Skippy_Kangaroo
Prince of Denmark
If it were lag it should catch up. But it never catches up - it just gets completely waylaid.ejday said:
How to make Civ4 for Mac work better
- Thread starter Brad Oliver
- Start date
girtholomew
Chieftain
- Joined
- Jun 28, 2006
- Messages
- 41
Having the same problems as everyone. Mitigated by running windowed - still next to no sound.
Is there a workaround so I can see the top of the window??
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iMac 20" Intel Dual Core
2GB RAM
256MB X1600
OS 10.4.7
Is there a workaround so I can see the top of the window??
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iMac 20" Intel Dual Core
2GB RAM
256MB X1600
OS 10.4.7
jdevo
Warlord
Wasn't sure where to put this post, but Aspyr emailed in response to my questions of whether a patch would fix the sound problems.
They said that a decision was made to proceed without unit sounds due to problems converting the engine to mac binary... they also said that there is no word whether this issue will be addressed in a patch.
I was wondering if anyone else has gotten this message (I've seen it once before posted sometime last week on these forums)
I'm starting to wonder if Aspyr knew about the sound problems before they shipped the game...
They said that a decision was made to proceed without unit sounds due to problems converting the engine to mac binary... they also said that there is no word whether this issue will be addressed in a patch.
I was wondering if anyone else has gotten this message (I've seen it once before posted sometime last week on these forums)
I'm starting to wonder if Aspyr knew about the sound problems before they shipped the game...
Skippy_Kangaroo
Prince of Denmark
Given that it seems to affect every system - not just 10.4.7 - I would be gobsmacked if they weren't aware. The alternative is that their beta testing was inadequate. Either way it is not exactly a gold star by their name.jdevo said:
ejday
King
Sure. Change your computer's screen resolution so that it's higher than the game's resolution. I'm running the game 1024x768... coincidentally what my screen resolution was at. Full screen was okay, but windowed, of course, the menubar covers the top. The fix was to adjust the computer's display to 1280x854. That "854" makes all the difference, giving the vertical space to keep the menubar from overlapping the top of the game.girtholomew said:
Gatekeeper
Warlord
I'm surprised one cannot just grab the edge of a window and manually adjust its size. A lot of programs work that way but apparently not Civ IV?
And if Aspyr knowingly shipped this game w/o sound effects ... well, let's put it this way: their bean-counters will regret the day they cut corners to ship by June 30. They sacrificed long-term potential for short-term gain. Civ IV might not sell that well because of it, which will have a ripple effect in the form of the very same bean-counters then saying it isn't worth it to port Civ IV Warlords to the Mac. The irony? These were the same folks who got the vicious circle going in the first place!
I wonder how many of these aforementioned bean-counters have business degrees? Because if they do, they're shaming the institutions that granted them.
Gatekeeper
And if Aspyr knowingly shipped this game w/o sound effects ... well, let's put it this way: their bean-counters will regret the day they cut corners to ship by June 30. They sacrificed long-term potential for short-term gain. Civ IV might not sell that well because of it, which will have a ripple effect in the form of the very same bean-counters then saying it isn't worth it to port Civ IV Warlords to the Mac. The irony? These were the same folks who got the vicious circle going in the first place!
I wonder how many of these aforementioned bean-counters have business degrees? Because if they do, they're shaming the institutions that granted them.
Gatekeeper
ejday
King
I'm probably wrong, but I think it has to do with the game being designed to play full screen, replacing all interface elements rather than using the OS to render them (like cursors, save dialogues, etc.). So, at the screen size level, the game sets its resolution and that resolution it keeps.Gatekeeper said:
Shaming? Maybe. Maybe not. Look at the market at large. These days, it's all about the short-term gains and the minor blips on paper that affect stock price. The pencil ne... uh, bean counters said they'd ship Q2 and if they don't, the analysts dock them and the stock takes a hit.
These days, considering the market and the state of technology, they'll look at "shipped on time" and weigh it against "mostly works", "high performance caveat" and "can be patched." They risk less of a market hit with "imperfect" over "didn't ship" after all, people can't buy what's not there.
Long-run satisfaction/customer loyalty can be bought. Want proof? Look at the Microsoft market model: that crowd has the biggest percentage of pathological apologists in the tech world. Despite this, other smart people see these in-denial advocates, hold their nose and run the system. Ya gotta do what ya gotta do.
Aspyr is in the same boat. Figure that's it's got maybe $5 million in revenues on a good year, filter out most of that for a thin net spread among, what...? 13 employees? I don't know how much they're publicly traded (if at all), but they aren't above market rules.
Yeah, it's frustrating (especially for us)... but ultimately, in The Big Picture, shipping when they did wasn't a choice they could make.
I personally think the whole mac-gaming business is allready a corpse...boot camp, and its eventual improvements, are going to make ports fairly unprofitable. Civ IV demonstrates a badly done port, a rushed job, and one that was what over 6 months after the pc version? The game is more expensive on OSX, available much later, and buggy as hell...if i had an intelchip in my mac, i'd much rather shell out for the pc version and play it as such (patches and all, and an imminent release of an expansion pack) rather than wait and get an inferior and system-crunching version.
Skippy_Kangaroo
Prince of Denmark
Well, I really like the Mac. And I particularly like things being Mac like. So I will always have a demand for Mac games. I have to use Windows for work and it frustrates me no end.Zukov45 said:
However, if the Mac port of a game is identical to the PC version - just buggier then it doesn't seem like there is much gain. I have to put up with ugly PC stuff and I get added bugs. If it was actually more Mac-like then I'll still want the port. There is still the barrier of getting a copy of Windows so I think there is easily a market for Mac ports despite Boot Camp. But Civ IV ain't the poster child for Mac ports.
The WAB said:How many times do you reinstall your mac? Sounds like you like to srew up things
Not once. I keep copies of all originals and have not had to reinstall yet from problems caused by regressing older kexts. Not that I recommend everyone to go out and start switching kexts.
Brad mentioned that there were some audio pieces that broke the game, so if he can give the exact components I'd be happy to try and replace them with earlier ones to see if that helps.
As far as shipping a product to meet a scheduled date... there has got to be some parameters to at least make the game reasonably playable before shipping.
Consistent crashes, a hair of audio, major performance problems, and these problems being pretty widespread across many Apple HW and SW products
Don't you all think that these problems should be addressed before GM'ing a product?
