Boot Camp and Civ IV

[Paul Grayson]

I acquired a MacBook this weekend (my iMac died the week before) and managed to get XP installed on a small partition yesterday after locating a suitable CD with SP2 already applied. I then installed Civilzation IV on it - the copy of Civ IV was a Christmas present from my sister who assumed I had a PC.

It runs well. The graphics are better than on the only other PC I've run the game on - a very low-end Toshiba - and the response time is a lot better, too, despite both having the same amount of physical RAM. Not got to the end of a game yet to see if it still runs quickly.

However three of the drivers supplied by Boot Camp are yet to receive proper Microsoft certification due to the hardware being so new, so there's a few stability issues.

I need Windows for work purposes only, and have relied on Virtual PC in the past for that.

 

[MAS]

I'm sure those "real-hardcore" gamers, who would use windows just becouse it has more games, already bought a PC with windows for that.

People who buy mac ports do it becouse they want their games to run on their prefered platform. I don't see how boot camp is going to effect this.

And I don't see why only religius mac zealots would want games to run natively. After all, it would be annoying if you have to boot into an other OS just to run some game, regardless of wether you are a mac lunix or windows user. Not to mention you would have to buy a copy windows to.

Blizzard recently stated that they will continue native mac support. Seems like they keep their cool.

But maybe I'm just being a naive optimist.


(I don't want to be rude Brad, but my biggest wish is that porting houses will be jobless becouse more game devolepers start following Blizzard's example in mac support... )

 

[airic]

Brad,

Any word on whether Civ4 Mac will run on a Core Duo Mac Mini? I think I read somewhere that you hinted it might not. Have you been able to look into any further?

 

[Macintosh]

Rest assured Brad that, when I have a Mac with the balls to run CIV, it will be Aspyr's port that is on my hard drive.

[...] I do have a Mac with the balls to run CIV 4 and it will be Aspyr's port that will be on my hard drive.

 

[Brad Oliver]

Any word on whether Civ4 Mac will run on a Core Duo Mac Mini? I think I read somewhere that you hinted it might not. Have you been able to look into any further?

No, I don't think we have one yet, although I could be wrong. Ask again in a few weeks.

 

[awb]

hey brad, this seems the right thread to ask you in since it's revolving around boot camp. whats the feeling in aspyr and other gaming companies about macs now that porting may appear unnecessary because of the ability to dual boot? can this belief be offset by increased market share for the mac? (basically im asking for a state of the union on mac games)

-alec

 

[Big Mac]

MacWorld has a nice 2 page article on "Parallels Workstation" (PW), a 'virtual machine' for Intel Macs (similar to Virtual PC, but unlike VPC [which runs on PowerPC Macs], it doesn't have to emulate the Intel chip, therefore runs MUCH faster than VPC.)

Unlike Bootcamp, which requires you to reboot into XP, PW (like VPC) opens XP (or Linix, or ...) in a window inside OS X.

2 downsides:

1 it's still beta
2 it's not free like Bootcamp. (Beta is free, but final version will cost $50 or so)

http://www.macworld.com/2006/04/firstlooks/parallelsfl/index.php

 

[AlanH]

My reading on this indicates that a virtual machine approach is unlikely to be able to exploit the graphic hardware fully, and that this may mean that Parallels, VMWare etc. may have trouble supporting 3D gaming effectively. So don't hold your breath for this to provide a way to play Civ4 in an XP/Vista window. Brad should not pack his bags at Aspyr just yet

 

[LimaTango3]

I'm not much of a computer guy, so hopefully this post is in the right place.

I just bought a MacBook Pro 17", installed bootcamp, partitioned the harddrive, installed Windows XP SP2, and then installed Civ4.

I have found that, even with the 1.61 patch, the game's graphics suddenly become severely distorted to the point of unplayability after about an hour of playing, although the time does vary on occassion. Civ4 will then close briefly to allow the ATI Radeon X1600 to notify you that it has quit and restart, and whether or not you want to send an error notification to ATI. After that, the game will run smoothly for another 15-20 minutes before the severe graphics distortions return. Shortly thereafter, the screen goes black and a few moments after that, the sound switches from the game's music to an annoying buzzing sound. This barrage is then topped off by the computer freezing and requiring a complete manual restart.

Hopefully someone else has encountered this or a similar problem and can tell a knuckle-dragger like me how to fix it. If not, then just a head's-up to anyone considering switching from PC to Mac with the intention of getting the best of both 'worlds.'


Scouts Out.

 

[NoMan]

Lima,

I've been running a 15" MBP with BootCamp and Civ4 since Memorial Day. It has performed beautifully. I didn't do anything out of the ordinary. I didn't adjust the graphics settings but it seems pretty high (higher than it was on my old PC with integrated graphics). I have run it on the internal display and an external 19" (not wide) display. I'm sure you've done this but I'll ask anyway if you installed the Apple drivers.

And off topic, I ordered the Mac version from the MacGameStore on June 28. It looks like it hasn't even shipped yet, although order status shows it was completed on June 28. They haven't answered their phone or responded to emails. Have other people had problems with them?

 

[bnew]

Lima,

I've been running a 15" MBP with BootCamp and Civ4 since Memorial Day. It has performed beautifully. I didn't do anything out of the ordinary. I didn't adjust the graphics settings but it seems pretty high (higher than it was on my old PC with integrated graphics). I have run it on the internal display and an external 19" (not wide) display. I'm sure you've done this but I'll ask anyway if you installed the Apple drivers.

And off topic, I ordered the Mac version from the MacGameStore on June 28. It looks like it hasn't even shipped yet, although order status shows it was completed on June 28. They haven't answered their phone or responded to emails. Have other people had problems with them?

That's where I ordered my copy from as well. I paid for Priority shipping - it shipped on the 28th, arrived the 3rd. I suspect you'll see your copy soon if the order status was completed on the 28th. Note that USPS didn't have any real-time tracking info online until it was already delivered.

 

[NoMan]

That's where I ordered my copy from as well. I paid for Priority shipping - it shipped on the 28th, arrived the 3rd. I suspect you'll see your copy soon if the order status was completed on the 28th. Note that USPS didn't have any real-time tracking info online until it was already delivered.

Shortly after I posted the USPS updated their site to show it was at my local P.O. It'll either be on my doorstep when I get home (nobody at home to sign) or I'll have to pick it up on Saturday. If it had arrived on the 3rd (like I expected, that's why I was pissed) I would have been home to receive.

Anyway, since the Mac version has problems I can stick with the Boot Camp version until things improve there. I'll give it a try this weekend just to make sure I have the same problems as everyone else.

 

[awb]

Has anyone had success with Civ 4 under Parallels or Boot Camp with a MacBook?

 

[metalhawk]

Not me, don't have one. BUT I know, almost for sure, that there's no chance under parallels due to the way it does video card emulation. I also am certain I saw a post in one of the recent threads from someone running it "just fine" on a MacBook under boot camp.

 

[NoMan]

And off topic, I ordered the Mac version from the MacGameStore on June 28. It looks like it hasn't even shipped yet, although order status shows it was completed on June 28. They haven't answered their phone or responded to emails. Have other people had problems with them?

To finish this off, the package arrived today. Postmark is July 3. So it did ship USPS priority and arrived in 2 days (not counting July 4). They just lied about the shipping on the 28th.

 

[Brad Oliver]

Not me, don't have one. BUT I know, almost for sure, that there's no chance under parallels due to the way it does video card emulation.

Yeah, Parallels will not allow you to run a game that uses 3D hardware, as Civ4 does.

 

[herwin]

Thanks for making our biggest fears come true so quickly!

Yes, Civ4 will work with Boot Camp to allow you to natively play under XP. It'd be awfully nice of you to buy the Mac version when it comes out though.

Works beautifully on the XP side of a bootcamp installation (Mac Mini).

 

[JoeM]

Has anyone had success with Civ 4 under Parallels or Boot Camp with a MacBook?

Bootcamp, Yes
The only problem is the lack of a right click; you can get a configurator though so that fn + click = right click, but I use the G to set a goto anyway.


Haven't tried it under Parallels yet, but I would expect wonderful things, but I would also expect worse performance.

Parallels is really impressive; I run two windows server 2003/SQL Server2005 and a windows XP machine all on top of OSX without problems.

 

[AlanH]

Haven't tried it under Parallels yet, but I would expect wonderful things

Don't bet any money on it. I don't believe Parallels can emulate the video driver interfaces that Civ4 demands.

 

[JoeM]

I wouldn't expect virtualisation to be the best option for gaming in any case - you'll always have some resources taken up by the host OS.

Otherwise Parallels is fantastic, IMO.