Firaxis Chat Q&A!!!

[gonzo_for_civ]

Here it is. All the questions and answers(deemed appropriate) from the Firaxis chat all rolled up into a nicely edited text file.

This took about 4 hours to do btw

Please post feedback. Tell me if you think it's easier this way then it was in the past(viewable from the www.civfanatics.com/chat/ page, under past chats)

Anyways, here ya go. This'll be posted to the main page soon.

Highlights!

Mac PTW announced!
Firewalls being worked on for next patch!
And much, much more!

 

[Sultan Bhargash]

Thanks Gonz! I'm opening it now. One day I will get the chat program.

Can't wait to see what people said to those guys! :flamedevil:

 

[gonzo_for_civ]

If you want to see EVERYTHING said..go get the chat log from the firaxis chat going on now thread. But i wouldn't suggest it.....reading 120K text files takes a while

 

[gonzo_for_civ]

Oh yeah. Soren Johnson did visit us after the official chat was over. I'm not formatting that right now(it's break time) but I will post a new Q&A with the Soren stuff included probably before the night's over(MST-Arizona Time )

 

[warpstorm]

Except the last question's answer is not true. I double checked the manual and it isn't there.

 

[Sultan Bhargash]

This Q and A was very polite it seems and the guys perhaps a little too self congratulatory. "When the internet works as well as my LAN" is cute but how about "when the internet works as good for PTW as it does for Unreal Tournament"?

The quest for that elusive goal seems to be the focus of the next patch (in addition to removing some bugs, including the PBEM bug I never knew about! ). Too bad. It seems less realistic than some of the other changes people want (specifically, replay in PBEM/Hotseat, the multiplayer modes that do work for everyone).

 

[kring]

Thank you; having done several copy/cut/paste jobs for other chats, I applaud and appreciate the massive effort that you have done so far.

 

[Chieftess]

Originally posted by Sultan Bhargash
This Q and A was very polite it seems and the guys perhaps a little too self congratulatory. "When the internet works as well as my LAN" is cute but how about "when the internet works as good for PTW as it does for Unreal Tournament"?

The quest for that elusive goal seems to be the focus of the next patch (in addition to removing some bugs, including the PBEM bug I never knew about! ). Too bad. It seems less realistic than some of the other changes people want (specifically, replay in PBEM/Hotseat, the multiplayer modes that do work for everyone).

It depends on several factors:

1 - The size of the data packets (in FPS, the packet sizes are usually smaller - player coords, particle coords). For Civ3, you've gotta send city info, unit info, etc.

2 - The connection on both ends - A 56k modem will send a LOT slower than a cable modem.

3. The Intenet Traffic - It also depends on where the packects are traveling. Packets are split up as the traverse the Net. Even if the connection is good for 30% of the packects, the other 70% might find themselves in a congested part of the Net.

 

[Sultan Bhargash]

Thanks Chieftess.

I have a cable modem so does my brother. Our packets travelled between New Jersey and Virginia. The patch changed nothing in unit speed.

Would playing direct IP make a difference/make it better than using the internet to connect to each other?

 

[Thunderfall]

The chat logs are posted on the main page. Thanks Chieftess and Grey Fox for administering the chat, and gonzo for compiling the QA!

 

[warpstorm]

Actually, PTW will never be as smooth as UT over the internet. Why not? Because FPS (and to a lesser extent RTS) games can 'cheat' as far as message traffic goes. In these type of games dropped or out of synch messages don't really matter. If you miss an update message on the position of a rocket that was launched you can go on and 'dead reckon' where it will be client side, rather than waiting for the message. If that message never comes no big deal. If it finally gets to you later, well, you can ignore it. In a game like PTW, presumably every message is important and must be processed in order, so these shortcuts can't be used.

 

[Hygro]

Man I'm happy. You posted my alias on your front page. Thanks to Chieftess, gonzo_for_civ and TheGreyFox for taking our questions!

 

[Isak]

Originally posted by Sultan Bhargash
I have a cable modem so does my brother. Our packets travelled between New Jersey and Virginia. The patch changed nothing in unit speed.

Unit speed depends heavily on the speed of the computers. If you're playing Turnless (and probably Si-move to some extent) the game will run at the capacity of the 'smallest' computer.

Would playing direct IP make a difference/make it better than using the internet to connect to each other?

Most likely, but in the world of computers - nothing is guaranteed

 

[cgannon64]

One thing I never knew, but some more computer-savvy people at this site told me is that TBS games are harder to put online than FPS. The reason is that, in an FPS, data packets can be lost, and it won't matter, because the computer can estimate where you will be. But, in a TBS, every packet is important, so if they computer misses one, it is to wait for all of them to be resent. In an FPS, it can estimate where you are going based on your direction and speed, but in a TBS, it can't estimate your next move or build order.

CG

 

[Silverflame]

Something that shocked me in the chat was when someone asked whether there will be a playback thing for Hotseat/PBEM, JMorris said no.

 

[warpstorm]

Silver, I was the one who asked and the answer disapponited me also. PBEM is fated to be the ugly red-headed step-child of PTW (no offense to any ugly red-headed stepchildren out there).

 

[wtiberon]

I felt that they were fairly unprepared for the questions presented. I read Gonzo's cut and paste job (well done gonzo) and noticed that too often they pushed the questions onto someone else (Infogrames or another developer) or they just didn't sufficiently answer a question (In my opinion anyway). One thing I was pleased to hear was that they were working towards fixing the (grumble, grumble, grumble) NAT router and firewall problem in MP

 

[gonzo_for_civ]

Thank you all for the compliments..or should I say your welcome for saying thank you....anyways, a lot of the time Firaxis did push off the questions to infogrames, but if you noticed those were mainly questions about the future. A lot of blame for diff things was put on gamespy but that's understandable(they are using the gamespy SDK..which means when using gamespy they can only use whatever is in gamespy's programming)

The chat went well and I'll have the soren QA done today hopefully.

 

[sumthinelse]

One of the questions says that if you "load a pbem game as a single player game" you see the whole map. How do you do that? "Load Game" from the main menu continues the pbem game, and control+L doesn't work in pbem. I don't want to cheat but I have a pbem game where I am playing all the civs and I want to see what happens in SP.

 

[etj4Eagle]

Originally posted by wtiberon
I felt that they were fairly unprepared for the questions presented. I read Gonzo's cut and paste job (well done gonzo) and noticed that too often they pushed the questions onto someone else (Infogrames or another developer) or they just didn't sufficiently answer a question (In my opinion anyway). One thing I was pleased to hear was that they were working towards fixing the (grumble, grumble, grumble) NAT router and firewall problem in MP

Well many of those questions that were put off were ones that they don't deal with. The issue of copy protection and problems with localized versions of the game is something that squarly falls on the shoulders of Infogrames. Firaxis provides them the code and then Infogrames messes with it a bit to produce the shipping version. Copy protection issues and localization issues are things that occur after Firaxis has finished their work and sent it off.

Like the complaint of European customers being treated as second rate customers. They only appear that way, because Firaxis being located in the US, makes a US version of the game and patches. Infogrames then releases that while at the sametime beginning work on making the necessary changes for the Europeen versions. Europe releases will always lag if any kind of localization is required. If they didn't, then they would be holding back the releases of the US patch/versions just so that the Europeens could feel good about things.

I think what this showed is that many of the hot issues are things that are beyond Firaxis's control (Gamespy SDK, Infogrames, localisation). Though where they could, the developers did say they would try to work on a work around or pass a message along to the appropriate people.

Next time I guess we will just have to think of questions that are clearly in Firaxis's court and not someone else's.