Can I play Civ 4 on a laptop from my desktop ?

[Siggy19]

There seem to be a lot of issues with playing Civ 4 on Laptops because of the Video requirements.

I have a fairly old Desktop and an even older laptop and cannot afford to replace the laptop.

However, I would prefer the flexibility of playing on the laptop, at least sometimes.

Would it be possible to upgrade/replace my desktop so it will run Civ 4 acceptably and then run it via the laptop using some sort of screen-scraper software ?

 

[Mercade]

Welcome to CivFanatics, Siggy19.

Somehow I doubt this will work. Games that are graphically intensive will directly communicate with the video card hardware through the DirectX interface, cutting out the Windows middle man. And it's the Windows middle man that the screen-scraper software will need to transfer the image from one PC to the next.

 

[Siggy19]

<sigh> Thanks for the thought... I was hoping that they just grabbed the video output and that it would let me sit on the potty playing rather than having to actually admit to my wife the true reason I am up all night !

 

[rbird]

I could do this with Civ3 without much trouble (minor lag), but Remote Desktop Connection (ships with XP Pro) uses a "virtual" display adapter to show the other computer's graphics. If you thought your actual video card was slow/obsolete, try playing with one that's only emulated, and not actually there! I tried it anyway, and it just DOES NOT WORK at all. The game never even loads (I think it may get up to "Checking XML" or so).

Sorry for the bad news, but at least feel comforted by the fact that you're not the only one who is out of luck (fortunately my desktop will run the game, barely).

Bob

 

[Pyrion]

Heh, at best you'd need something capable of streaming the entire video feed raw (or losslessly-compressed), audio and keyboard+mouse inputs with no noticeable latency.

 

[oddroot]

VNC (http://www.realvnc.com) is also alot like RDP, but will occasionally give better results for remote viewing of a computer, especially if they are on a fast link... just don't expect much more than a frame a second, or maybe a frame every 3 seconds

 

[rbird]

Heh, at best you'd need something capable of streaming the entire video feed raw (or losslessly-compressed), audio and keyboard+mouse inputs with no noticeable latency.

The built in Remote Desktop in XP Pro will do the audio (slight delay, but not really an issue in this case), and the keyboard and mouse support are flawless in my experience (I use it daily for websurfing, etc). It's just the video that's the problem.

Bob

 

[kylevaughan]

I dont know if this is still relelvant but i figured i would post the solution anyway.
Yes civ 4 can be played over remote desktop, you just have to make sure to set the game to windowed mode, full screen will not work. you cna do this either through the game or changing fullscreen=1 to fullscreen=0 in your civilizationIV.ini file. hope that helps someone.