Beyond the Sword for Mac OS is Shipping!

scriblerus · Jul 26, 2009

AlanH said:
And the latest email from Amazon UK:

Play.com are advertising "Release date 31 July 2009". I wonder if they can get it any faster ...

I think the play.com date has been posted since the start, so may simply be as much of a stab in the dark as Amazon's original 20 July shout.
I also have the Amazon.uk email predicting despatch around 21 August, and the most polite way I can express my reaction is "wtf!?". If, as reported, it really is already shipping in the US, France & Germany, why the h*ll are we going to be waiting another 4 weeks, give or take, to get copies in the UK. Are they transporting US copies across the Atlantic by kayak?
Or -is this just Amazon dicking around again (nb even if it is, it means they don't yet have stock, as other territories evidently do).
Or is the lack of a press release/official Aspyr announcement indicative of some bigger foul-up going on behind the scenes - it's certainly the oddest (aka most incompetent) marketing launch of any media product I've ever seen.
:mad:

Graven · Jul 26, 2009

AlanH said:
Graven's recent thread is the first published indication I've seen that anyone has actually installed and played BtS for Mac.

Sounds like it might not be a figment of our fevered imaginations after all.

Well, my guess is that a lot of people in the US have received it from Amazon as well. I suppose it would depend on how close they live to an Amazon depot (I always receive my Amazon stuff overnight, regardless of my shipping method, because of how close the depot is to me). At the latest, I'd think the rest of the US guys would be getting it tomorrow (Monday).

Anyways, the game looks great and I was playing it with my girlfriend for several hours last night. Since Brad seems to check this thread often, I mine as well ask here though...every once in awhile the game crashes. It happened once last night with BtS and also happened with Warlords on occasion. Anything I can do to prevent it? Thanks.

AlanH · Jul 26, 2009

Graven said:
Anyways, the game looks great and I was playing it with my girlfriend for several hours last night. Since Brad seems to check this thread often, I mine as well ask here though...every once in awhile the game crashes. It happened once last night with BtS and also happened with Warlords on occasion. Anything I can do to prevent it? Thanks.

When it crashes, do you get a message offering to send a report? If so I recommend you open the report, copy the text in the window, and send it to Aspyr Tech Support. You could just click the button to send it to Apple, but I doubt if they could do anything with it themselves, and I don't know how efficient they are at getting the crash reports to the original software developer.

If you copy the first 50 lines or so of the crash report to a post here it may be possible for someone here to suggest work-round options. Crash reports are also available if you launch /Applications/Console.app and look for ~/Library/Logs/CrashReporter/Civilization IV Warlords_crash.log or the equivalent file for BtS.

Graven · Jul 26, 2009

AlanH said:
When it crashes, do you get a message offering to send a report? If so I recommend you open the report, copy the text in the window, and send it to Aspyr Tech Support. You could just click the button to send it to Apple, but I doubt if they could do anything with it themselves, and I don't know how efficient they are at getting the crash reports to the original software developer.

If you copy the first 50 lines or so of the crash report to a post here it may be possible for someone here to suggest work-round options. Crash reports are also available if you launch /Applications/Console.app and look for ~/Library/Logs/CrashReporter/Civilization IV Warlords_crash.log or the equivalent file for BtS.

All right...well I plan to play significantly today, so if it happens again, I'll post it here. Thanks.

Brad Oliver · Jul 26, 2009

AlanH said:
If you copy the first 50 lines or so of the crash report to a post here it may be possible for someone here to suggest work-round options. Crash reports are also available if you launch /Applications/Console.app and look for ~/Library/Logs/CrashReporter/Civilization IV Warlords_crash.log or the equivalent file for BtS.

Yes, I'll second this recommendation. You may also e-mail such a crash log to me at brad AT aspyr DOT com. If I were a betting man, I'd guess this is related to OpenAL (our longstanding nemesis for Civ4), but I'd like to see a crash log to know.

Graven · Jul 26, 2009

Brad Oliver said:
Yes, I'll second this recommendation. You may also e-mail such a crash log to me at brad AT aspyr DOT com. If I were a betting man, I'd guess this is related to OpenAL (our longstanding nemesis for Civ4), but I'd like to see a crash log to know.

All right, well it just happened (I was clicking on my economy slider). This is the error code:

Spoiler crash log :

dojoboy · Jul 26, 2009

Whoa, that's more than 50 lines.

AlanH · Jul 26, 2009

Bingo! Brad was right - it's an Audio issue:

.....
.....
Thread 3 Crashed:
Thread 3 Crashed:
0 ...pple.audio.units.Components 0x70040a41 AUMixer3DEntry + 11179
1 ...pple.audio.units.Components 0x70041924 AUMixer3DEntry + 14990
2 ...pple.audio.units.Components 0x70008695 DefaultOutputAUEntry + 29897
3 ...pple.audio.units.Components 0x7000f778 AUHighShelfFilterEntry + 5092
4 ...pple.audio.units.Components 0x70008f71 DefaultOutputAUEntry + 32165
5 ...pple.audio.units.Components 0x700d1913 0x70000000 + 858387
6 ...pple.audio.units.Components 0x700d0d1f 0x70000000 + 855327
7 ....audio.toolbox.AudioToolbox 0x93d649e1 AudioConverterChain::CallInputProc(unsigned long) + 189
8 ....audio.toolbox.AudioToolbox 0x93d6467e AudioConverterChain::FillBufferFromInputProc(unsig ned long*, unsigned long*, CABufferList*) + 84
9 ....audio.toolbox.AudioToolbox 0x93d63e7e BufferedAudioConverter::GetInputBytes(unsigned long, unsigned long&, CABufferList const*&) + 234
10 ....audio.toolbox.AudioToolbox 0x93d63d0f CBRConverter::RenderOutput(CABufferList*, unsigned long, unsigned long&, AudioStreamPacketDescription*) + 119
11 ....audio.toolbox.AudioToolbox 0x93d63a73 BufferedAudioConverter::FillBuffer(unsigned long&, AudioBufferList&, AudioStreamPacketDescription*) + 211
12 ....audio.toolbox.AudioToolbox 0x93d63c01 AudioConverterChain::RenderOutput(CABufferList*, unsigned long, unsigned long&, AudioStreamPacketDescription*) + 93
13 ....audio.toolbox.AudioToolbox 0x93d63a73 BufferedAudioConverter::FillBuffer(unsigned long&, AudioBufferList&, AudioStreamPacketDescription*) + 211
14 ....audio.toolbox.AudioToolbox 0x93d63900 AudioConverterFillComplexBuffer + 190
15 ...pple.audio.units.Components 0x70008b07 DefaultOutputAUEntry + 31035
16 ...pple.audio.units.Components 0x70008695 DefaultOutputAUEntry + 29897
17 ...pple.audio.units.Components 0x70007b59 DefaultOutputAUEntry + 27021
18 com.apple.audio.CoreAudio 0x91477872 HP_IOProc::Call(AudioTimeStamp const&, AudioTimeStamp const&, AudioBufferList const*, AudioTimeStamp const&, AudioBufferList*) + 240
19 com.apple.audio.CoreAudio 0x91476d9a IOA_Device::CallIOProcs(AudioTimeStamp const&, AudioTimeStamp const&, AudioTimeStamp const&) + 274
20 com.apple.audio.CoreAudio 0x91476b21 HP_IOThread:erformIO(AudioTimeStamp const&) + 1299
21 com.apple.audio.CoreAudio 0x91474f49 HP_IOThread::WorkLoop() + 953
22 com.apple.audio.CoreAudio 0x91474b8b HP_IOThread::ThreadEntry(HP_IOThread*) + 17
23 com.apple.audio.CoreAudio 0x91469171 CAPThread::Entry(CAPThread*) + 93
24 libSystem.B.dylib 0x90023d67 _pthread_body + 84

PS I added spoiler tags to your crash log to help with the post size!

scriblerus · Jul 26, 2009

UK news from Aspyr - who to give them credit bothered to reply to an email on Sunday.....
Copies were shipped to distributors - including the UK - on Friday. They expect Amazon to have stock by mid-week. So the Amazon UK date of 21 August for despatch is more bo**ocks.
Huzzah!

Graven · Jul 26, 2009

AlanH said:
Bingo! Brad was right - it's an Audio issue:

PS I added spoiler tags to your crash log to help with the post size!

Haha, thanks for the spoiler tag -- I didn't know how to do that.

All right, so is there anyway for me to prevent that? What if I go to options and turn the master volume off?

dojoboy · Jul 27, 2009

Aspyr has released an announcement. Here's a bit of the email I received.

AUSTIN, TX – July 27, 2009 – Aspyr Media has announced that Sid Meier’s Civilization IV: Beyond the Sword® for Mac has shipped to North American retail outlets. . .Released in partnership with 2K Games, a division of the 2K publishing label of Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc. (NASDAQ: TTWO), Sid Meier’s Civilization IV: Beyond the Sword is the second expansion pack for the enormously popular Sid Meier’s Civilization IV® franchise.

cmason · Jul 27, 2009

The product page is now up, same URL as before:

http://www.aspyr.com/product/info/108

Brad Oliver · Jul 27, 2009

Graven said:
All right, so is there anyway for me to prevent that? What if I go to options and turn the master volume off?

The less-than-ideal solution is to upgrade to 10.5, as that contains a fixed OpenAL/CoreAudio framework. I don't believe we've ever been able to come up with a satisfactory solution for 10.4.

Graven · Jul 27, 2009

Brad Oliver said:
The less-than-ideal solution is to upgrade to 10.5, as that contains a fixed OpenAL/CoreAudio framework. I don't believe we've ever been able to come up with a satisfactory solution for 10.4.

All right, well thanks for the help.

Edit: While I have your attention, I've got one more quick question. I often play the game as a hotseat with my gf, but I've noticed a minor difference with the coding for BtS. In Warlords, we would *always* be placed on almost opposite sides of the map (which was good because she cries if I declare war on her). With BtS, we've generated a few maps and it now seems our placement is completely random -- one attempt we were directly next to each other.

Was anything changed with the hotseat coding? Maybe even in addition to just placement (ex. how quests or negative events work -- I don't have a big enough sample size, but she hasn't gotten any negative events and I've had a few).

Thanks again, Brad.

NwabudikeMorgan · Jul 27, 2009

Good news for anyone in Edmonton, Canada BTS is available tomorrow!!!!!

cmason · Jul 27, 2009

NwabudikeMorgan said:
Good news for anyone in Edmonton, Canada BTS is available tomorrow!!!!!

Do you know anywhere in Canada where you can order online? Preferrably with free shipping? Amazon Canada doesn't have it yet.

Thanks.

frunobulax · Jul 27, 2009

dojoboy said:
Aspyr has released an announcement. Here's a bit of the email I received.

Anybody have any news on a UK/Europe shipping date?

Brad Oliver · Jul 27, 2009

Graven said:
Was anything changed with the hotseat coding? Maybe even in addition to just placement (ex. how quests or negative events work -- I don't have a big enough sample size, but she hasn't gotten any negative events and I've had a few).

This may be a question better asked in the general Civ4 forums. We didn't intentionally change the behavior here from the PC, but I'm not sure if the PC behavior changed vs. Warlords/vanilla.

scriblerus · Jul 27, 2009

frunobulax said:
Anybody have any news on a UK/Europe shipping date?

See my post yesterday?
Reported to have shipped to dealers, and expected to ship out to customers midweek, according to Aspyr (Sunday).

frunobulax · Jul 27, 2009

scriblerus said:
See my post yesterday?
Reported to have shipped to dealers, and expected to ship out to customers midweek, according to Aspyr (Sunday).

I missed that, but just read it - great news!

Beyond the Sword for Mac OS is Shipping!

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