How can I play this game at WORK and not worry about being caught?

[costanza]

I've come up with an OK solution, but I need something better. Since the game runs in full-screen mode, and I only have 128 megs of ram, using alt-tab takes too long. Also because it's an XP machine, it has that silly display in the task switcher.

What I have so far is a small script that kills the civ3.exe process with a hot-button I can hit any time during the game. Then I can go back and just load an autosave.

But this script takes 5-10 seconds to execute especially if the AI is taking it's turns. I know I need more RAM.

The only other thing I can think is the shift-scroll lock hack, but I don't want to fully crash my machine every time.

Anyone got any ideas?

 

[adarel]

I totally feel for you.. Fortunately, Alt+Tab works for me speedily enough but the taskbar doesn't show at the bottom, so you can still see irrigation and trees below my WordPerfect window .. but oh well ..

Hope you find a fix soon.. I know the pain.

-e

 

[Richard III]

The risk of being caught should be acceptable. It's worth the risk.

Sadly, I cannot share in the risk, since my co-workers and I have tried and failed many a time to load up a game on our NT system.

Laptop for christmas, laptop for christmas, laptop for christmas...

 

[Malys Faisent]

Step one: Turn your monitor away from the traffic

Step two: Buy civ for your boss and/or any coworker that might get pissy

Step three: Tell them how great they are doing, how you wish you could play as well as they do

Step four: Stock lines such as, "I just wanted your opinion of this situation..." or "While thinking about our inventory problem I thought a quick tangent on commerce and corruption might help..."

Step five: Society as we know it, degrades as all on the job performance falls under Civdom.

 

[damunzy]

I can't even use the ALT-TAB function because Civ3 makes all my open screens mess up. By mess up I mean that they think they are still maximized but they are really fractions of their former sizes. So I have to hit the restore button then maximize to get them to enlarge. I didn't have this problem until I started to tinker with the .ini file so I is probably my fault!

 

[runaway]

"alt, space, r", in sequence, restores a window.
"alt, space, n" minimizes... and
"alt, space, x" maxaimizes.

 

[Knight-Dragon]

I think you all are looking at the problem fr a wrong angle. So how to play w/o getting caught at work? The solution is so simple in its blinding logic. Get a job that will allow you to play Civ3 at 'work'. What's easier?
Examples - playtester, game reviewer, game seller (need to demo), game store assistant. Worse comes to worse, set up your own business, hire some help to run it, then sit in and play your game.

 

[c92nichj]

How about, not playing Civ at work?
Or as I usually do it, I work from home the days I get a little distracted from work. Just make sure you make a couple of phone calls in the morning, logout from the game and send an email or two each second hour.
The next time you speak to your boss say how a really productive day you had, that you where producing hoplites and granaries you don't have to mention...

 

[WUM]

consider yourself lucky because you´re able to take the risk...
i want to, but don´t have a cdrom...

Good thing is i can read these forums instead!

 

[dozenlong]

I would love a job where I just played civ3 all day. These boards are my saving grace.

If they ever make civilization for a palm or a windows CE machine, I may as well just kiss productivity goodbye.

 

[xRamsesx]

They should probably include "$$$s lost to Civ3" in this years economic data. If they're not actually playing the game at work, people are on the civ 3 forums

 

[BurnPoodle]

the pain is the same for me... Im a student in computer science, and I would like to play during my courses but I can't so I'm on the forum too haha :crazyeyes