About OS X and Civ III Complete

[Synergy67]

I'm rather excited that my new copy of Civ III Complete is winging its way to me right now. I've been wistfully yearning after Conquests and Play the World for um, some years now. I note that Civ III Complete runs only on Mac OS 10.3.9 and higher, and I'm still running Jaguar on my G4 (with both OS 9 & 10) because I spend most of my time in OS 9 still. I saw a note from Brad here somewhere, but couldn't find it again or I would have posted this there, where he confirmed one definitely has to run 10.3.9 or higher to run the new Complete disc.

So, I'm poking around on eBay looking for an affordable copy of OS 10.4 Tiger. I'm confused by all the variant releases: two gray discs, a black "Universal" disk with or without gray discs, people saying only a three disc set is complete, some people selling only one disc and saying it is complete for any Mac. What do I really want or need just to get Tiger running on my G4 1.25 single chip Tower? I need to keep Classic runnable too. Thanks, my Mac-savvy friends. So glad there are Mac forums here too.

 

[AlanH]

OS X Tiger comes in a retail pack as a single black DVD that will install on any Mac. There's also a trial verison of iWork in the box.

Treat anything else with suspicion, as it may have been delivered for a specific hardware configuration and may not work with all Macs.

You can keep Classic running if you save a copy of your OS 9 system folder somewhere before you install Tiger, then reinstate it afterwards. I've had the same copy of OS 9 on a separate partition (actually the original hard drive in my G4 tower) right through upgrades from 10.1 thrugh to 10.4 on other disk partitions. I never use it, but it's still there to be launched if needed.

 

[Synergy67]

I've gotten OS 10.4.6 Tiger installed now and have been playing Civ III Complete, but I've got some really buggy problems going on. Primarily, and very frustratingly, I can't LOAD a saved game. If I do command-L or go to the menu to load a saved game (autosave and manual saves are working), then the game gives me a in-game dialog box that simply says, "The game will now quit" as if I selected command-Q and was trying to quit.

Also, sometimes when I hit F2, the screen comes up completely blank of text. Escaping, then hitting F2 again brings the info back. Mostly vexing though is that the only way I can play a game right now is to never reload and to never quit or shut down the computer until I'm done. I haven't seen that problem listed elsewhere here. I've only had the game crash about three times so far over the last week. It seems much more stable than the OS 9 Vanilla version was.

The only thing I can think of that might be relevant is that I have an old Turbo Mouse running through an iMate USB to ADB adaptor plugged into my keyboard. When I installed Tiger, it seemed confused, thinking I had some sort of unrecognizable keyboard plugged in which it wanted to try to recognize by entering certain keys in certain locations on the keyboard. When I entered the buttons, it didn't take the entries and kept asking the same thing over and over, so I gave up trying. The Turbo Mouse works fine, but it's not recognized. What the System Profiler lists is another Apple Pro Keyboard where the Turbo Mouse should be. I am wondering if some of the key commands are confused in game as a result.

Anyone else report this game quitting, inability to reload problem? I also can't for the life of me get DYP and RAR mods to work with the full graphics, but I'll post that in another more appropriate thread.

 

[AlanH]

I've never heard of any of these problems.

When the game says it will now quit, that isn't the same as if you hit Quit. That message normally accompanies a crash. Are you sure there's no other error message or report?

"Only had the game crash about three times this week..." sounds pretty unstable compared with my experience. Do you have some crash reports? Launch the Console application in /Applications/Utilties and look for Civ3 reports in Logs.

It's conceivable that your odd mouse may be getting in the way of the keyboard's communication with the software. Is there no way you can try a more conventional mouse to eliminate that from the equation?

 

[Synergy67]

OK, forget the Turbo Mouse issue. I tried my original G4 optical mouse, removing the Turbo Mouse, and I get the same problem. If I try to load a game, it Exits (not quits). Here's the actual picture of the load. About 1/2 through the loadup, I get a dialog box saying "The game will now exit" with a button to push to have it exit (all this with the Civ parchment-styled dialog boxes which pop up in the game.) I can't get a screenshot of the exiting dialog box, but this is what I am doing right before it happens:



I think the game crashed on me maybe only one-two times in many hours of use so far, actually, when rapidly doing stuff with the mouse and clicking on nations to do diplomacy with them from the F2 page. I'm not worried about that at all, it has been so rare.

 

[AlanH]

Option 1: When it Exits, do you get a Mac dialog saying Civ3 unexpectedly quit, with a noption to send a report to Apple? Alternatively, have you looked in the Console yet, to see if there are any crash logs for Civ3 Complete?

Option 2: You could upload one of the files that causes this problem here. I can check it to see if the issue is with the saved file. Note that you may have to zip the file or use FileValet to compress it before uploading, to ensure that it fits the max file size.

Optin 3: Have you tried loading a save that was created elsewhere. Eg a SG save or a COTM save? Do they give the same problem? That may give a clue as to whether it's only your saves that are causing the problem.

 

[Virtual Alex]

After just installing OSX and then installing C3C on it, do a permission repair.

Insert the OSX start up disk. Restart holding the C key to boot off the disk. Once the installer starts, go to the menu, utilities, and open disk utility. Click "repair permissions" and just for good measure "repair disk." This is a good first step for basic housekeeping.

I have OSX and have been running C3C for about a month and I have never had a crash yet. The game should run fine, so there is some kind of issue we need to find and take care of.

 

[MAS]

Basic housekeeping?

Do you even know what repair permissions actually does?

I would advice anyone to only apply such stunts if you know there is actually a good reason to do it.

 

[AlanH]

I was a total sceptic over Repair Permissions ... the 21st century equivalent of "Rebuild Desktop' or 'ZAP THE PRAM'.

However, three months ago I installed a security update released on 14th March, and after that Civ3 Complete crashed on launch. I reinstalled the entire suite, trashed every preference I know of, and still no luck. As a last resport I ran Repair Permissions, knowing it was very unlikely to break anything, but not expecting it to achieve anything either, and not paying any attention to what it reported.

And blow me down ... it worked!

 

[MAS]

I was a total sceptic over Repair Permissions ... the 21st century equivalent of "Rebuild Desktop' or 'ZAP THE PRAM'.
... ....

And blow me down ... it worked!

Lucky shot I suppose. Blow me then, but I'm seeing this "repair permissions" advice way to often, on any mac forum. Far more than I've seen "zap the pram" and "rebuild desktop" combined in the past. And OSX doesn't need "basic housekeeping." "repair permissions" is only there for when there is a problem that can be solved with it.

I hope you see where I'm coming from.

 

[AlanH]

I hope you see where I'm coming from.

Absolutely! I was similarly scathing whenever I saw the advice previously. There's a very well-reasoned article somewhere out there on the web that debunks Repair Permissions as a cure-all, and it summarised all that I (used to) feel about it.

However, it appears that there *are* rare occasions when it will do a job for you. As far as I know it should not be pssible for RP to make things worse, and life's way too short to try to predict the possible situations where it may do some good. So I now figure it's easier to just let people try it if they want to, rather than to get up tight when I see it being suggested in inappropriate circumstances.

 

[Virtual Alex]

I do't think it's so rare. Anytime you add large chunks of data to your computer, and move alot of stuff around it's a good idea to do it. I never said it was a cure all, I said it was a good idea. Repairing permissins doesn't do any harm, and does, and I would argue alot more than occasionaly, fix a problem. And unlike Zapping PRAM and rebuilding desktop, you can SEE if permission repair is doing anything or not. If you end up repairing 400 lines of permission errors, than there is a good chance thats the problem.

 

[MacBaldrick]

Alan,

You put your finger on the issue when you stated you installed a security update before problems which 'repair permissions' solved.
If I recall, Apple recommend you repair permissions before implementing all major upgrades - I assume because these upgrades overwrite so many files there is a risk the directory gets confused making a crash is possible. I had just such a problem last year which I solved. It begs the question why do permissioned get changed / corrupted anyway ?

 

[AlanH]

I don't believe I've ever seen this mythical advice by Apple to Repair Permissions before, during or after system updates. Permissions only get corrupted if a rogue installer changes them from what they were after a previous install. Apple's installers *shouldn't* do that.

 

[Virtual Alex]

It's not by Apple, it's buy me and everyone at the MacOsXhints forum.

Permission repairs can only help. So doing them should always be one of the first steps.

When installing a clean system, there should be no problems. But when upgrading from one system to the next, or when installing new programs, permissions can get fudged up. I always repair them after installing large amount of stuff to my computer like new games, or programs. And when I do I always find a large list of errors, and get them all fixed.

 

[AlanH]

I was responding to:

If I recall, Apple recommend you repair permissions before implementing all major upgrades

 

[MAS]

It's not by Apple, it's buy me and everyone at the MacOsXhints forum.

Permission repairs can only help.

And that is just my point.

From my understanding, what repair permission does is set the permissions back to their original value. But who sais that the original value is any good to start with?
What if some of those permissions where changed for a good reason?
How could you know?
It may be there is only a small change it does wrong, but I wouldn't be claiming it can only help.

Considder OSX does just about all the basic regular housekeeping itself, automatically, it even defrags the HD in the background... Why wouldn't the apple engineers make repair permission an automatic process, part of the patch routine, done on a regular basis?

Aspirin is a relatively harmless drug, still you don't use it unless you actually have a petty darn heavy headache or fever, and not just whenever you feel a bit uneasy
Like any medicine...

Well, sorry for going off-topic.

 

[Synergy67]

Option 1: When it Exits, do you get a Mac dialog saying Civ3 unexpectedly quit, with a noption to send a report to Apple? Alternatively, have you looked in the Console yet, to see if there are any crash logs for Civ3 Complete?

Option 2: You could upload one of the files that causes this problem here. I can check it to see if the issue is with the saved file. Note that you may have to zip the file or use FileValet to compress it before uploading, to ensure that it fits the max file size.

Optin 3: Have you tried loading a save that was created elsewhere. Eg a SG save or a COTM save? Do they give the same problem? That may give a clue as to whether it's only your saves that are causing the problem.

1) No. The game just says it will now exit any time I try to load any kind of saved game period. Also, even weirder, the SECOND time I hit command L from in-game to access the load menu, the game also exits before even attempting to load any specific save listed. The first time it pulls up the saves menu fine. If I escape back to the game, then hit command-L again, it always immediately exits.

2) I will upload a file and tack it on this post shortly...a basic starting game save.

3) I used it on the MacMaya GOTM and got the same exact result. "The game will now exit."

I did a permissions repair (there were dozens) on my hard drive as recommended, but it hasn't affected this issue. I reinstalled a fresh copy of Civ III Complete back on the hard drive (before I had modified terrain graphics as I have done with the first copy). Same deal, fresh off the DVD. I am quite at a loss here. I also scrapped all my saves and prefs once before and had the same problem.

argh. and um....any further ideas?

EDIT: Adding Save file.

 

[Synergy67]

Anyone? Anyone? Bueller? Bueller?

[lame bump

 

[AlanH]

Sorry - missed your post. Your save loaded fine here.

1) No. The game just says it will now exit any time I try to load any kind of saved game period. Also, even weirder, the SECOND time I hit command L from in-game to access the load menu, the game also exits before even attempting to load any specific save listed. The first time it pulls up the saves menu fine.

I really don't understand why you aren't seeing any kind of crash log. If it's failing half way through a load there has to be some exception being raised. Is Tiger behaving OK in other applications? I recall that you bought a "second hand" copy.

Maybe you should contact Aspyr support?