Aspyr Announces Civ3 Complete & Civ4

[ejday]

That's all fine and good, but honestly - what do you expect us to do about it, aside from sweat profusely? This knowledge won't affect our ability to port games faster, or make them run better - we're already doing just about the best we can given our time constraints.

Sweat not, my friend. I think you took the comment opposite of its intention: seeing someone who is using a PC that is thinking about switching to a Mac build instead...? That's good news for the Mac game hauses!

It probably won't be a huge movement, but maybe a positive blip on the sales screens. The power of superior interface...

Of course, I could just be dreaming.

 

[Brad Oliver]

Sweat not, my friend. I think you took the comment opposite of its intention: seeing someone who is using a PC that is thinking about switching to a Mac build instead...? That's good news for the Mac game hauses!

You're right - I totally misread that. I've been reading all these posts about people using WINE to try and run games on the developer boxes, and other posts about people drooling to dual-boot into Windows on an Intel Mac, so my paranoia here is a little higher than usual. I hope you're right of course.

 

[ancestral]

With Conquests and Civ IV coming out only months between them, I think Aspyr would be keen to stick in a small rebate. Not only would this make people who plan on buying both games happy, but more importantly this would get people who don't play Civ games and just want a game under the Christmas tree to think about buying the sequel afterwards.

If I remember correctly, MacSoft did this for people who bought Civ II Gold but owned Civ II.

 

[Padma]

I've been offline for a few days, and I don't really want to drag this off topic, buut just to put in a few more words:

Brad: Yeah, I realize there is a whole lot of difference between Mac and Linux, but from my understanding, the biggest problem in porting Windows games to Linux is DirectX vs OpenGL. So if you guys get the OpenGL port done ...

Alan: *LOTS* of folks buy software for Linux. Especially games. The *principle* of Linux is freedom (as in free speech). *Free* (as in free beer) is nice, but not required. And *most* Linux users aren't really averse to proprietary software, particularly games. (Yes, there are zealots who think that if it's not open source, its evil, but they're, well, zealots. ) If there is an equally good (or better!) version of something that is free (as in beer), then it will get preference, of course. But that even holds true in the Windows world.

I buy Linux games. I also bought Cedega, a tool to help me run Windows games in Linux. I would *definitely* buy a Linux version of Civ3/Civ4!

But I'll shut up now. This *is* the MAC forum, after all.

 

[ejday]

With Conquests and Civ IV coming out only months between them, I think Aspyr would be keen to stick in a small rebate. Not only would this make people who plan on buying both games happy, but more importantly this would get people who don't play Civ games and just want a game under the Christmas tree to think about buying the sequel afterwards.

If I remember correctly, MacSoft did this for people who bought Civ II Gold but owned Civ II.

I wouldn't bet on it. Aspyr's Civ III build isn't a rehash, it's a fresh effort. Same end effect, perhaps, but totally new manhours building it. Further, while Civ III and Civ IV may share the "Civ" name, they're utterly different applications. It doesn't quite translate like Civ II to Civ II Gold, where the base app was the same.

 

[droo]

Alan: *LOTS* of folks buy software for Linux. Especially games. The *principle* of Linux is freedom (as in free speech). *Free* (as in free beer) is nice, but not required. And *most* Linux users aren't really averse to proprietary software, particularly games. (Yes, there are zealots who think that if it's not open source, its evil, but they're, well, zealots. ) If there is an equally good (or better!) version of something that is free (as in beer), then it will get preference, of course. But that even holds true in the Windows world.

Ah memories of Loki (rest in peace). I have the Linux versions of Quake 3, Sim City 3000, and best of all SMAC + SMACX!!!

I'm really excited that both Civ3 Complete and Civ4 are coming to the Mac. I'll actually jump on Civ3C and wait on Civ4 b/c I doubt my PB will be able to handle Civ4 and I never even played Civ3 yet b/c I wanted the complete version and didn't want to cave in and buy it for the PC.

Besides if history of Civ3 + early reports of Civ4 are any judge, it will take some patches and maybe even an expansion pack before Civ4 becomes truly refined and polished so in my mind there's no harm in waiting until a Civ4 Complete for the Mac.

 

[krzysp]

I must admit that it will take a while before Firaxis fixes all the bugs and those are overwhealming at the moment. Hopefull then Civ4 arrives for the Mac it will be free of the bugs we face today.

Nonetheless I'm going for the PC version, though I will probably wait a little Till the first patch for instance. Hopefully that will be released soon

 

[bio_hazard]

I may be wrong, but I think many of the issues are specifically related to graphics cards and their drivers (or maybe I'm biased in this assessment because this is the problem I'm having with my pc version). Is it safe to say that there are fewer models of graphics cards to worry about with macs than with PC's? Hopefully this will help whoever has to worry about those sorts of things to do some more effective quality control for the mac release.

 

[AlanH]

Certainly there are fewer combinations of Mac software and hardware, but there will probably be fewer beta testers as well, and so fewer test beds.

 

[bio_hazard]

Good point, AlanH... I was trying to be optimistic about it.

 

[JoAT]

On the other hand, I don't see us dropping the OS requirement down below 10.3.x

I know we were talking C-IV here, but I can't remember hearing what the min. OS requirement would/could be for C3C. Are you shooting for 10.3.x for C3C as well?

OS X is evolving faster than Windows. I would strongly recommend any Jaguar user to upgrade to Panther at least. It makes your hardware - any hardware - work so much better. My G4 took on a new lease of life with Panther.

I'm sure most of you have heard of LowEndMac.com. Well, if I was running a website, it would be www.CheapAssMac.com. The only reason I even have 10.2.8 is because I got it free when Apple decided to give it away for free to any teacher that wanted it. Computer $s just never seem to be in the budget if you ask my wife...

JoAT

 

[Brad Oliver]

I know we were talking C-IV here, but I can't remember hearing what the min. OS requirement would/could be for C3C. Are you shooting for 10.3.x for C3C as well?

Yes, it'll require 10.3 of some form. We've only tested it in 10.3.9, but it'll probably run on lesser versions of 10.3.

 

[JoAT]

Yes, it'll require 10.3 of some form. We've only tested it in 10.3.9, but it'll probably run on lesser versions of 10.3.

Damn. Guess it's finally time to upgrade...

JoAT

 

[Beamup]

Tiger's worth it anyway. I was using it for three weeks on my new iBook while in Japan, and how I can't stand Jaguar anymore (though it's still installed on my desktop machine, which is my primary). Just a much better OS overall.

 

[droo]

Is Tiger really a big improvement over Panther? I've had a PB with Panther since March and recently got the Mini with Tiger. So far I haven't seen all that much to appreciate any differences but I haven't really had the time to use the Mini all that much.

I intend to play C3C on the PB mostly so I'd be curious to see if there's any compelling reason to upgrade to Tiger.

 

[bio_hazard]

@ droo
Spotlight is pretty bad-ass. I have tons of .pdf articles that I download, and now I don't have to worry about re-naming them- I can search the text in .pdfs. That by itself makes it worthwhile for me.

Desktop/Widgets probably fall in the 'fun but you could live w/out it', although I'm getting fond of having the iCal events right there...

By now hopefully most things are compatible- it took a few months for some developers to release compatibility patches...

those are the main differences I've noticed...

 

[tao]

Is Tiger really a big improvement over Panther?

Yes. Spotlight and the smart folders in Finder, Mail, Addressbook are killer features.

 

[droo]

Sounds cool, although it would mean adding more $$$ to the C3C budget and getting CFO approval (a.k.a. the Mrs. ).

I'm curious, did you guys do an actual upgrade or a fresh install? I've heard that for Macs it's usually better to wipe the hd and to a fresh install rather than install on top of an existing OS.

 

[AlanH]

@droo: I don't rate Tiger as quite such a good upgrade as Panther. Panther transformed my Mac, and was probably the most cost-effective performance upgrade I've ever bought.

Tiger has some impressive stuff going on under the surface, but rather little of it is visible until the application developers take full advantage. Core graphics, core data, an improved kernel threading architecture ... superb underpinnings for the future! If you want to see some of the new OS graphics infrastructure in action, try loading up the Developer Tools and playing with Quartz Composer and Core Image Fun House. Now that's impressive!

Spotlight is a tip of one of those icebergs - the file system meta-data system - but under-achieves currently. Dashboard is pure memory-eating eye-candy and I never use it. Automator is interesting, and I *think* I ought to be able to use it, but I haven't quite got a round tuit.

So, Tiger's not quite such a no-brainer as Panther, but I guess I'm happy to contribute a few pounds to the cause of ongoing OS X development every 18 months. I'll be near the front of the line for Leopard, as well .

 

[bio_hazard]

@droo
sorry- mine was a new computer, although it came with panther installed and tiger in a box. I think i did a fresh install since I didn't have anything else on it yet.

and be ready with your old data- I made the mistake of not slurping everything from my old drive when I did the install, instead doing a target disk transfer later on. No major problems, but none of the transferred stuff got indexed, which caused me a couple days of grief until i made it to the local genius bar.