dojoboy
Tsalagi
Brad Oliver said:...., and I'm anxious to work on anything but Civ4 for a while.
SMAC/x!
Woo-hoo!
Insane Civ IV System Requirements announced
- Thread starter Cougarcat
- Start date
SMAC/x!
Woo-hoo!
Brad Oliver
Civ3/4 Mac programmer
Cougarcat said:
I think you'll be mostly OK but yeah, the endgame will be a little pokey.
yellow_roast
Chieftain
- Joined
- Jun 6, 2006
- Messages
- 2
Thanks for your reply Brad.
As someone who played Civ3 extensively before knowing about the patch that was available, ive lived with pokey end games before...
As someone who played Civ3 extensively before knowing about the patch that was available, ive lived with pokey end games before...
I can live with a little pokiness, too. After all, I played Deus Ex on a 350 mhz iMac.
By the way, Civ IV has officially reached beta.
By the way, Civ IV has officially reached beta.
scottellsworth
Chieftain
- Joined
- Jun 8, 2006
- Messages
- 4
Brad Oliver said:Burnout is always a problem after a project ends, and I'm anxious to work on anything but Civ4 for a while.
I do hope that you get a few cycles for the Civ3E patch after you return. Civ 4 looks like fun, and I am definitely going to buy it, but as you said above, Civ 3 is far more parsimonious about system resources. I can run it in a window on my MBP, and still do other things.
Appreciate the hard work - it is not easy getting through that last month or two before shipment. Do take a good rest after - burnout really sucks.
(On a slightly related topic, I own Parallels Workstation, and could install Boot Camp, but I am unlikely to. I multitask too much to reboot for a game. For that matter, only a few games on the PC side have made me even consider installing a windows version. Thus, at least from the perspective of this gamer, I will still be buying any turn based strategy game, and virtually any sim/economic 4x game that comes out for the Mac.)
Scott
Brad Oliver
Civ3/4 Mac programmer
Cougarcat said:
And as a way of further muddying the waters with our (Aspyr's) terminology, when we say it hits "beta", it is what most people would call "final candidate."
It's more analogous to something like an "internal final candidate", where we do one last QA pass here at Aspyr. When we send it to Take2/Firaxis, we call it "final candidate" for real. From a pragmatic standpoint, it's equivalent to an "external final candidate" since it's mostly out of our hands at that point.
Hope you are all confused now.
Earthling7
Chieftain
- Joined
- Nov 30, 2005
- Messages
- 16
Thanks Brad. Woud have been confused, but am not. What really strikes me is that one person does the porting. It must be a monumental task.
It is a shame that the game is such a resource hog, but that is out of your hands. As I said earlier, I think Sid lost the plot on this one. The graphics better be worth it, gameplay wise. Now it's just a matter of waiting to see what others with measly, little 12" Powerbooks (Feb. 2005 rev.) have to say about the performance before I fork out for the game. If it's a dog on the PB, then I second the poster above that suggested porting SMAC/X!
It is a shame that the game is such a resource hog, but that is out of your hands. As I said earlier, I think Sid lost the plot on this one. The graphics better be worth it, gameplay wise. Now it's just a matter of waiting to see what others with measly, little 12" Powerbooks (Feb. 2005 rev.) have to say about the performance before I fork out for the game. If it's a dog on the PB, then I second the poster above that suggested porting SMAC/X!
Brad Oliver
Civ3/4 Mac programmer
Earthling7 said:
Civ3 Complete was a one-man job. Civ4 had three of us on it. It was still a beast.
Earthling7
Chieftain
- Joined
- Nov 30, 2005
- Messages
- 16
Still impressive! Not wanting to bore you with drivel, but I'm curious. Were you able (or allowed even) to use the existing Civ3 Vanilla to speed up the Civ3 Complete port?
Brad Oliver
Civ3/4 Mac programmer
Earthling7 said:
Yes and no. Some of the fixes we originally did for Civ3 vanilla were sent back to Firaxis when I was still at Westlake, and so they appeared like magic when we got the C3C code. That was surreal. But beyond that, it was basically a re-port from scratch.
waltham845
lurked in the forum
I don't know if your reading, but thanks for Civ4 Brad
I am still playing the old Civ3 vanilla, plus two other games of C3C and was wondering since you whipped up C3C so fast, if you didn't get the old vanilla code to help out.
When I get Civ4 I might try out the blue marble mod, my hands are just itching to play it. Thanks Alan for being patient with me as well. Civ on..
I am still playing the old Civ3 vanilla, plus two other games of C3C and was wondering since you whipped up C3C so fast, if you didn't get the old vanilla code to help out.
When I get Civ4 I might try out the blue marble mod, my hands are just itching to play it. Thanks Alan for being patient with me as well. Civ on..
ejday
King
This is the best news I've heard all day. I don't mind "pokey" just as long as it runs!Brad Oliver said:
ejday said:This is the best news I've heard all day. I don't mind "pokey" just as long as it runs!
Indeed. The second-best news I've heard is the existance of the blue marble mod.(Thanks, waltham845!) After looking at those screens I can't understand why Firaxis went for a more cartoonish look.
ejday
King
Just looked. That is pretty cool. But it says "program" (and I assume it's written in Perl)... will it be loadable on Macs? I have no idea how the textures work for CIV, it doesn't seem as simple as replacing a little artwork.Cougarcat said:
I don't think there's any perl in Civ4, code is all C++, Python and XML as far as I know. Textures are stored in .dds files, short for DirectDrawSurface, a DirectX format, and there's an .XML file called CIV4TerrainInfos.xml that tells the game how to use them.
CivBlueMarble.zip expands to a Windows installer .exe. Stuffit doesn't open it - in fact on my system it crashes when it tries. I've tried running the installer in my old PC, but it wants a valid copy of Civ4 to install into. I don't have one, and that seems to be a fatal error in the installer, so I can't see what it contains. However, I would guess it's just .dds and .xml files like the other other terrain mods that are available in the Civ4 C&C forum.
CivBlueMarble.zip expands to a Windows installer .exe. Stuffit doesn't open it - in fact on my system it crashes when it tries. I've tried running the installer in my old PC, but it wants a valid copy of Civ4 to install into. I don't have one, and that seems to be a fatal error in the installer, so I can't see what it contains. However, I would guess it's just .dds and .xml files like the other other terrain mods that are available in the Civ4 C&C forum.
ejday
King
The only thing that made me wonder was the Blue Marble mod page that Cougarcat pointed out (scroll down they mention it). Though that might just be the "graphics scaling tool" they talk about.AlanH said:
One might assume (...) that if it's just .dds files that we should be able to throw it in a folder somewhere and it'll work (though, obviously, not be scalable with the little custom program). Have to pick at that, see if we can figure it out once CIV is in our Macs.AlanH said:
Just to test it, I downloaded it to see if I'd get similar results. Unfortunately, I got the "does not appear to compressed or encoded..." error message.
Just for giggles, I sent an email to Kai, the genius behind this mod:
If I get any response, I'll share it here.ejday said:
waltham845
lurked in the forum
edjay, thanks.
When i mentioned the mod i hadn't gone any further than the download. I was able to expand it to the .exe stage. I was using Q to throw it into Win95, just to see what was inside .exe. That didn't work tho. I was wondering if you or Alan or someone else would be looking into it. which they are so all is good.
When i mentioned the mod i hadn't gone any further than the download. I was able to expand it to the .exe stage. I was using Q to throw it into Win95, just to see what was inside .exe. That didn't work tho. I was wondering if you or Alan or someone else would be looking into it. which they are so all is good.
Please do. Note that .dds files open in GraphicConverter. This may be enough to allow us to scale them if needed. If not, we may be able to blag a copy of the scaling tool sources and recompile a Mac executable. We have the technology. There are also files with .nif extensions in some mods I've looked at. Dunno what they are, and although GraphicConverter thinks it can open them, it fails.ejday said:
Nif files are Gamebryo files.. guessing it might be possible to compile the open source NIFTools to mac : http://niftools.sourceforge.net/
godonlyknows
Chieftain
I think I'm going to buy Civ4 for my powerbook g4 1.67Ghz with 1GB of memory.
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