Firaxis a little slow?

[damunzy]

You're a good sport Dan. Did you get your ability to shrug off insults and mad comments by being the only kid picked for dodging the ball in elementary school?

I have to say I love and hate the game. I can't wait until multiplayer support comes out and I think that the editor is pretty darn good. I sure as hell wish I could get rid of corruption, but it is part of Civ3 so I have stopped complaining about it (but I sure wish I could get completely rid of corruption....did I say that already?).

 

[Grey Fox]

I tottaly agrees with Dan and Gonzo. I have no problem with this game, I even think the game is better then SMAC, and boy have I had some discussions with a freind of mine about that...

And bugs, sure games have bugs... and a game as complex as this has many smaller bugs and some larger ones. So stop whining and play the game, give it a chance, it's the best strategy game of 2001. And of 2002 so far!

 

[Libertarian]

"To believe in a God is to disbelieve in the creativity and intellegence of the human race."

Is that how Fredrik spelled intelligence?

 

[Mr Spice]

CIV III is such a buggy piece of crap

I´m sorry to hear that you encounter such a huge amount of bugs when you play, whstaff. As for myself, the only Civ 3 - bug that I have ever seen is the broken air superíority (and it was fixed in the patch).

Civ 3 is one of the most bug-free games that I have ever played since computer games did no longer fit in a 1.4 MB floppy.

Could it be that you mistake game features for bugs, like so many other people on this forum?

 

[etj4Eagle]

Originally posted by Mr Spice


Could it be that you mistake game features for bugs, like so many other people on this forum?

Yes I have noticed that many people are very loose with terminology on this forum, and in some cases this has led to misunderstandings. Problems people have with playing the game are not all bugs, there are also design flaws and design decisions.

examples:
bug- the corrupted games that are generated on some people's machines that then crash the game during a future disorder popup.

design flaw- bombers (at least after some time) not being able to sink ships. Now the key thing with design flaws is that they are also subjective. And this is where the editor falls in, allowing us to change it to suit our likes.

design decision- unable to unload or upgrade armies. These are decisions made during playtesting to balance things out. This also includes the relative unit strengths.

Now you can only expect the bugs to eventually get fixed (this is also dependent on how reproducable the bug is, so that they can find it). And you can hope they might address the design flaw issues if you make a good enough point, or at least give you the option in the editor to make those changes.

The same terminology argument can be made to the discussion on AI cheats. To me AI cheats are things that it does on all skill levels, which are part of the AI code. The stuff that is tied to difficulty levels are just handicaps to me. This misunderstanding has resulted in some people giving the player bonuses on high difficulty levels to balance out the AI "cheating" (handicaps in reality).

It would be nice if people said what they mean, like with their problems with combat. Refer to it as improbible combat results if that is the problem or design issues with combat. At least for a while some of the combat threads would degenerate into pretty much flame wars since both issues were being argued and not kept seperate. The interesting thing is that if improbible combat results are happening too often, which would indicate a problem with the random number generator in that it is too streaky, this may also effect city flipping, resource distribution and dissapearances. All those use random numbers. I haven't seen those problems, but I am willing to accept that there might be a system specific bug in the random number generator.

 

[Grey Fox]

Is that how Fredrik spelled intelligence?

Yea Yea, so I don't spell every english word right... big deal...

 

[Mr Spice]

Well said, etj4Eagle. Such wise words can only come from the mouth of a fellow chemistry engineer, I guess.

(To be honest I looked on your profile, but that is a bit too embarrasing to admit.)

 

[homegrown]

Originally posted by etj4Eagle
Yes I have noticed that many people are very loose with terminology on this forum, and in some cases this has led to misunderstandings. Problems people have with playing the game are not all bugs, there are also design flaws and design decisions.

This is perhaps the most intelligent thing I've read here or on Apolyton for weeks now. I once heard that "Expectations are pre-paid resentments." Personally, I think I got exactly what I paid for. I have played it for a couple months, enough to beat it on Warlord level and start playing Regent. Now the game flaws (no stacked movement, time between turns on Huge maps with 16 civs) have taken their toll and I'm anxiously anticipating forking over another $20 for an expansion in the next couple months.

In the meantime, I'd like to know for certain that the Expansion is on the table, and what they are conservatively hoping for in terms of features and content to be included.

Now that SimGolf has shipped, Sid, can the Civ fans have your attention back for just a moment, please, while you're waiting for the QA complaints to start coming in for SG We like where you're going, so please finish what you've started. :aargh3:

 

[whstaff]

oh come on. I'm talking 10 minutes and longer waits between turns, corrupted save games that will not load, and worst of all the program has a tendency to write to the windows registry. An unacceptable coding flaw that not only results in the game crashing, but the dreaded blue screen complete with "safe mode being invoked". The software engineering in this game can only be described as amateurish. I've never encountered a corrupted
save game with any other game, let alone the registry thing. I have a very powerful, fast computer complete with nvidia graphics card with the latest drivers and 512k memory. I've even won the game at least 5 times. I've played civ, ctp, and Alpha Centauri/Alien Crossfire for 100s of hours without so much as a stutter from my 'puter. This board is replete with complaints about the technical shortcomings of this game, so I'm not alone. You've been lucky, I think your 'puter must be configured the exact way the game "likes" it. In any case I'm far from alone.

Take your ignorant and condescending attitude and stuff it where the sun don't shine.:crazyeyes

 

[Ripley]

Originally posted by whstaff
I'm talking 10 minutes and longer waits between turns.

I'd like to be ignorant and condescending too please.

I must be one of the lucky ones. I don't think I have ever had to wait more than 15 seconds at the most while the computer makes it's moves. I have all the animations turned on as well. My average wait would be "a few seconds'.

Your machine can't be all that powerful if your waiting 10 minutes. Either that or your configuration is up **** creek in a barbed wire canoe with no paddle in sight. Which would actually surprise me if you have been around computers as long as you suggest.

 

[Sir. Martin]

Well here is my 48 old reply:




Well there´s been many threads, wich means many replies. I will not anwer concrede at all "Questions", just a general reply trying to answer as good as possible. -And by the way thx for the great interrese for this subjekt!

Well I will now explain my problem with Civ III, in details, and try to make it more understandeble.

My Problem Is:
Often when I kill babarians, build new cities, or just whenever there is one of theese small popup-boxes that ex. says "You just destroyed the Al banana tribe ( or something like that ), it happen. The marker will stay on last moved unit, and not pop on to next un-used unit. To fix it I have to save/load, and after doing this a few times in a game, I have to restart!
( restart because of civilization.exe will now close message )

I can live with this "bug" even doh it´s very annoying because I like the game so much. -And it´s mostly in the begginning of the game this happens.

Another thing is if I have the music on it will freeze, but this is fixed by switching it of - so that´s in some way okay.

-Hope this helped you to see my problem.


The most annoying cheat I can think of AI conduct is: That it ALWAYS know where the weakest city is etc. This is also before spies!


As far I understood the MP-update would be included in the game-price - which means free. But maby I misunderstod capitalistic Infogrames again?

-Keep writing!

 

[Hurricane]

Originally posted by whstaff
[BI have a very powerful, fast computer complete with nvidia graphics card with the latest drivers and 512k memory. [/B]

It might be an issue with the NVidia drivers. Check out this thread: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=10941

 

[whstaff]

On this board there is a technical support page, there's over 1600 posts on it. About 10% of the posters can't install the game or can't play it at all after installing it. I suggest you check it out before issuing more of your BS. Compared to them I'm lucky, and you--probably have some kind of cyber angel in your case.
As for my computer, it plays all my other games just perfectly. So how do you explain that, BOY??
The last thing I will do is optimize my computer to play CIV III just right. That's freaking nonsense, as was your contri. Even during the periods the game ran fine, CIV III simply wasn't much fun, and ranks near the bottom of my list of games I've bought in the last five years. Please remember, I own just about every game Sid Meier has been associated with. All of them were fabulous games, and very stable as well..:crazyeyes

To Hurricane:

Thanks for the attempt to be helpful, but I do have the latest drivers from nvidia. One problem I never had was that scrolling thing anyway.

 

[Ironikinit]

Um, check out any game board, there will be people who can't install or play the game, even online games where you don't have to have anything installed on or your system. That's why they have technical forums.

Games ask a lot of a system and they aren't tested as well as, say, business applications. And business applications have bugs and flaws, too. I've had to make boot disks, download patches, change my autoexec and config, update drivers, all that and more to get a game to run. Civ III is no buggier than the Sims and a lot less buggy than Europa Universalis, at least that's my experience.

Good post, etj4Eagle.

 

[Mr Spice]

Yes, turns take a long time when playing on huge maps, I find that annoying too. But it is not a bug since the game uses the same algoritms as when playing on other maps. (I asume that you have no problem with long turns on, say, a standard map. At least I don´t.)

Instead it is probably only bad optimization. As far as I know the game was designed to be played on standard maps. The larger maps were added shortly before releasing the game because the customers (we) requested it. I for one find it hard to get angry at Firaxis only because the were trying to be nice to us.

I have never seen the game crash on my computer except after me making some badly thought through changes in the rules. I have never seen a corrupt save game either.

I stand by my opinion. Civ 3 has few bugs.

As for me beeing ignorant and condescending, I think that you are overreacting. But for what it´s worth, I do apologize. I am honestly sorry if I have offended you.

 

[ainwood]

Originally posted by whstaff
oh come on. I'm talking 10 minutes and longer waits between turns, corrupted save games that will not load, and worst of all the program has a tendency to write to the windows registry. An unacceptable coding flaw ....

God forbid! A program that has the audacity to write to the windows registry!

Originally posted by whstaff
The software engineering in this game can only be described as amateurish.

No, amateurish would have been to right to an .ini file.

 

[etj4Eagle]

Thanks to all who liked my previous post.

For those of you having tech problems with the game, while I know it is a pain that you can't get the game to run or run well, remember that your experiences are not universal. There are many people for whom the game runs without trouble. However, this is not to marginalize your problems. Look for help in the tech support forums and make sure you make use of Firaxis tech support. The only way for the problems to get fixed is for Firaxis to know the details and be able to reproduce the problem themselves. This is the one problem with PC's compared to MAC's (a consequence of their major advantage) is that there are thousands of permutations and there is no overriding party responsible for making sure everything is done correctly.

In some cases a problem may be traced to a totally different program that you installed years ago that decided it did not like a generic windows dll file and decided to replace it with a custom version. You would have been surprised how much ire I saw directed at MS when they decided that with WinME that the system files would be off limits for changing by anyone otherthan themselves (this is what "broke" some programs). These people thought it was their god given write to change basic system files to fit their needs, without consideration of what that would do to any other program that used that file, instead of using the correct approach of putting the updated dll in the program's directory. BTW this was the early solution to the NVIDIA problems, putting an early version of the driver in the game's program directory.


I have also noticed quite a few people who are upset that huge maps with 16 civ's take forever to run on their systems. While I do fault infogames a bit for not flagging this feature for advanced systems some, you have to remember that these maps are in their for those with very powerful system. I applaud any company that enables the program to take advantage of technology improvements down the road. I remember how the TA add-on came out with 64MB only maps, giving something to those who had all those memory.


On Firaxis not giving us more word on the add-ons or what not. Remember that they don't want to tell us anything till they have a firm date. Otherwise they will just get more ire when dates slip. It is better to let them work without a date, giving us something when they feel it is ready, then forcing them to give us a date and then be constrained by that.

Of course maybe I am more tolerant of bugs and slow running after using process simulator software. There was a period of a month or so before a patch came out for our software where in using it you ran the risk of loosing a whole day's work. At some point it would stop saving valid saves, but give you no clue that it had till it crashed a few hours later. I think I rebuilt my simulation a half dozen times because of that (though each rebuild was far better than the first). And then there was a wonderful program that liked to change permissions in NT as it ran so that it could not save the changes it was making. That was a wonderful little bug. Plus the computer would become useless till the system administrator came and reset them. Ugh!

Well I hope those of you having problems running the game, can get them taken care of. BTW in case you don't known EB and Babbagges both buy back games at a decent price, for those of you who decide to give up. But don't immeadiatly by your new games there without checking out stores like Target and Walmart, they often sell the hot new games for $10 less (that is a 20% savings).

 

[whstaff]

registry smegistry, I'm no geek all I know is that after some of these crashes Norton Systemworks tells me there are errrors in my registry and then fixes them. This has never happened to me before with anyother software.
BTW, my first gaming experience was in the mid 80s, the bards tale series. The machine I played them on was an IBM xt, it had a 10 KB HD!. When you saved a game you inserted your own floppy. I suppose game design was easier back then, as puters were more uniform. CIV III reflects todays diversity, as performance with the game various a bunch. Still, it is the publishers responsibility to release a game that will perform on any system that fits the minimum requirements listed. CIV III clearly dosen't. I've installed CIV III on 2 machines and it performed the same way on both machines, next week I'm getting one of those burners from Falcon NW, very expensive designed and optimized (supposedly) for gamers for my second home. The thing has got everything, I'll let you know how it plays on that platform. Untill then you guys really should checkout the tech forum here, and familiarize yourself with the plethora of problems experienced with the game.
My intuition tells me the game was rushed into release with very limited (in house??)beta-testing, and those who have had problem free performance, have machines similiar to those the beta testers were furnished.
It really pisses me off, that Firaxis is only now forming an at-large beta testing panel 3 months after the game was released. This kind of thing should have been done before release. It's an insult to most of us who paid good money for this game. The patch was also a total joke.

 

[pompeynunn]

I have to stand up for Firaxis here, and say that I have not had a single bug since I installed Civ 3. Now, that could be because I have a brand new PC that hasn't been 'contaminated' by many other dodgy programs yet. I suspect that the trouble with the bugs may be down to incompatibilities between different software packages - and you cannot reasonably expect Firaxis to check for compatibilities between the thousands of potential combinations of software available. (A bit more Beta testing would probably have been better though - 2-3 weeks of Beta testing would still have got the product out for Xmas).

On the other hand, I used to have Civ II crash on me all the time - just goes to show that not everybody experiences the same performance.

Would somebody from Firaxis please tell us, however, if there will be another patch released. If so, then perhaps we can all start making suggestions on what we would like to see in the next patch. If there won't be one, then we can all shut up and stop wasting bandwidth!

 

[ainwood]

Originally posted by etj4Eagle
Of course maybe I am more tolerant of bugs and slow running after using process simulator software. There was a period of a month or so before a patch came out for our software where in using it you ran the risk of loosing a whole day's work. At some point it would stop saving valid saves, but give you no clue that it had till it crashed a few hours later. I think I rebuilt my simulation a half dozen times because of that (though each rebuild was far better than the first). And then there was a wonderful program that liked to change permissions in NT as it ran so that it could not save the changes it was making. That was a wonderful little bug. Plus the computer would become useless till the system administrator came and reset them. Ugh!

There must be a few chem / process engineers lurking in this forum!

Yes, the simulator bugs. My personal favorite was the error in Provision that would (sometimes) happen when you tried to add another stream onto a flowsheet.

.... And in a desperate attempt to try to stay vaguely on-topic (ha!), at least in Civ III people can identify what the bugs are. The problem with process simulators is that it is often very difficult to deduce whether the result is "right" or not. I found a bug in HYSYS that would double the pressure drop across a heat exchanger. Took a long time to notice that one...