Howdy

[Xyth]

Well, I got an answer. As it stands right now, Aspyr doesn't have any plans to address these issues, with so much going on for a future project, all of Development and then some is tied up and will be for some time. I know that sucks for you gamers right now but we just don't have the staff to accommodate such a request at this time, not that we don't want to. If only I'd been around a while back Sorry Ya'll

No great surprise, thanks for the attempt though.

 

[gfeier]

Well, I got an answer. As it stands right now, Aspyr doesn't have any plans to address these issues, with so much going on for a future project, all of Development and then some is tied up and will be for some time. I know that sucks for you gamers right now but we just don't have the staff to accommodate such a request at this time, not that we don't want to. If only I'd been around a while back Sorry Ya'll

And that project would be...? Civ V? ;-)

 

[civ_king]

Please do only Intel, IIRC that is what screwed so badly with Civ IV.

Please make this game work well with Grand Central, this should aid support for insane number of core (Mac Pro) and make it scalable down the line to the MacBooks (running Core2Duo@2GHz here),

Also I would like it if Mac Civ V played well with Mods from other people,

This is all IF Aspyr gets Civ V , I look forward to dealing with Aspyr and hope for a wonderful Civ V experience,

(Do you have any offices in the SF Bay Area as I would like to get into software programing and aiding the Mac Community would be wonderful)

 

[Schaefer_Aspyr]

And that project would be...? Civ V? ;-)

HA! Didn't say that homey ;-)

 

[Schaefer_Aspyr]

Please do only Intel, IIRC that is what screwed so badly with Civ IV.

Please make this game work well with Grand Central, this should aid support for insane number of core (Mac Pro) and make it scalable down the line to the MacBooks (running Core2Duo@2GHz here),

Also I would like it if Mac Civ V played well with Mods from other people,

This is all IF Aspyr gets Civ V , I look forward to dealing with Aspyr and hope for a wonderful Civ V experience,

(Do you have any offices in the SF Bay Area as I would like to get into software programing and aiding the Mac Community would be wonderful)

Well, we do not have offices in SF. Our offices are located in Austin, TX.

 

[Andrewicus]

Mr. Schaefer, can you say anything about Civ 4 on Steamplay? A lot of people bought the PC version when it was on sale last weekend and now they can't download the Mac version nor can they buy the Mac version. What is it Aspyr intended to do with Steamplay? Is it just if you purchase Civ 4 after Yesterday then you get to download both for free? Valve doesn't seem to be clarifying that point on their forums so I would appreciate some clarification.

Edit: Thanks for the response on the GameAgent blog, i'm going to post it here too:

Hello Commenters! We definitely appreciate the feedback.
I understand your disappointment and I just wanted to explain what exactly is going on here. Aspyr does not control the pricing and partnerships for the Civilization Mac titles digitally and therefore we have not been part of the arrangements 2K made with Steam in launching their Civilization Mac titles. 2K/Take Two is the publisher of the Civilization Mac titles digitally even through our own store, gameagent.com. This is a unique digital relationship for us and typically we DO make the decisions for digital partnerships. Aspyr is still available as the developer for your game support issues. When it comes to these outside relationships it is not our call.

We understand Steam is still working through some of their SteamPlay launch issues so what we can do is share your feedback as much as we can.

To help us in our communications with our licensing partners please let us know more! Seriously, we need this feedback and it is truly appreciated.

Do most of you own a Mac version already and simply wanted to “Try” the Mac version via Steam, or are most of you PC gamers?

That's from this blog post.

I really did not know that that was the case on the digital distribution rights, that's fascinating. Though I'm thinking that Aspyr being the dev for the Mac version on Steamplay can only mean good things for Aspyr doing Civ V....

 

[ancestral]

Andrewicus, login to Steam and check again. It should now be available

 

[AlanH]

@civ_king:

Without wanting to put words into Steven's mouth, we have already been told that Aspyr don't foresee another Civ4 patch. If you want one, you are going to have to give more information than the above to justify it.

I suggest you give some quantitative evidence that Steven Shaefer can take back to Aspyr, rather than ".. clearly wins", "duh!" and "something is clearly wrong". Steven will need numbers, and what areas if the game you perceive as slower. He'll need details of your system configs (not just RAM and CPU, but speeds, OS versions, graphics ...). He will also need some indication of the game sizes, speeds, whether you are running mods etc.

 

[Xyth]

can Aspyr please make a Intel Mac Patch to make the Mac version as good as the PC version (or close to), because currently it is inferior, my Pentium 4 (computer is from '05!) was better than my buddy's iMac

P4 vs C2D, C2D clearly wins
4 vs 8GB RAM, duh!
Windows XP vs. Snow Leopard, um...
something is clearly wrong

DirectX is a better 3D graphics system than OpenGL for games and thus any game converted from Windows to Mac will have worse performance. This is true even of games like World of Warcraft, made by companies that have in house Mac development. Pretty much unavoidable unless development of OpenGL catches up.

I imagine that for the most part increasing performance of Civ4 would require a near complete rewrite of the game to optimize it for Intel processors, multiple core processors, etc. Aspyr aren't even interested in patching small bugs/incompatibilites anymore, so we'll just have to suffer with our inferior product for now and hope that Firaxis and Aspyr (or preferably someone else) do a much better job on Civ5.

 

[civ_king]

I shall try to gather information, but a start
from benchmarks it appears Core 2 Solo at 1.8 is roughly as fast as a 3.6 Pentium
so Core 2 IPC is ~2x Pentium IPC (AMD IPC ~3)
Core 2 IPC would be 4 and Pentium IPC is 2,
Core 2 Duo @2.66 is (2.66x4x2=) 21.28
Pentium 4 @3.4 (mine) is (3.4x2x1=) 6.8

from that a Core 2 Duo should* be ~3 times a Pentium 4's speed on turn processing, but it isn't

The FSB in Pentium is also slower (some where between 1/2-1/3 of Core 2)

8GB of RAM drastically reduces the amount of paging (major slowing)

Windows XP vs Snow Leopard; I thought that Snow Leopard was much more adept in general,

I'll get Civ 4 BTS for Mac and compare it on my MacBook to my Pentium 4 (I would compare it against Windows on my Mac, but I somehow botched Bootcamp and can't install Windows)

EDIT: Hopefully it will be optimized through Grand Central allowing Mac Mini-Mac Pro core scaling, now they can optimize it for x86 processors as PowerPC is antiquated

 

[Xyth]

I shall try to gather information, but a start
from benchmarks it appears Core 2 Solo at 1.8 is roughly as fast as a 3.6 Pentium
so Core 2 IPC is ~2x Pentium IPC (AMD IPC ~3)
Core 2 IPC would be 4 and Pentium IPC is 2,
Core 2 Duo @2.66 is (2.66x4x2=) 21.28
Pentium 4 @3.4 (mine) is (3.4x2x1=) 6.8

from that a Core 2 Duo should* be ~3 times a Pentium 4's speed on turn processing, but it isn't

The FSB in Pentium is also slower (some where between 1/2-1/3 of Core 2)

8GB of RAM drastically reduces the amount of paging (major slowing)

Windows XP vs Snow Leopard; I thought that Snow Leopard was much more adept in general,

I'll get Civ 4 BTS for Mac and compare it on my MacBook to my Pentium 4 (I would compare it against Windows on my Mac, but I somehow botched Bootcamp and can't install Windows)

EDIT: Hopefully it will be optimized through Grand Central allowing Mac Mini-Mac Pro core scaling, now they can optimize it for x86 processors as PowerPC is antiquated

Civ4 doesn't support multiple core processors on either platform so more recent processors don't make as big a difference as they could. Graphics card and graphics framework are much bigger factors. As I said in my previous post, OpenGL is inferior to DirectX for games and that's something that Aspyr nor Firaxis can do anything about at this stage.

Using Grand Central would require a near complete rewrite of Civ4.

Civ4, even BTS, is based on an engine that is 5 years old now. A LOT has happened to the Mac since 2005 and we can't expect the same performance from games converted then than from ones converted more recently. But because Firaxis/Aspyr gave BTS to us 2 years late, with poor performance and still not complete compatibility - yet at full price - we do have a right to feel cheated.

 

[civ_king]

I know from experience that the XT800 won't help much. Macs run this game slow no matter what anyone says. I have given up on the Mac side and gone to PC. 20 bucks for all three titles. Can't beat that.

I run it on my wife's old Compaq with a 1ghz chip and older graphics card... it runs amazingly fast. I run it on my MacBook laptop using Bootcamp ... it doesn't even meet the minimum specs, and it still runs better on the PC side than the game ever ran on my G5 tower or my iMac 3.0 ghz.

this person seems to agree, note bolded

@OpenGL was even more inferior on release

@2006 we were on tiger right?

 

[AlanH]

Please read what has been said. Unless the problem is a very simple bug fix, it isn't going to happen.

We can all hope that our new friend at Aspyr will take away the feedback here and try to use it to improve the way they handle future products, but he has already stated that issues with existing products can only be fixed through the Aspyr Tech Support channel. If we subject him to high levels of noise that are outside his remit, we may lose his attention entirely.

 

[civ_king]

sorry

 

[AlanH]

No need for an apology. I just wanted to draw a line under this part of the discussion.

 

[Xyth]

Yeah regardless of what Aspyr could/should have done better, its been been people like Steven and Brad Oliver that have made the effort to make things better for us Mac civ fans. Often in their own time too. That Steven is even here on these forums is a positive sign for the future though so lets focus on that.

 

[Keinpferd]

If we subject him [Schaefer_Aspyr] to high levels of noise that are outside his remit, we may lose his attention entirely.

Moderator Action: Expletive deleted. Don't try to defeat the auto-censor
Please read the forum rules: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=422889

Sorry, but only for the language, Alan. We aren't begging for Schaefer_Aspyr's attention, we aren't testing a hobbyist modder's spare time output – but paying for a retail product with some severe manufacturing errors published by professionals. The ladder I thought. I don't understand why Aspyr isn't getting Xyth to a relaxed conversation having him tell them step by step what would be neccessary to do in order to raise some customer's attitudes from furious maybe back up to annoyed. Otherwise, I'm not getting out of this thread, what Aspyr was trying to achieve with sending Schaefer_Aspyr? PR? Really?

 

[Keinpferd]

Kill the tories.

 

[gfeier]

So what's new?

 

[civ_king]

A german magazine mentioned civ 5 is coming for mac and pc so maybe we. Will get. Near simultaneous. Release