Firaxis: Patch coming next week

[Llotyhy]

I've been playing Civ IV for days now... and I never had a crash or anything... just slowness once in a while, but no big problems of any kind...

Sure, the Civilopedia could use some work, and some other things as well... but pure bugs? No...

So I wonder, is the game really buggy, or is it your computers?

 

[Smidlee]

They get high reviews, because every reviewer fondly remembers Civ way back in the day when they were in highschool or whatever.

But this is the buggiest game I've ever had the misfortune of running into. It whiped out my laptop, totaled the harddrive. So ontop of the ridiculous 70 dollar CND price I'm going to fork out another 250 just to undo the damage that Civ IV inflicted opon me.

But Fireaxis should be proud I guees. Civ was the first comptuer game I've ever played, Civ IV is the last computer game Ill ever play.

So nice work boys, way to bring some symetry to my life

Yet this is the real problem with PC games. On one of my PC I can play no bigger than standard and even then slow & choppy then on my new rig no problems at all so far. This is what makes consoles so attractive to game makers ; you know exactly what everyone has and spend all your focus on debugging one spec system. With PCs you got so many processors, graphics cards, motherboards, etc. made by different companies all slapped together in endless combinations. It's any wonder PC games have some many bugs.

 

[zeise]

Whats with all you people, a piece of software without bugs is like a doughnut without a hole. If a day goes by where there isn't something for me to fix on a computer then it just doesn't feel complete.

 

[jdurg]

Rare, but it can potentially happen.





More common would be poorly written software that causes harddisk corruption...although the disk is not destroyed physically, it is 'destroyed' because critical files have been corrupted. Had it happen to me a few months ago - a software program added a key to the registry that unlocked the Kernel Reserved Space that XP uses for system files and allowed any software to write to it...it hosed my OS files and corrupted the boot sector of my disk ... had to re-format and reload.

To a lot of regular users, a BSOD and a failure to boot seems like the disk is 'destroyed, when it is only the OS Boot files or disk boot sector that has been corrupted. I have amazed and astounded a few folks when I 'miraculously' revived their disk that they swore was 'destroyed', through the Recovery Panel...

Very good articles, but a computer system runs a bit differently than a hardware router. The hardware router being discussed in that first article doesn't exactly run like a modern machine runs.

In the second article, you did read the part that mentions how they'd have to write very specific code designed for that particular drive in order to 'hose it', right? Because if they did, then everybody who installed it would have their hard drive 'destroyed'. I'm just saying that the poster's drive didn't die because of Civ4 like he claims. It died because it was going to die anyway.

 

[Venger]

Venger, obviously something is bothering you,

Ya think? Might be my crash to BIOS problem in Civ4...

as you seem to know everything about everyone,

Sorry, that's the forte of the "Civ4 is fine, it must be your PC" crew.

what they do and how stupid they are.

The latter becomes evident when they post...

You claim to know that the only PC I ever see is my own...

For the intents and purposes of this thread? Uh, yeah, who else on this forum's PC have you inspected? What I thought...

strange, since I repair/reconfigure PC's for a living,

Really? I bet you're even A+ certified! Did you have to load Civ4 to obtain such a valued job skillset? Or is your computer probably the only you have installed Civ4 on? No wait - I sense an apocryphal tale of how you and all of your friends play it and you've seen their computers, kind of like that Canadian girlfriend that one kid had in grade school...

so I tend to see quite a few every day... Secondly you tell people that don't have problems not to mix in the discussion,

No, I tell people who have no problems and have no contribution OTHER than their lack of problems that they probably are wasting bandwidth. However, if you have something CONSTRUCTIVE to add - feel free to. We are waiting for the first time...

I suspect so you can say later 'look at this thread, NO one seems to be able to run Civ4'.

Instead of MAKING QUOTES UP, you could respond to something that was actually said? Mmmm Hmmmm...

Well let me wake you up, EVERYONE in my circle of friends (before you suggest I haven't got any, I do...) seems to be able to run the game just fine (except for the memory leak bug I mentioned earlier, no biggy)

OMG!! I hadn't read forward before predicting this! I LOVE IT! EVERYONE in your circle of friends went out and bought Civ4? What an odd group of friends, all pre-ordering or buying Civ4 and running without error! Like the Canadian girlfriend, this of course in not verifiable in any way, shape or form, nor does even the remote possibility this is accurate in any way inform the fact that LEGION are those having problems...

on a multitude of different systems. Lastly, you seem to be so certain Civ4 will not sell more than a few copies...

Jeez...

Reading. Is. Fundamental.

QUOTE IT. You see the quote function? Quote it. What did I say? Here, let me do your work FOR YOU...

"I love the Civ games, always have, but there is NO WAY there is anywhere NEAR 1 million installs of Civ4. No. Where. Near."

It takes really poor reading comprehension skills to conflate that with "don't think it will sell more than a few copies". No, sir, they are two utterly distinct concepts. What it HASN'T done is sell ONE MILLION COPIES (insert Dr. Evil voice) in one week.

The entire Civ-franchise has sold several million copies up until now (I think I read a few days ago it was 6 or 8 million), so I would be surprised if Civ4 doesn't represent a fair share of that...

Then you should be surprised, since they have been selling Civ for what, almost 15 years now? So, you figure that between Civ for multiple platforms, Civ2, ToT, Civ3 and all it's variants, all sold for over a decade, that Civ4 in one week has a "fair share" of that?

The wheel is spinning... but the hamster's dead...

what with it being in the top 3 list of about every major online/retails sales list...

Board ettiquite dictates I candy coat this, but you think that Civ4 being out for a week in the US makes it a fair share... RIGHT. A mind is a terrible thing to waste.

but you seem to know better, so you're probably right; the 100 people complaining about problems on this thread probably represent 50-80% of all Civ4 sales, therefore only a quarter of the people that bought it are able to play it...

Okay - if 100 complaining people represent 50-80% of sales, how can they then be a quarter that bought it?

Our public schools are failing us...

Venger

 

[Venger]

As to Civ4 actually damaging hardware - that's like a one in a million chance.

BUT...

A bombing program can trash your hard drive - unlikely to physically damage it, but quite likely to trash your MFT or another portion, rendering the system unusable until a reformat - reinstall.

Civ4 isn't hurting anything except my feelings...

Venger
P.S. Mind you, I am fighting through it to play a fun game - finally made peace with the Chinese, I think they are isolated and hence have really gone crazy with tech, not having to ward off invaders or worry about doing a land grab. I am about to take back what was lost to the Inca - heavy is the price I will exact in full from that Godless band of ne'er-do-wells...

 

[Dida]

I've been playing Civ IV for days now... and I never had a crash or anything... just slowness once in a while, but no big problems of any kind...

Sure, the Civilopedia could use some work, and some other things as well... but pure bugs? No...

So I wonder, is the game really buggy, or is it your computers?

If this game has so many problems on so many pc's, than it is buggy.

 

[jdurg]

As the game is working pretty near perfectly for me, the patch doesn't hold as much anticipation for me as the release of the SDK will when it comes out. I can only imagine the heights to which this game can be modded once that tool is released. I can only dream of having every unit/tech that I've wanted in a game finally able to be added. (It also makes me wonder why they're releasing such a powerful, edit to your liking, tool. Is this perhaps the last Civ game so they're giving us the power to mod it like there's no tomorrow?)

 

[Venger]

Here's my hope on the SDK and modding...

I made numerous changes to Civ3 - added resources, unit types, Civs, changed values, really made what I felt was a very strong change to the game...

And then PTW came out. And I had to REDO EVERYTHING. Because the file format changed, and everything had to be put back in, piece by piece.

But I did. And got it really good, added a wonderful civ of the Moors, with a wonderful Saracen unit, got everything set..

And then Conquests came out. And I had to redo it all AGAIN, because AGAIN they changed the format of the file, and everything had to be re-entered by hand...

I hope that with this, new releases don't require wholesale and total revamps of changes.

Venger

 

[varradami]

As to Civ4 actually damaging hardware - that's like a one in a million chance.

BUT...

A bombing program can trash your hard drive - unlikely to physically damage it, but quite likely to trash your MFT or another portion, rendering the system unusable until a reformat - reinstall.

Civ4 should not be able to trash your hard drive. If it somehow managed to, I'd say your operating system has a rather serious fault in it.

I really am getting a kick out of this thread. People are blaming Civ4 for everything. What's next, "Civ4 killed my dog"?

 

[Venger]

Civ4 is very addicting - so addicting that in fact I forgot to feed my dog. He has perished...

Venger
P.S. If a bombing program cannot trash your hard drive, why don't we just hit the reset button when we want to reboot? Think about it... a program that crashes can interrupt file writes and MFT updates, including registry files...

 

[oldStatesman]

Very good articles, but a computer system runs a bit differently than a hardware router. The hardware router being discussed in that first article doesn't exactly run like a modern machine runs.

In the second article, you did read the part that mentions how they'd have to write very specific code designed for that particular drive in order to 'hose it', right? Because if they did, then everybody who installed it would have their hard drive 'destroyed'. I'm just saying that the poster's drive didn't die because of Civ4 like he claims. It died because it was going to die anyway.

JDurg, Venger, et al...

I was not saying that Civ did or did not destroy that posters hard drive...you are right, it is a long long long long long long shot if it did. If it did, and it could be proven it was Civ4, I believe that would be one for the Guiness Book of World Record's.

I was simply responding to DisruptiveIdiot's statement that software did not destoy hard drives, and pointing out that it could. Not that it does. (Plus I had just read that article on Hard Drive virus', and found it fascinating info, and was looking for an excuse to pass it on....)

You are absolutely right. More than likely his HDD was on it's last legs anyway...or a sector went bad that contained boot or System files and it died.

Forgive me for being a bit of a Devil's advocate tonite...had a bad day and I'd rather be playing Civ4 but I can't deal with the constant CTD's tonite. Guess I'm taking it out here...

 

[EdCase]

As the game is working pretty near perfectly for me, the patch doesn't hold as much anticipation for me as the release of the SDK will when it comes out. I can only imagine the heights to which this game can be modded once that tool is released. I can only dream of having every unit/tech that I've wanted in a game finally able to be added. (It also makes me wonder why they're releasing such a powerful, edit to your liking, tool. Is this perhaps the last Civ game so they're giving us the power to mod it like there's no tomorrow?)

Do not tempt the patch gods ...many are they who play then patch..then play not. Remember that sometimes one mans meat is another mans poison

 

[oldStatesman]

Do not tempt the patch gods ...many are they who play then patch..then play not. Remember that sometimes one mans meat is another mans poison

Now wouldn't that make for a fun time around here...if the tables were turned after the patch...

I can see it now...those who are running the game with no issues suddenly frothing at the mouth because it won't run, and those who cannot play now posting "I love Civ4 and have no problems".

 

[varradami]

Civ4 is very addicting - so addicting that in fact I forgot to feed my dog. He has perished...

Venger

Haha, that I could believe. I'm a believe in personal responsibility though, so I still don't think you should be faulting Civ4 for that (though I do understand the feeling)

P.S. If a bombing program cannot trash your hard drive, why don't we just hit the reset button when we want to reboot? Think about it... a program that crashes can interrupt file writes and MFT updates, including registry files...

All right, yes, a program can corrupt your hard drive (or more correctly, the data on that drive), but only if it has access to do so. All access to any hardware on your system should go through the operating system*. A user-level program should not be allowed to simply make any changes it wishes. Of course, if a user is running with Administrator privileges in Windows, the program may very well be able to get this type of access - this is typical of Windows users (with good reason), but is the fault of Windows.

Despite this, there should not be any way for Civ4 to physically damage a hard drive. I assure you it was a coincidence that the hard drive failed when attempting to play Civ4. Hard drive failures happen more frequently than you might expect.

What actually happens is Civ4 makes a call to a function in the OS, telling Windows that it has some data it wants written. The OS then adds this to its own internal buffer, and promises it will get around to writing that data to the disc at some point. Civ4 is then free to continue on. If you simply kill the power in your system, Windows may not have actually written that data to the disc yet.** However, if Civ4 crashes Windows will still get around to writing the files to the disc.

The function that Civ4 calls only allows it to write to a file. It does not allow modifications to the disc outside of the filesystem structure - hence, no corrupting the partition information or the master boot record. The worst that could happen is Civ4's files get corrupted.

* Actually, this is a bit of a generalization. But I don't think a discussion on operating system architure is really relevant here, nor do I wish to have one. Got enough of that in college

** I am assuming Windows does asynchronous writes. Unix (and other Posix systems, such as Linux) do, but I have not actually verified that Windows does. It seems likely, but I could be wrong.

 

[oldStatesman]

Haha, that I could believe. I'm a believe in personal responsibility though, so I still don't think you should be faulting Civ4 for that (though I do understand the feeling)



All right, yes, a program can corrupt your hard drive (or more correctly, the data on that drive), but only if it has access to do so. All access to any hardware on your system should go through the operating system*. A user-level program should not be allowed to simply make any changes it wishes. Of course, if a user is running with Administrator privileges in Windows, the program may very well be able to get this type of access - this is typical of Windows users (with good reason), but is the fault of Windows.

Despite this, there should not be any way for Civ4 to physically damage a hard drive. I assure you it was a coincidence that the hard drive failed when attempting to play Civ4. Hard drive failures happen more frequently than you might expect.

What actually happens is Civ4 makes a call to a function in the OS, telling Windows that it has some data it wants written. The OS then adds this to its own internal buffer, and promises it will get around to writing that data to the disc at some point. Civ4 is then free to continue on. If you simply kill the power in your system, Windows may not have actually written that data to the disc yet.** However, if Civ4 crashes Windows will still get around to writing the files to the disc.

The function that Civ4 calls only allows it to write to a file. It does not allow modifications to the disc outside of the filesystem structure - hence, no corrupting the partition information or the master boot record. The worst that could happen is Civ4's files get corrupted.

* Actually, this is a bit of a generalization. But I don't think a discussion on operating system architure is really relevant here, nor do I wish to have one. Got enough of that in college

** I am assuming Windows does asynchronous writes. Unix (and other Posix systems, such as Linux) do, but I have not actually verified that Windows does. It seems likely, but I could be wrong.

Ah, but you brought it up...

User level programs that are written correctly (or incorrectly) do not have access to Kernel level sectors of the drive...normally. But there is a reg entry that can be modified to allow this...and it has not so much to do with admin level priviledges ... it has to do with System level priviledges, a big difference. It is true that to change this key, a program does have to run in the admin context...but it has to run in the admin context in order to install in the first place; once this key is modified any program can write to the restricted memory space. MS left this open for Devs...it is usually used in the Dev process...but closed in production builds. However some programmers will leave it enabled because that is the only way to solve a particular bug in the time frame they have. (I'm not implying that the Civ team did this...there is no evidence for that; I checked and the key is not there on my system. But I also just installed a program that did leave the key recently...and ran the regfix to remove it, so I am not 100% sure...only 99.9% sure that they did not do this.)


Of coarse, there is also Murphy's Law...

...and poo will always happen sometimes. When the system is unexpectedly shut down, all bets are off...weird stuff can and does happen...not just with Windows but with any OS. It's the nature of the beast.

 

[Chaotic42]

I've been having problems as well, but I don't think it's a memory leak. I'm running:

Athlon 64 3700+
2GB PC3200
PCI-E Geforce 6800GT 256MB
10K U160 SCSI Drives
Sound Blaster Live Digital 5.1 Sound

When I have slow downs, ALT+TABing out and ALT+TABing back in works for me like it does for most other people. When the computer hard crashes however, I get crazy sound problems. Weird white noise events and squeals.

That makes me think it's related to sound in some way. No matter what video settings I put the game at, I still get the slowdowns. Even if I overclock my CPU to FX53 speeds, I still get the slowdowns.

My money is on there being a sound bug somewhere.

Oh, and I humbly bow before the Civ Gods as a new poster. I should have gotten on the Civ bandwagon a long time ago, but I was playing F-19 Stealth Fighter and Silent Service.

 

[Dida]

I notice there is a huge memory leak when swapping maps with the AI.

 

[oldStatesman]

I notice there is a huge memory leak when swapping maps with the AI.

Can you document it? I have been trying to find one but so far no luck.

 

[Chaotic42]

Can you document it? I have been trying to find one but so far no luck.

I'm running a test now. I started a game on huge with all of the AI slots filled. I played for a while and took a screenshot of the memory usage. I'll check it when I wake up in several hours and see what the usage is.