Civ4 in Windows Virtual Machines

[AlanH]

Have you turned ON the shader support in the Parallels Video options?

 

[NSPaintball]

were is that located?

on the top there is no video options

 

[AlanH]

When you launch Parallels and select your Virtual Machine you can Edit its settings.

Here is my settings screen, with Video highlighted on the left. You can see the "Enable DirectX Shaders (experimental)" checkbox is ticked.

 

[NSPaintball]

is that shaders the same as Vertex Shaders? or is that to just to enable the use of Direct X?

because the only things I am missing to run a game is Video HW Transform and lighting, Vertex Shader 1.1, and Pixel Shader 1.1

 

[AlanH]

Dunno. All I know is that I need to turn that option on to run Civ4.

 

[NSPaintball]

Well thanks for the help anyways but still cant run any games my card is inferior(for some reason when it can support) or something

 

[AlanH]

Your physical card may be able to run the game (what is the game, anyway?), but Parallels creates a virtual card in software that tries to convert DirectX 3D commands into the OpenGL commands necessary to drive your physical card through Mac OS X. Your game is seeing that virtual card. not your real card, and if it doesn't have enough capabilities then the game will fail.

If you install Bootcamp, then it will probably run fine, as the game will be directly connected to the video hardware.

 

[NSPaintball]

And the only way to install Bootcamp is upgrading to Leopard right.(Game is company of heroes)

 

[AlanH]

And the only way to install Bootcamp is upgrading to Leopard right.

Correct, as far as I know.

(Game is company of heroes)

Sorry, I haven't seen any indication, anywhere, that Company of Heroes can be made to work in Parallels.

 

[NSPaintball]

Well doesn't matter so far since I cannot even play Civ4 because i dont have Video HW lighting.

 

[metalhawk]

Sorry for the long hiatus. Alan, I can't get Civ to do anything in parallels so far. I tried to install my old copies, to no avail (I was missing a disk, so I had to borrow disks, etc). Gold became available here in the states, so I installed it, and still had no luck. I'm missing the warlord's head in the animations, and it gets stuck at "initializing" on the way in. I never get to the game. Leonard finishes his spiel, and things just sit there.

On Fusion, I'm able to start up and play, but the terrain is black. Otherwise, it's fairly spiffy and I think it'd be playable. Sigh. Any other hints? Anything specific you did to get it working? (other than turning on the shaders?) How much RAM and GFX capabilities are you giving to parallels?

NS - BootCamp was supported in beta under Tiger, but that support has either gone away, or is ending at the end of the calendar year. The impression I get is that, if you can still get the installer, you can use it to set things up, without Leopard. It is supposed to continue working after the BootCamp beta ends on 12/31.

 

[AlanH]

I'm now on Parallels build 5582.
Main memory is set to 1024 MBytes.
Video memory is set to 64 MBytes (the maximum).
My 4 cores run at 2.66 GHz, and I have 4 GBytes physical memory.
I run Windows XP Pro in an OS X window, and I run Civ4 in an XP window.
I don't think I have any other special features set up.

 

[TechRavingMad]

I would love to play natively in bootcamp, but I am afraid of melting through my table.

If anyone has info on Windows software for MacBook Pro fan control, I would appreciate a shout out.

I'm playing Civ IV (BTS) on a MacBook Pro 17" with 2GB Ram in bootcamp.

I've downloaded SMC Fan control and it seems to help some with the crashes (I set it to max fan speed then reboot into WinXP it retains the fan speed). I've also built myself a custom notebook stand that raises the back of the MBP 2" off the desk and then rigged two 4" computer fans to blow cold air directly onto where the video card is on the MBP. Doing it this way I can often play for hours without crashing.

However, I still get random sound repeating, lockup reboots. I think that's something different than the complete reboots.

I think the complete reboots are due to overheating and the sound looping crash is due to some driver incompatibility.

TRM

P.S. - The total cost for this notebook stand setup was about $20, consisting of 1 2x4 that was cut to 6" and bevel cut one end at 45 degrees (the edge of the 45 degree cut is where I set the center of the back of the laptop) to provide stability and keep good airflow and 2 80mm fans that I hard wired on standard 4 pin HD connectors and then used this: http://www.cooldrives.com/saandidehadr.html with a 1to2 power splitter to power it. Rigged up but it works to keep it cool.

 

[shmoolie]

I've been running BTS in BootCamp on my iMac 2.0 GHz IntelMac with 2 GB RAM and an ATI with 256 MB, and it works great with any sizes up to huge. At huge I start to get random freezes in the late middle stages of games. But it's all good because I rarely play huge size worlds anyways.

As far as I'm concerned they might as well not bother to release Mac versions of Civ anymore because they can't get it right and there are so many other options for Mac users now.

 

[TechRavingMad]

I'm playing Civ IV (BTS) on a MacBook Pro 17" with 2GB Ram in bootcamp.

I've downloaded SMC Fan control and it seems to help some with the crashes (I set it to max fan speed then reboot into WinXP it retains the fan speed). I've also built myself a custom notebook stand that raises the back of the MBP 2" off the desk and then rigged two 4" computer fans to blow cold air directly onto where the video card is on the MBP. Doing it this way I can often play for hours without crashing.

However, I still get random sound repeating, lockup reboots. I think that's something different than the complete reboots.

I think the complete reboots are due to overheating and the sound looping crash is due to some driver incompatibility.

TRM

P.S. - The total cost for this notebook stand setup was about $20, consisting of 1 2x4 that was cut to 6" and bevel cut one end at 45 degrees (the edge of the 45 degree cut is where I set the center of the back of the laptop) to provide stability and keep good airflow and 2 80mm fans that I hard wired on standard 4 pin HD connectors and then used this: http://www.cooldrives.com/saandidehadr.html with a 1to2 power splitter to power it. Rigged up but it works to keep it cool.

I solved my freeze issues. I found some updated drivers on nVidia's site and installed those. Works perfectly now.

Pisses me off though that neither windows update nor boot camp tools told me there were new drivers.

 

[hank127]

please help.. i downloaded civ 4 1.74 patch and now game will not play. i keep getting error message d3dx9-32dll can't be found.i have windows xp, game played ok until i downloaded this, i have tried everything ,but still can't get it to work....thanks

 

[AlanH]

Welcome

Is this in Parallels? VMWare? Bootcamp? I'm sure you understand what you are doing, but a little more info is needed for others to help

 

[Sam_Yeager]

please help.. i downloaded civ 4 1.74 patch and now game will not play. i keep getting error message d3dx9-32dll can't be found.i have windows xp, game played ok until i downloaded this, i have tried everything ,but still can't get it to work....thanks

See this thread for help with the error message. Essentially DirectX doesn't get updated properly whilst the patch is being applied so you have to do it manually.

 

[metalhawk]

VMWare Fusion just released version 2 Beta with "..support for DirectX 9.0 Shader Model 2 3D acceleration, and more!"

Link

I've installed Civ IV Gold plus BtS and it works rather nicely. Certainly a bit slower, and I have yet to try it through toward the end-game, but it *does* work.

The beta is free. For those that have a win license, and want to try running in a VM before you buy, now's the time.

Also, CrossOver Games is an option. The support for Disc based BtS isn't good due to CD-checking, but the Steam version is supported. I haven't tried it yet.

 

[AlanH]

Hmm! Civ4 now displays well in VMWare Fusion, with none of the graphics problems I was seeing in Parallels, such as missing leaderhead faces; but it seems to run slower than in Parallels.