BtS For Mac Release

It seems that they've added some more things, but really not much more info...

There's now a main graphic, and this occasionally appears in their front page, centre panel (see below), linking to the release page. It still looks rather incomplete, and there are no official announcements anywhere as far as I can tell. However, since it seems to be moving towards release, I have now posted a home page news item describing the current situation.

aspyr_home.jpg
 
This looks interesting...

As has been stated before, a major issue would be producing an SDK-thingy to work the dll-thingy (Or is it the other way around?) for mods/modding. I was under the impression this wasnt possible? Somebody please tell me it is.
 
Most unexpected! Good thing I have been saving up† to buy Civ4 Gold/Mac. Allen does such a great job moderating the vanilla GoTM that so far I have not missed Warlords, let alone BtS!

†I am an employed adult, so to me “saving up” is mostly an emotional thing. It takes me a while to convince myself to pay twice the fair market value‡ for a buggy and late to market product.

‡I determine the fair market value by seeing how much Best Buy is asking for the Windows version.
 
This looks interesting...

As has been stated before, a major issue would be producing an SDK-thingy to work the dll-thingy (Or is it the other way around?) for mods/modding. I was under the impression this wasnt possible? Somebody please tell me it is.

I'd guess we will know more about this when we learn how all the built in mods/scenarios are implemented (assuming they will also come with the mac version). It seems like by the time you've made a mac version of those you might as well have ported the whole SDK...
 
We should all realize that there will not be a SDK for the Mac Civ4 version. We only got an editor for Civ3 because Brad Oliver ported it on his own time. I am more than happy to look like a fool if it does arrive.

Might be time to rename the petition for the SDK.

If we've got a Mac programmer among us with the skills Aspyr requires, then perhaps that person could sign a pro bono contract with Aspyr to port the SDK. However, there is then the issue of support in the event it's needed.
 
The blurb on the [Aspyr_release_page_that_isn't] lists Final Frontier, Afterworld, Charlemagne "and more" as included scenarios. It's interesting that none of those named mods contain a custom CvGameCoreDLL.dll file. The only BtS standard mods that do contain a custom DLL are The Road to War and Rhye's and Fall.

I rather doubt if BtS could run DLLs without recompiling them. Aspyr would have to build a virtualisation layer for the DLL to run in so that it felt like it was in a Windows system. Possible, using WINE technology, I guess, but it seems a bit heavyweight considering Aspyr's past track record of lack of support for modders. If they recompile them, then the question is whether they would publish an Xcode framework to allow us to do that for other custom DLL code, which may need to include specific libraries. Again, look at their track record.
 
So, would anyone like to make a guess on when (or if) BTS will be released?

Well based on the recent progressions and how long it took to make BtS and then finally establish it to be released onto the mac, I say somewhere around 2015 or after Civ V comes out.

:sarcasm:
 
Well hopefully sometime soon :)

But I am very excited about this! I have been wrestling with the idea of either getting Warlords now or try to hold out for some hope of BtS being ported for a while now. No more decision for me now, I'm going to just get BtS when it comes out :)
 
I've heard that if you buy BTS without Warlords that you get everything in Warlords except for the scenarios. Is this true?
Not really. They are different expansions. Races get different traits, for example.

Any file not updated for BTS gets a Warlords file created so that BTS can draw from that.

I only have Civ4 Complete, so I guess it's *possible* that it has been optimised to leave out Warlords files from BtS, knowing they will be installed. However, I'm guessing that Firaxis just put the three packages together on the disk without removing duplicates. There are several units in my Warlords/Assets/Art/Units/ folder that are not in the BtS folder. The most obvious example is the Warlord unit in Warlords!
 
Says 12 and 11 for me too.

But to answer your question Sandman, mostly yes. All of the new civs, leaders, and gameplay mechanics from Warlords are included in BtS. But some of the traits for leaders and things like that are changed since they have more included. And you do miss out on the scenarios included with the Warlords pack.

But from a money saving standpoint unless you are just determined to have both expansions you would not be missing out much by jumping straight from vanilla to BtS.

^At least this is what I have picked up and been told from my reading on this and other sites. Someone please correct me if I am wrong here.
 
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