Beyond The Sword is Coming!

[Brad Oliver]

Don't suppose you could grace a petty In-Box (i.e. mine) with a 'pro-tip' on the best website/location to *cough* purchase Windows XP, without anything nasty I wouldn't want sneaking about somewhere secretly inside - just a nice clean, stable version..?

Beyond the Sword.... Complete. What is the difference? There are none as far as I'm aware.

There is a difference of exactly 3 games.

Is the Mac version more stable than the PC? Can I play on the largest maps with the max amount of A.I. and be completely lag and load free even in very late game? Is it worth waiting or or should I just get Windows and run off boot-camp?

I don't know what Mac you have, so...maybe.

You mentioned wanting to pirate the Mac version if the price was not to your liking earlier, so my personal preference would be to see you use the Windows version under Boot Camp instead. You should ask in the general Civ4 forum on how to "acquire" it. That'd probably get you a response.

 

[ainwood]

And they had better not stick an obscenely over-priced tag on the thing or I'll be resorting to illegal methods of collection..

Moderator Action: We have ZERO tolerance for piracy here. You will not get any support for your game from here if you pirate it. If you continue to discuss piracy here, you will likely find your account banned.

Don't suppose you could grace a petty In-Box (i.e. mine) with a 'pro-tip' on the best website/location to *cough* purchase Windows XP, without anything nasty I wouldn't want sneaking about somewhere secretly inside - just a nice clean, stable version..?

Yes, you can get it from here.

 

[Conspirator]

Alright, alright I was only joking. No point going all bold and coloured on my arse. Neither was the sarcasm necessary, either from Mr. Oliver or the moderator ainwood. Where's the fellow fanatical love? Surely we're all friends here. Am I the only person who feels cheated that a Mac release is taking this long?

Mr. Oliver, as for the Complete compared to Beyond of Swords what I was referring to is the Civilisation game - I'm not interested in Colonisation and whatever other game they release with Complete.

As for the Mac I have its a 2.66 Mac Book Pro with 4gb of ram DDR3...

- Conspirator

Moderator Action: Warning: You are in danger of taking a posting holiday for "PDMA" (Public discussion of moderator actions).
Please read the forum rules: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=422889

 

[dojoboy]

Moderator Action: We have ZERO tolerance for piracy here. You will not get any support for your game from here if you pirate it. If you continue to discuss piracy here, you will likely find your account banned.

Yes, you can get it from here.

OT: Ooh, ainwood, love the avatar!


OTS: Aspyr Media still has not announced it officially, and likely will not until the very day it ships.

 

[dojoboy]

Alright, alright I was only joking. No point going all bold and coloured on my arse. Neither was the sarcasm necessary, either from Mr. Oliver or the moderator ainwood. Where's the fellow fanatical love? Surely we're all friends here. Am I the only person who feels cheated that a Mac release is taking this long?

Mr. Oliver, as for the Complete compared to Beyond of Swords what I was referring to is the Civilisation game - I'm not interested in Colonisation and whatever other game they release with Complete.

As for the Mac I have its a 2.66 Mac Book Pro with 4gb of ram DDR3...

- Conspirator

With all due respect, Conspirator, you joined in April and have a total of 4 posts at the moment, just relax and let the game arrive. The Mac vets here know the deal regarding Mac ports. It comes, when it comes.

 

[cmason]

Looks like amazon US now has the proper cover art up with Aspyr's name. Still nothing on amazon Canada though.

 

[Conspirator]

With all due respect, Conspirator, you joined in April and have a total of 4 posts at the moment, just relax and let the game arrive. The Mac vets here know the deal regarding Mac ports. It comes, when it comes.

With all due respect, what's your point? I've been reading these forums for years - just because I've joined recently and only have 4 or 5 posts shouldn't really mean anything. Surely this isn't one of those forums where all the members take comfort from the quantity of posts they've clogged up over the years?

I'm a patient guy. I'll wait - and in the meantime play it through Parallels (currently awaiting Windows to update before installing Civ Complete - yay). I just find it incredible that a port for the Mac is taking so bloody long. Seriously, I would have thought Civilisation was a popular game on the Mac. It comes across as a game Mac users would enjoy and cherish. It should have been released simultaneously to the PC version - or at the very least shortly afterwards.

Will there even be a reason to buy the Mac version when I can play it through Parallels? What annoys me is that if it was available I would have bought it when I bought my Mac - but now I probably won't ever buy it. It's a shame really. Ports shouldn't take this long in this day and age; especially considering Apple's Boot-Camp app and all - a wait this long will surely cut sales drastically. No?

All I'm saying is it doesn't make much sense.

- Conspirator

 

[dojoboy]

With all due respect, what's your point? I've been reading these forums for years - just because I've joined recently and only have 4 or 5 posts shouldn't really mean anything.

My post was a polite way to say, "Shut up, already," which was the point. Rants concerning entitlements to Mac ports ( ) bring no favor.

Surely this isn't one of those forums where all the members take comfort from the quantity of posts they've clogged up over the years?

Maybe, maybe not.

We do have the choice to use Parallels et al, or install Windows, which may be affect the timing of Mac ports. I don't know. Mac ports that utilize Cider technology come quicker; however, the user experience is mixed on it. To my knowledge, Aspyr Media has not used Cider, and we should all be grateful they're not with BtS. At least, I hope not.

I'm not looking to make an enemy of you, just saying. You certainly have rights to your opinion, and the mods here allow opinions within the forum rules.

Moderator Action: Please don't feed the trolls

 

[Brad Oliver]

Mr. Oliver, as for the Complete compared to Beyond of Swords what I was referring to is the Civilisation game - I'm not interested in Colonisation and whatever other game they release with Complete.

It is my understanding - and someone can correct me if I'm wrong - that the apps bundled in "complete" are otherwise identical to their non-bundled counterparts, with the only changes being perhaps that they ship on-disc patched to a more recent version.

 

[Brad Oliver]

I just find it incredible that a port for the Mac is taking so bloody long. Seriously, I would have thought Civilisation was a popular game on the Mac. It comes across as a game Mac users would enjoy and cherish. It should have been released simultaneously to the PC version - or at the very least shortly afterwards.

Time has probably dimmed the memories, but my recollection is that we shipped Mac Civ4 pretty close to PC Civ4. We certainly started work on the Mac port months before the PC version shipped. BtS was different in that we had only recently started on that, for various contractual reasons.

Yes, it would be awesome had it shipped long ago, and yes, it sucks that it did not, and yes, we know we lost sales of some kind because of that. We are not entirely devoid of common sense here.

 

[cmason]

It is my understanding - and someone can correct me if I'm wrong - that the apps bundled in "complete" are otherwise identical to their non-bundled counterparts, with the only changes being perhaps that they ship on-disc patched to a more recent version.

Okay, cool. Since I already own Civ IV and warlords, then, there's no reason for me not to buy Beyond the Sword instead of waiting for the "complete" version.

Thanks.

 

[Conspirator]

Time has probably dimmed the memories, but my recollection is that we shipped Mac Civ4 pretty close to PC Civ4. We certainly started work on the Mac port months before the PC version shipped. BtS was different in that we had only recently started on that, for various contractual reasons.

Yes, it would be awesome had it shipped long ago, and yes, it sucks that it did not, and yes, we know we lost sales of some kind because of that. We are not entirely devoid of common sense here.

Brad,

I take it you're one of the people working on the Mac BtS release then? How come you guys don't work side by side with the people who made the PC version to ensure a simultaneous release?

And why does it take so long to port over? I would have thought Apple would provide some sort of software to make ports easier and quicker (I'm not a programmer or tech-wiz but that's a no brainer, no)? I'm sure the guys behind the Xbox and PlayStation provide something like that so that PC games can be ported quickly onto their particular platforms...

And are you guys employed by Firaxis or whoever owns the Civilisation brand or are you independent and pay royalties?

- Conspirator

 

[cmason]

Brad,

I take it you're one of the people working on the Mac BtS release then? How come you guys don't work side by side with the people who made the PC version to ensure a simultaneous release?

And why does it take so long to port over? I would have thought Apple would provide some sort of software to make ports easier and quicker (I'm not a programmer or tech-wiz but that's a no brainer, no)? I'm sure the guys behind the Xbox and PlayStation provide something like that so that PC games can be ported quickly onto their particular platforms...

And are you guys employed by Firaxis or whoever owns the Civilisation brand or are you independent and pay royalties?

- Conspirator

Don't mean to speak for him, but here's how I understand the situation. If you design your product to be cross-platform from the beginning, then it's relatively easy. It makes it even easier for future products and expansions if you have a cross-platform toolset, some reusable code and good methodologies.

Blizzard is an example of someone who follows the above. They release great quality, high performance games simulatenous for PC/Mac. The other end of the scale is EA who seems to be using mainly cider crap these days. This basically takes a Windows app and runs it under emulation. Performance is terrible. I refuse to buy or use any of these games. (I tried Spore on a quad Mac Pro system with high-end video card and tons of RAM, and it would only run if I set all the graphics settings to their minimum. Pathetic. You couldn't *pay* me to run crap like that.)

In the middle are people like Aspyr, then take the code for a Windows game and port it to the Mac. Depending on time and effort (and money) this can also lead to a very high quailty native Mac app. Or it can be done quickly and cheaply and lead to a slow and buggy native mac app. Aspyr seems to do a pretty good job usually, though the performance of Civ IV could definitely be improved.

 

[AlanH]

To answer another of the questions - Aspyr is an independent company. They take on the porting task and pay royalties to the originator, and sell the Mac product.

 

[Conspirator]

mason, alanH,

Thanks for clearing that up. Well I'm just installing Complete on parallels now. Hopefully it runs well, if not then I'll have to spend whatever odd sterling for the Mac version. You can't have a laptop without a good copy Civilization now can you?

- Conspirator

 

[Brad Oliver]

Okay, cool. Since I already own Civ IV and warlords, then, there's no reason for me not to buy Beyond the Sword instead of waiting for the "complete" version.

That's correct: "Complete" essentially exists to bundle all the products up into one box "for one incredible value" as my PC box exclaims.

 

[Brad Oliver]

Brad,

I take it you're one of the people working on the Mac BtS release then? How come you guys don't work side by side with the people who made the PC version to ensure a simultaneous release?

To do this, we must sign a contract with the PC publisher (in this case, Take2) before the PC version ships *and* have a willing partner in the PC developer (in this case, Firaxis). We had both of those things in place when we started on the original Mac Civ4, so that was great. That said, it's a rarity. Most of the time the PC publisher and developer are so focused on getting their product out the door that they don't want the additional hassle of even thinking about other platforms before they ship.

And why does it take so long to port over? I would have thought Apple would provide some sort of software to make ports easier and quicker (I'm not a programmer or tech-wiz but that's a no brainer, no)?

I think we did the Warlords expansion in 3-4 months time once we got the code and got rolling. It was essentially a month or so of actual dev work, a month of QA and then some time on the end for approvals and manufacturing before it hit stores.

I'd have to check our Perforce to see how long we truly spent on BtS, but we had some complications because it included a number of third-party mods "out of the box" which spawned some new issues we had to sort out. And as stated before we started on Mac BtS long after the PC version shipped for various contractual reasons.

And are you guys employed by Firaxis or whoever owns the Civilisation brand or are you independent and pay royalties?

The latter.

 

[Brad Oliver]

Aspyr seems to do a pretty good job usually, though the performance of Civ IV could definitely be improved.

We did do a performance patch for Civ4 shortly after release, but it's hard to easily benchmark it compared to, say, Call of Duty. That said, my methodology was to load up complex levels and measure the framerate late in the game and compare that framerate to Boot Camp on the same Mac.

I'd have to dig up my notes to get hard numbers, but when Civ4 shipped, our framerate on the first-gen Intel iMac was roughly half the Boot Camp value on that same Mac, and after our performance work we were within 5-10%.

I haven't done any measuring recently, but certainly if someone notices a trouble spot on the Mac which doesn't exist on the PC (bonus if it is easily shown via a Boot Camp comparison), we'll gladly look into it.

 

[cmason]

We did do a performance patch for Civ4 shortly after release, but it's hard to easily benchmark it compared to, say, Call of Duty. That said, my methodology was to load up complex levels and measure the framerate late in the game and compare that framerate to Boot Camp on the same Mac.

I'd have to dig up my notes to get hard numbers, but when Civ4 shipped, our framerate on the first-gen Intel iMac was roughly half the Boot Camp value on that same Mac, and after our performance work we were within 5-10%.

I haven't done any measuring recently, but certainly if someone notices a trouble spot on the Mac which doesn't exist on the PC (bonus if it is easily shown via a Boot Camp comparison), we'll gladly look into it.

The speed is usually okay, the main problem is if I play the standard map or larger, it can get really slow in the later game, though I think this is a problem on windows too, to a lesser extent. Also, I often start swapping after playing for an hour or two and need to save the game, exit the program and re-run, so maybe there's some memory leaks. I have a Macbook Pro 2.5 with 3 gigs of RAM, so it's not like I'm using a low end laptop. I even have the model with 512 megs VRAM, not sure if it's all used though.

I usually just play the small map nowadays and it seems to be fast enough that way.

 

[Conspirator]

I've loaded up Civilization on parallels and it works perfectly. Quicker than on my Windows laptop, though I haven't tested out what it's like during the very late game. I loaded up WorldBuilder on a Huge sized map and it loaded almost instantly. Control with the touchpad works perfectly - zoom in and out, etc.

I'm currently downloading the update 3.17.

Don't suppose you guys can shed some OT advice on a strange phenomenon: I stopped/paused (same thing on the Mac) the download when I had about 1mg left to go. I then resumed it and it started downloading from scratch - even though I have the file that says 139 out of 140 or whatever MB. I clicked on that specific file and it still started from scratch.

Is there something wrong with my laptop? The files are THERE. Why can't Safari see them?

- Conspirator