Disclaimer (its getting nasty in some quarters out there)
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The writer is not employed by nor has any affiliaton to Gamespy, Firaxis or Civ4Players.
This information is supplied without warranty or guarantee and is soley based on the opinions, experiences and observations of the writer and should NOT be deemed as accurate. Using or following this advice is done at your own risk as the writer will not be liable in any way for any of the content that follows as you are forewarned in this notice. Please do not follow this advice if you are still unsure as to what you are doing after reading it.
Hi all
At 2800+ downloads (it was 2800 2 days ago) I'm noticing a trend here. I've applied the patch on two different configurations and helped a few people get it installed so here's what I think I've learned so far.
Someone please correct any mistakes I might make although I doubt I made a lot but a second or numerous sets of eyes does help. Anyone who has worked or played with me knows I don't make short posts but distribute all kinds of nuggets in them so read carefully.
Preface
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First thanks to Alex, Canuck SPM and Primax for getting this fix out. You guys don't know how much we all hated oos. Since I play naval games (extra islands), I used to get at least one oos per game. It always involved trying to pause the game in such a way that you could see who is oos which was a feat in itself and then waiting for them to rejoin - if they did - and if they didn't rejoin, the game often got abandonded on the next oos, so thanks guys. Mucho
I've played 12 plus games with the fix, some of them with 8 players and more on BTS (Civ Complete) and some games over 5hrs with no oos (unless an unpatched player joined and then it cleared up as soon as they left). From what I've seen, the version of Civ, your OS and the particular type of install are all factors in how the install is carried out and from what I've seen those factors can vary immensely. Hopefully this info will help.
If Firaxis had funded an installer for it (after all, they did introduce the bug as mentioned by Alex) we would not have had any problems in adopting the fix at all because I believe their patch installer determines the exact configuration before the install process begins and selects the appropriate files and options - too big a work for the community.
Needless to say, because you can see it in the lobby, the user community has varying technical abilities and those lacking the skills seem to have adopted an 'anti-fix' stance. Edit - It is not only those without skills. Email and Pitboss players amongst others with existing long term games actually need to remain unpatched so that is probably part of the motivation for such strenuous resistance - End Edit.
Installation info
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Okay, here's the juice for those having problems or just wanting to find out about the process. There are two patches. One is an installer program contained in a zip file and the other is a dll file that is copied to a certain location. Since I have only used the installer, I will focus on that.
0. Importantant Patching Background Information
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Civilization routinely checks files in the installation when joining a game and between turns. It generates sychronization information based on this and/or other info, which if incorrect in any player's game, generates an oos warning. This mechanism is very useful in preventing cheating but of course is also a potential source of error.
Because of these checks it appears that the prompt to patch games needed to be installed at lobby level to ensure that all players have the same files. If players do not have the same files the game will naturally be out of synch (OOS) from turn 1 and onwards. There is also a warning at game level so if any player joins a game with different files, all the other players should get a warning.
It seems that at patch 3.17 (correct me if earlier than that) Firaxis stopped providing the file to Gamespy so users end up with a patching process that goes on forever. Users that are prompted to upgrade to the new patch should instead ctl alt delete, right click on Civilization in task manager and end the process. Then go to:
http://www.firaxis.com/downloads/Patch/Civ4BeyondTheSwordPatch3.17e.exe
to download and save the 3.17 patch and when downloaded, you should run it. To summarise, the upgrade process now serves as a prompt only. You must now download your patches directly from the game providers (see bts manual in the bts folder).
As Alex and Canuck have stated above, this OOS fix has not been provided by Firaxis through the normal channels and processes, therefore, you will get no warnings on entering the Gamespy lobby if you do not have the OOS fix. Hopefully the following information, targetted mainly at plain Civilization and Civilization Complete users on XP or Vista, should clarify the installation process that people have so many doubts about.
1. Download the Fix
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The fix is hosted on the civ4players league site. It is absolutely free and at no cost to you the user you don't even have to join or see the site pages, however, the install is targetted at standard configurations so you might need to do some stuff to get it to install properly and working at the first attempt as follows. The file is here:
OOS Fix (Zip File)
When you download the zip file, you will need to extract the exe that it contains. You should ideally extract it to a new folder away from your civ installations. navigate to where you extracted the file and you you should see a file called Civplayers OOS patch(.exe). Now comes the tricky part...
2. Pre-Install Actions
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To complete the install, you first need to stop civ if it is running. You will then need to find the Beyond the Sword (BTS) install folder for reasons I will explain after in 3.
a) XP and Vista All User Installs
If you installed BTS on XP with all the standard settings with the standard civ or complete editions then BTS will probably be located on C:\Program Files\Firaxis\Sid Miers Civilizaion\Beyond the Sword or similar.
If you changed the directory names or other install configuratons, the you need to find out where your BTS folder is. Probably the best way to do that is to run 'search' from Windows Explorer or use Start Menu > Search and find 'Beyond the Sword'.
b) Vista This User Only Installs
On Vista, if you installed CIV for 'this user only', you will probably find BTS in Users\My UserName\AppData\Roaming\Firaxis (may be 2K games before this)\Sid Miers etc... otherwise it will as the XP install folder above. Either way, using Start Menu > Search should find your installation as mentioned above for XP.
3. Running the Installer
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The installer needs to know where Beyond the Sword (BTS) is located because it runs its script on the assets folder, one level below this. If you point the installer at the assets folder, it will not install correctly. If you are not sure where BTS is located, please, for your own sake, go back to step 2 and find out NOW!
Now that you know the location of your BTS folder, run the extracted file. At the first screen you will be shown where the installer assumes your BTS folder is located. Check that against the actual location. If the two are different then copy and paste or type the actual location of your BTS folder in place of what is displayed in the installer or browse to the location by using the '...' button.
The install should take about 30 seconds if that. Error messages are discussed below in 5.
4. Checking the Install actually suceeded
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A lot of people have told me that the installation suceeded when in fact it failed. This is because even though there are errors in the install the installer reports success whatever the outcome of the process. If there is a problem you will see error messages along the way (see 5 for more info).
The first check should be on the actual files installed. Go to your BTS folder and then to the Assets folder that is located in there. You should see three files.
CvGameCoreDLL.dll
CvGameCoreDLL.bak
Uninstall.exe
You will also see various other folders but those are not related to the fix, only the original game.
If those three files are present then the install worked correctly. The next test is joining a game. At present, the civ lobby contains games that contain the words 'patched', 'oos' and 'no patch' to help you understand which games are which but if in doubt, ask first! Join any new patched or oos patched game. If you get the warning that the host has different files, ask whether they have the patch / fix installed and whether they have already played games with it.
If the above files are there, you either have a previous bad install of the fix residing somewhere in your civ install which may mean that you need to reinstall civ and the patches or you need to remove the previously failed install. See 6 for uninstall instructions.
5. Installation Errors
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If you have errors while running the installation file, you are probably pointing at the wrong folder. The first message will be 'cannot extract civcore.dll' or something to that effect. If you see that message, please go to step 2 and begin again.
6. Uninstalling the OOS Fix
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If you are still having problems after following all the above instructions, you still have problems, you will be probably better served by using the other install file and method. Some isolated Steam based installs and Gold edition installs (few not all - to my knowledge) have had problems and used that method instead but read on first.
Since the dll download process is beyond my experience, I will simply explain how to uninstall the fix that you installed sucessfuly after following step 3 since if the new files remain, you may get a 'different files' message and oos when you join other patched players.
The uninstall file is situated in the Assets folder under BTS run that file and the Fix will be removed.
Please note that Gamespy, Firaxis, 2K Games and Civilization are all registered trademarks so search the internet for more informatoin on them if you don't know them already.
