffice it to say, when we got cable internet, he had me install a larger hard drive in his computer )

We've taken things off topic a bit far here, and so as to return to topic...I got nothing. Maybe later.

I hate .trashes good thing Macs don't got em,

I'm impressed 5GB with 56k

5B are surprisingly easy (I know, it's a typo, like os79 told slammer). 5GB - dedicated phone line, and lots of determination. Think, single, horny guy, who hadn't had a girlfriend or date in something like five years (he was in his mid-thirties). He used to hide the smut in his room, "just in case I bring a girl home," he says, but we all wondered why he bothered.

I was wrong on one detail. We didn't share the dial-up connection. When I got cable net (very soon after moving in) he pretty much begged me to hook him up (which I did, of course, since between him and another roommate they paid for my net )



Do you seriously want to get me started on why Linux will never take off as anything other than an appliance OS and LAMP derivatives in the general market?



Ah, up here it's just fine for a fireplace. Although the last few days have been beautiful, it's now getting chilly again.

I've got a bunch of funny stories about computer users. When I read places like notalwaysright, I can see my own past experiences right there (especially in tech support, but I've worked service industry too).

got any on Mac like OMG Apple shipped me a mouse without buttons

 

[NBAfan]

How on earth do you manage to download 5B of anything with dialup!?

That guy has an addiction problem.

 

[scribbler]

I wonder which came first, the lack of a GF or the pr0n. I would bet on a causation there...

Yeah, you gotta wonder. Especially since they were mostly RealPlayer .ram files pulled off websites, which might have taken a bit of time.

got any on Mac like OMG Apple shipped me a mouse without buttons

No, unfortunately nothing so inane. But I do have one where a customer couldn't understand why his all-in-one printer/fax wouldn't accept faxes. I come in to the guy's house and look at the printer/fax in his home office. I call the number and indeed the fax doesn't pick up. Not being thoroughly familiar with the model (there's too many on the consumer market to bother being overly familiar with a particular model), I start by making sure everything's physically set up properly. Then I look through the settings, nothing to show Pick Up/Do Not Pick Up faxes. Nothing on the computer for software settings either.

So I look at the face of the fax machine itself. There, there's a button with an LED on it. Right beside the button it says: Auto Answer.

Yes, I did ask him beforehand if there was any button on the machine that could indicate whether it's in a receiving mode or not.

He was trying to figure out what was wrong for something like 5 days.

Time to fix: 10 minutes
Billable time: 2 hours
Look on client's face when I explain it to him: priceless


That's the same client that couldn't tell why his internet wasn't working. I ask him over the phone if modem and router are turned on, and he says yes, but I should have known better and asked for each light specifically.

So after determining that his net really is out after trying to remote connect, I go over. I look over his setup. Router lights are all on (like he said). I look at the modem...it's dark.

I look for the power cable from the modem, determine that it's going somewhere halfway across the room in a very visible spot and it's now half out of the power outlet. Hook it back into the power bar and everything works great.

His explanation was that he thought the modem was the router, when it wasn't the modem, which was the router. I suppose he thought he was observing quantum probabilities or something. :headdesk:


Finally, (for now) there's the client that kept on reinstalling Windows XP through the disk auto-repair function every time Windows popped up an error, until one day his trick for doing it stopped working (we won't get into why it had problems, but think middle-aged man, still virile, not getting the lovin' at home). Computer was completely nerfed. I reinstall everything properly, then upgrade it to SP1 and download and install all the updates. When I send it out, the computer works perfectly. I tell him through one of his employees not to do it again, because the SP1 would really mess things up.

Two weeks later it's back. Mr. FixIt had tried his trick again. He reinstalled Windows XP (SP0) onto an SP1 install. Nothing worked, especially the network. I think that was the last time he did it.

For those that don't follow, the install disk on Windows XP allows you to run an auto-repair function that will overwrite the Windows system files from the original disk, reset the boot manager, and reset some things in the master boot record, which can make it look like it's fixing the disk. It's really a nuke option, because it replaces updated files as well, but it does not reset settings. So if you update to a service pack, more often than not you'll have a system that is trying to access DLLs that are now out of date and no longer have the needed functions.

Well, more work for me.

(this is regarding Linux) Lol. I think you should.

It's your head..err, thread.

I've got a real good one, but I need to work myself up to it. I work best when in a mild fury over an issue -- and how disappointed I am in Linux is something that needs a good stoking. I'll get back to it tomorrow.

 

[Afforess]

Two weeks later it's back. Mr. FixIt had tried his trick again. He reinstalled Windows XP (SP0) onto an SP1 install. Nothing worked, especially the network. I think that was the last time he did it.

Should have given him a Windows XP with SP1 slipstreamed in.

Lol, I get funny questions on these threads from time to time. Let me see if I can dig up some of the more inane posters here.

 

[civ_king]

Yeah, you gotta wonder. Especially since they were mostly RealPlayer .ram files pulled off websites, which might have taken a bit of time.



No, unfortunately nothing so inane. But I do have one where a customer couldn't understand why his all-in-one printer/fax wouldn't accept faxes. I come in to the guy's house and look at the printer/fax in his home office. I call the number and indeed the fax doesn't pick up. Not being thoroughly familiar with the model (there's too many on the consumer market to bother being overly familiar with a particular model), I start by making sure everything's physically set up properly. Then I look through the settings, nothing to show Pick Up/Do Not Pick Up faxes. Nothing on the computer for software settings either.

So I look at the face of the fax machine itself. There, there's a button with an LED on it. Right beside the button it says: Auto Answer.

Yes, I did ask him beforehand if there was any button on the machine that could indicate whether it's in a receiving mode or not.

He was trying to figure out what was wrong for something like 5 days.

Time to fix: 10 minutes
Billable time: 2 hours
Look on client's face when I explain it to him: priceless


That's the same client that couldn't tell why his internet wasn't working. I ask him over the phone if modem and router are turned on, and he says yes, but I should have known better and asked for each light specifically.

So after determining that his net really is out after trying to remote connect, I go over. I look over his setup. Router lights are all on (like he said). I look at the modem...it's dark.

I look for the power cable from the modem, determine that it's going somewhere halfway across the room in a very visible spot and it's now half out of the power outlet. Hook it back into the power bar and everything works great.

His explanation was that he thought the modem was the router, when it wasn't the modem, which was the router. I suppose he thought he was observing quantum probabilities or something. :headdesk:


Finally, (for now) there's the client that kept on reinstalling Windows XP through the disk auto-repair function every time Windows popped up an error, until one day his trick for doing it stopped working (we won't get into why it had problems, but think middle-aged man, still virile, not getting the lovin' at home). Computer was completely nerfed. I reinstall everything properly, then upgrade it to SP1 and download and install all the updates. When I send it out, the computer works perfectly. I tell him through one of his employees not to do it again, because the SP1 would really mess things up.

Two weeks later it's back. Mr. FixIt had tried his trick again. He reinstalled Windows XP (SP0) onto an SP1 install. Nothing worked, especially the network. I think that was the last time he did it.

For those that don't follow, the install disk on Windows XP allows you to run an auto-repair function that will overwrite the Windows system files from the original disk, reset the boot manager, and reset some things in the master boot record, which can make it look like it's fixing the disk. It's really a nuke option, because it replaces updated files as well, but it does not reset settings. So if you update to a service pack, more often than not you'll have a system that is trying to access DLLs that are now out of date and no longer have the needed functions.

Well, more work for me.



It's your head..err, thread.

I've got a real good one, but I need to work myself up to it. I work best when in a mild fury over an issue -- and how disappointed I am in Linux is something that needs a good stoking. I'll get back to it tomorrow.

Anything on macs in General?

EDIT: I just went through a mage of google when i typed mac fail and couldn't find mac fails

 

[Afforess]

Okay, this is by far my favorite bad user experience with this mod. I've removed the name of the user, since it really isn't about him.

Thread:

I upgraded XP to SP3, now I'm getting the strange runtime error when BTS is loading.

All was working fine before the SP3 upgrade. All civ patches have been installed prior to sp3 upgrade.

Civ IV is definitely a very misbehaving program, in general. None of my other installed games have given me a problem with the sp3 upgrade.

Anyone ever experience this and its solution?

1 Day Later:

anyone ever have this problem with bts after updating xp to sp3. both vanilla and warlords are working fine after the upgrade. again, another major glitch with bts, undoubtedly.

works fine for me - and in fact its the first report of such problems I have come around here - so its not a common theme

that said:
please post your dxdiag results file and the error message

Here is the error message and dxdiag file.

Things done: reinstalled civ iv complete (from DVD) THREE times! (followed the instructions given by Ori for uninstall and reinstall); all patches installed; changed gfx drivers over a dozen times and finally settled on omega drivers as giving the best, stable results; installed RoM mod again from scratch with fresh install.

It is strange how none, and I mean NONE, of my other installed games are giving me any problems!

Does it do the same without the mod installed?

Most mods include an updated DLL programmed in C++, which the error dialog seems to be pointing to.

Yes, the error seems to be pointing me to something but I was not able to see the entire path. Plus, what is the solution if the DLL is the problem? I installed the latest version of the mod, so what else is there to do?

ask in the thread maintaining the mod - is this mod created for the patch version you are using?

Yes. RoM is v 2.71, which is intended for BTS 3.19.

Moderator Action: moved to RoM subforum

This is where the sh!t hits the fan...

it looks like, to me, that some of BTS's required libraries were deleted in the upgrade process. Try reinstalling BTS, patching it to 3.19, and loading the mod again.

I did that. After the SP3 update, I deleted ALL Civ IV stuff, per Ori's suggestion, and I even cleaned out the registry. Then I installed Civ IV complete and applied the patches for BTS and Col. Then, I downloaded a fresh RoM 2.71 and installed that last. When I double clicked on the saved game, the runtime error came up. After that I reinstalled DirectX 9.0c, but the installer told me that no installation was needed as everything was up-to-date.

So, I'm at a loss as to what to do now.

Try starting a new game. It may just be old saves that are corrupted.

This is the point where the paranoia sets in...

I have over 50 saved games for RoM (all the same start, different years) and I have a real hard time believing that ALL 50 games have become corrupted simply because of a Windows update. There has to be something more sinister at work here than just a simple corruption for it to make all 50 games unusable.

You don't understand, and are not cooperating, how can you expect us to help you fix your problem?

Try starting a new game. It will help us isolate whether your saves are ruined, or your BTS install is bad.

And by the way, I don't care how many saves you have, one change to a core game file, and EVERY single file will no longer load. New games, should work, however. Life sucks, sometimes.

Can you load a saved game from a non-RoM scenario ?

Irony, you can almost taste it.

Thanks, but no thanks! I'll work with Zappara on trying to resolve this issue. I don't need nor deserve to be spoken to in such a rude and condescending manner. Might I suggest a better tone in answering people when they ask a question or fully don't understand an issue instead of charging them with not being cooperative and giving them the "I don't care" attitude. Perhaps you are used to talking to your friends or family in that fashion but when you work with a much larger forum of people, a little more politeness and courtesy go a long way.

you have my most humble apology if we have come across as rude/condescending, however Afforess is a modder and understands what may be happening, Zappara doesn't understand C++/DLL (I think) and can't help you there so please follow what Afforess said, he understands from experience

I apologize again if I/we have come across as rude/condescending

FYI: Windows XP SP3 List

Any one of these hotfixs could change the way windows reads the saved file before the fix was applied. A Service Pack, is more that just a collection of security updates.

This is where things get good...

No, let ME tell you what is truly incredible. You have people, like civ_king (thanks for trying to smooth the waters), apologizing for you and cleaning up the mess for your lack of interpersonal skills when dealing with a broader audience. Ignorance? IGNORANCE??? Ignorance is an arrogant 18 year old who thinks he has the world by the ass because he can bang out a couple of lines of code in C++ and then when clientele ask questions he becomes defensive and attacks people with a haughty attitude. And then to top it all off, you threaten people to withhold help if they don't bend to your will and cower to your demands of "do what I say or else." I don't know what relationship you have exactly with Zappara, but you are giving his mod a bad name by being so confrontational with people that are just trying to use it. If I were him, I would disassociate myself from you.

At this point, the mod is broken by my rule book and has some serious bugs that need worked out. I have plenty of other mods installed and not one, NOT ONE, corrupted all of the saved games after upgrading my OS. As a matter of fact not a single game on my computer had a problem with the OS upgrade. These statistics lead me to believe it is definitely a programming issue.

Do me a favor, stick to programming if that is what you're good out and leave the public relations matters to people who know how to interact more professionally with individuals. You are in for a rude awakening if this is how you are or plan to act with people in the work sector.

Moderator Action: Thread closed. Way too much trolling and flaming interlaced with useful information to try and clean up the thread.

There was more explicit stuff by the user there, but Turner wiped those posts. I'm sure you can tell it was good. None of my posts got wiped though, I just stuck him on ignore and went on as normal. I don't think he ever solved his problem. I wonder why?

That was my favorite user experience. It was before A New Dawn, back when I was still making Afforess's Modmods. Months ago.

 

[civ_king]

I remember that *[30 second long BEEP]*

 

[Hydromancerx]

Wow ... just ... wow!

 

[dyerbods]

That's why I stick with Linux, now if I could only get Civ VI with RoM and AND to run under Wine.

I'm running RoM 2.9 with AND 1.7b3 under Ubuntu 9.10 (wine 1.1.19). No problems running, but I do have to do the installation of RoM and AND under Windows and then copy it over to my Ubuntu system. This is because the AND installer doesn't run under wine.

 

[Sinapus]

There was more explicit stuff by the user there, but Turner wiped those posts. I'm sure you can tell it was good. None of my posts got wiped though, I just stuck him on ignore and went on as normal. I don't think he ever solved his problem. I wonder why?

That was my favorite user experience. It was before A New Dawn, back when I was still making Afforess's Modmods. Months ago.

....

Gah, I thought I was pressing things when I let exasperation leak into some of my reports of being unable to load savegames. (Hasn't happened again since 1.64, even with my XML tweaks so I think the bit lichen8566 spotted may have fixed the problem.)

So far so good. (Spent recovery time from four wisdom teeth extractions incorporating my XML tweaks into 2.91 and the current beta phase. Nothing blew up yet, though I'm hoping the release version doesn't have too many changes from beta3.)

Oh, and I did check my Anime Music Videos directory (most from before 1999 or so when I had dialup) and it's about 5.6GB, so it's doable. There are some downloading programs that let you pause and resume downloads if the server you're connecting to supports that.

 

[Fanghorn]

At first i want to thank Affores for his repeated success in making RoM any better. I am not sure but since you included the Great Commanders Modmod i guess this is the right place to get some answers. My Great Commanders dont get any xp from battles even in stack with only one other unit and that unit gains xp not just a promotion after battle. Most funny thing is that i could make my first GG lvl 2 because he got 3 xp when my units battled an animal. The unit was a warrior lvl 2 with 2 xp and advanced to lvl 3 with 3 xp. I assume that their controlpoints are beeeing used up entirely or not at all.

 

[strategyonly]

I think this might have been mentioned, but not for sure, the FOG does not seem to work correctly??

Units get lost in the Fog, and next to a building Fog is still there??

 

[scribbler]

Should have given him a Windows XP with SP1 slipstreamed in.

Lol, I get funny questions on these threads from time to time. Let me see if I can dig up some of the more inane posters here.

I did, but he didn't use it because it wasn't the original disk so he wasn't sure what it was.

Okay, this is by far my favorite bad user experience with this mod. I've removed the name of the user, since it really isn't about him.

[snipped]

There was more explicit stuff by the user there, but Turner wiped those posts. I'm sure you can tell it was good. None of my posts got wiped though, I just stuck him on ignore and went on as normal. I don't think he ever solved his problem. I wonder why?

That was my favorite user experience. It was before A New Dawn, back when I was still making Afforess's Modmods. Months ago.

One of the reasons I've stayed away from telling certain clients how much things will cost them up front is because they tend to be nicer when they don't know. Has to do with the human psyche. When you've already paid for a service or you know you will pay a set price, you generally want to maximize gain but don't worry about increasing cost. You also care less about your own behavior because the cost, at least in your mind, has already been incurred.

The same calculation happens when you get something for free, although most people are smart enough to realize that when they're coming in for help the onus is on them to direct the conversation in a way that is of benefit to them. Most of the time that just means being polite and not taking any razzing too hard.

Anything on macs in General?

EDIT: I just went through a mage of google when i typed mac fail and couldn't find mac fails

Since I feel bad about going so far off-topic, even with maybe Afforess' blessing, I'm putting my answer in spoiler tags.

Spoiler :

If I should happen to have misconstrued your point here, and caused some friendly fire, allow me to apologize in advance (I am Canadian, after all, so the apology is pretty much a given ).

Thing about Macs is that the primary source of most problems are variously known as eye-dee-ten-tee errors, PEBKACs, or Stupid User Tricks (which are the primary source of problems with all tech, most likely including runaway Toyotas). Most of the time it's nothing serious, sometimes embarrassing, but all told, no harm no foul.

Sometimes it's serious, where files disappear for some 'unknown reason' (and time machine doesn't have it stored) or programs are installed that the user 'doesn't know how it got there', with conversations usually going something like this:

"But it asked me if I wanted to 'securely' the file or something."

"Do you mean securely delete?"

"I don't know, I'm not an expert!"

"So you clicked OK and entered your username and password?"

"Of course, why wouldn't I?"

"But if you didn't know what it was for..."

"But it asked me to! It's a Mac! It should know what I want!"

Unfortunately you find people like that on just about any system.

But no, the point which I believe you've been so circumspect in making stands (and I understand your need to defend your Mac, I used to feel the same way about the Amiga, although I had less of a basis than you do right now), and I had made it in my first response to you -- Macs have been more stable than Windows (although I've been quite satisfied with the latest iteration of Windows). It's what you get when you control the hardware you're running your system on.

But they are less secure. Luckily not quite as many people are trying to break Mac security, so the likelihood of malware is much smaller, but not quite as many white hats are trying to find vulnerabilities before they become an issue. Considering that malware is the primary culprit in stability issues under Windows, this is definitely the route I'd go if I wanted to take down an OS X system. All it takes is finding a way to inject bad code into kernel memory (although I'm uncertain and not about to try to find out if the problems with security have been improved, I do know that the kernel is still based off a heavily modified version of Debian that has had several very severe security issues to handle, and last I heard was not going to be updated from the open source code because of licensing issues -- Apple doesn't want to share with the open source community).

Knowing this hasn't stopped me from recommending Macs to some clients (the guy with the fax/printer and modem, for one) when I felt it appropriate and they asked me for a recommendation. That does not mean I have faith in their ability not to break (or be broken). If I were to run/test the Mac equivalent of some of the stuff I regularly do on my PC, I'd almost certainly have stability issues with those programs. Likewise if I tried to run OS X on the quality of hardware that many PCs are made from. Most hardware PC problems are PSU, mobo, ram, hdd (most problems I've had with WD, funny enough), vid card (when not ATI or nVidia). Get those solid and you have a Windows machine that will rival a Mac so long as you don't try to break it or are careless in installing software.

Now, so as to put this to rest, I will state it clearly -- I neither need nor want a Macintosh system, and I am in a better position than most to make an informed decision about it. My point was never about you civ_king (I respect what you do here on the boards, and have often found your posts informative), or an attack on you. My problem was always, has been and will always be, with the idea that people feel they can make a recommendation off a single throwaway line, particularly in computers.

Or I may have gotten a little pissed off that someone on the internet actually tried to get me into the Mac vs. Windows thing, which I'd had my fill of about ten years ago, while I had a lot of time on my hands this weekend. At this hour, I'm not too sure either way.

As I'll prove Sunday when I post on Linux, my opprobrium is not limited to taking on or supporting a single OS. If you want, on Monday night I can go into a small portion of the myriad of problems Windows has had and continues to have (if I tried to be complete, I would have to out-write Robert Jordan and George R. R. Martin combined, "oh Windows, how well I've known thee"), and on Tuesday night I'll go into why all the other consumer personal computer OSes combined may have more intellectual merit and societal benefit than a guy that goes up on stage and turns his foreskin into a performance act, but just barely (that includes my beloved Amiga OS).

But if you want me to write up on Monday and Tuesday, on Wednesday I'll go into why OS X, while being a superb OS, still fails like the rest. I'll also give some detail as to why it will see a complete reversal of fortunes over the next five to ten years and why while the iPxxx line will do fine for some more years after that, it too will ultimately die out. And it has less to do with technology itself (although there is a strong element to it), and more to do with a number of factors which are completely out of both product designer's and engineer's hands.

To paraphrase Mercutio, "A pox on all their houses."

 

[scribbler]

I think this might have been mentioned, but not for sure, the FOG does not seem to work correctly??

Units get lost in the Fog, and next to a building Fog is still there??

Which version are you running? I know this problem was in beta2, but I've so far not seen it myself in beta3.