Macintosh Tech Support/Game FAQ
- Thread starter Chieftess
- Start date
There are some very unpleasant Flash advertisements from time to time. A recent one played the cursed Crazy Frog ring tone at full volume regardless of how I set my sound controls. It only happened in Safari, Firefox seemed to be able to control it.Sophie 378 said:
As a result of that I invested in a license for Pith Helmet, the Safari ad blocker and now I have a plain grey rectangle where the ads usually display.
Sophie 378
Avvie by ybbor
And another seriously daft question! Is there a Mac equivalent of Paint - the thing where you draw individual pixels with a colour pallette, adn lines/circles/text/fill with colour etc as options? Sorry for this, but this thread is called Macintosh Tech Support! Do you work for a Genius Bar, AlanH? 
I want to play EPYC - see Perfection's thread at http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?p=2504007
I want to play EPYC - see Perfection's thread at http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?p=2504007
Sophie 378 said:
Depends what you've got already.
Appleworks is easy to use, rather in the mould of the old MacPaint and MacDraw products. It has Paint and Drawing document types depending on whether you want to build pictures with geometric objects, or just paint pixels and shapes.
Beyond that there are some more high-end options:
There's GraphicConverter - shareware, pretty good, but I use Photoshop Elements, which I paid for. It also comes free with a lot of scanners, so check if you already have it. It has a lot of capability for freehand and geometric drawing/painting as well as a wealth of features for modifying your photos. Bit of a learning curve bcause of its range of facilities.
Thers also Gimp, which is an Open Source Photoshop, and therefore FREE. Again, very comprehensive and a bit complex. Also looks rather Unix-y, as that's where it originated.
They couldn't afford meSorry for this, but this thread is called Macintosh Tech Support! Do you work for a Genius Bar, AlanH?
Sophie 378
Avvie by ybbor
Gah. Just been trying to upload a nice piccie as an avatar, it says it's not a valid image file. 
What ones are? I spent ages telling Preview to export the original down to where it was definitely <10kb. Sorry again, too sleepy now to try to find the answer in FAQs. 
Tx to all you nice people who've been helping the newbie!
What ones are? I spent ages telling Preview to export the original down to where it was definitely <10kb. Sorry again, too sleepy now to try to find the answer in FAQs. Tx to all you nice people who've been helping the newbie!Hi, I have an interesting problem. I have recently started downloading scenarios for Civ III vanilla that come with custom units. Whenever I install them (I back up my files, don't worry) one of two things happen:
1. The scenario successfully loads, but before I can play a turn civ III crashes.
2. The scenario successfully loads, but the modified units all have stock skins. Occasionally this situation will result in the game crashing.
I am running Civ III 1.29b on Mac OS X.3.9, 800 MHz Flat-screen iMac. Help is very much appreciated.
1. The scenario successfully loads, but before I can play a turn civ III crashes.
2. The scenario successfully loads, but the modified units all have stock skins. Occasionally this situation will result in the game crashing.
I am running Civ III 1.29b on Mac OS X.3.9, 800 MHz Flat-screen iMac. Help is very much appreciated.
Hi, welcome 
Which mods are you trying? I can test them here and see if it's a generic problem or specific to your system. Crashes can be caused by bad graphics files - I suspect the Mac version of Civ3 is less tolerant of .pcx files with errors than the PC. I don't know how the units could revert to standard graphics if you've overwritten them.
Which mods are you trying? I can test them here and see if it's a generic problem or specific to your system. Crashes can be caused by bad graphics files - I suspect the Mac version of Civ3 is less tolerant of .pcx files with errors than the PC. I don't know how the units could revert to standard graphics if you've overwritten them.
I have tried:
Grey Fox's WWII (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=18078)
Procifica's American Civil War (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=49742)
Grey Fox's WWII (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=18078)
Procifica's American Civil War (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=49742)
I'll try these out on the next day or so and let you know how I get on. I've downloaded and looked at Grey Fox's WWII mod, but haven't done any work with it yet.
How exactly did you deal with the Units folder in Grey Fox's mod? Did you replace your entire original Units folder with his, or did you add the contents of his Units folder to your own, replacing any duplicate items? There may be a difference, and I would recommend the second option, as I think that is what unzipping the file in Windows would do.
How exactly did you deal with the Units folder in Grey Fox's mod? Did you replace your entire original Units folder with his, or did you add the contents of his Units folder to your own, replacing any duplicate items? There may be a difference, and I would recommend the second option, as I think that is what unzipping the file in Windows would do.
I've checked out the Grey Fox WW2 scenario.
I added all the folders from the mod folder Units into /Art/Units, backing up and replacing ARMY, Scout, Settler, Worker, and I placed the scenario file in Scenarios. To prevent a crash on launch I had to modify the pediaicons.txt file to change TECH_Amphibious_Warfare to TECH_Amphibious_War, as indicated in the thread. I was then able to start a game and play a few turns. How far would I have to go into the game to determine whether it is OK?
I added all the folders from the mod folder Units into /Art/Units, backing up and replacing ARMY, Scout, Settler, Worker, and I placed the scenario file in Scenarios. To prevent a crash on launch I had to modify the pediaicons.txt file to change TECH_Amphibious_Warfare to TECH_Amphibious_War, as indicated in the thread. I was then able to start a game and play a few turns. How far would I have to go into the game to determine whether it is OK?
Brad Oliver
Civ3/4 Mac programmer
AlanH said:
The code to load PCX files is identical between the Mac and PC versions of Civ3 (there is no OS-dependent PCX loading code, it's all in the Civ3 code).
Interesting. I wonder if the OS itself is less tolerant of errors, then. For example, the early GOTM mods use a non-standard resources.pcx file, trying to stamp out the use of fog-busting resource graphics and also adding some extra resources. If one of these gotm files is loaded up in an unmodded vanilla then, it crashes CIv3 on a Mac but I *think* it just screws up the display on Windows, based on reports and screenshots in the forums. I also seem to recall, in my early days of playing Cv3, I tried some graphics mods that would not play on the Mac but were apparently OK on Windows.
Sophie 378
Avvie by ybbor
I've seen a few Civ3 screenshots with little letters next to resources, like C for coal and smilies for luxuries. Like this:
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads7/ct_landlocked_AI.jpg
Can I turn this on in Mac? If so, how? While I'm on the topic, does anyone know how to turn it on in Windows Civ3? I've got the 1.29b2 update from AlanH's sig (thanks!). And WTH are those green splodges that I'd only just noticed?
http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads7/ct_landlocked_AI.jpg
Can I turn this on in Mac? If so, how? While I'm on the topic, does anyone know how to turn it on in Windows Civ3? I've got the 1.29b2 update from AlanH's sig (thanks!). And WTH are those green splodges that I'd only just noticed?
The user has installed one of the many graphics mods available in teh Creation and Customisation (C&C) forum. You can get various sets of little "badges" like those to make it easier to identify strategic and luxury resources, and some come with little "blips" to see how much food or shield or gold bonus is provided by each one.
There are also some modified little faces for your city screens and F1 display that make it easier to distinguish and count happy, content and sad people. These let you spot cities about to riot, or see the happiness effect of adjusting the money sliders more clearly.
And you can also find complete terrain mods that change the appearance of your world. This user has installed one of these as well, so the forests are the big green splodges, the mountains are rocky outcrops, and the sea is darker than normal.
There are modified cultural borders, units, leader-heads, advisers, user interface dialogs, adviser screens, tech trees .... if you can see it on screen then it's probably been modifed by someone. Browse the C&C forum to see if you like any of them.
All of the mods contain modified versions of existing graphics files in your standard Civ3/Art/ folder. You can install them by moving the existing files or folders of the same name into a safe place, and replacing them with the mod files. The same procedure works for version 1.29f on Windows. I think the Windows expansion packs (PtW and Conquests) also allow you to put the mods into "scenario" folders to avoid having to back up your original ones.
There are also some modified little faces for your city screens and F1 display that make it easier to distinguish and count happy, content and sad people. These let you spot cities about to riot, or see the happiness effect of adjusting the money sliders more clearly.
And you can also find complete terrain mods that change the appearance of your world. This user has installed one of these as well, so the forests are the big green splodges, the mountains are rocky outcrops, and the sea is darker than normal.
There are modified cultural borders, units, leader-heads, advisers, user interface dialogs, adviser screens, tech trees .... if you can see it on screen then it's probably been modifed by someone. Browse the C&C forum to see if you like any of them.
All of the mods contain modified versions of existing graphics files in your standard Civ3/Art/ folder. You can install them by moving the existing files or folders of the same name into a safe place, and replacing them with the mod files. The same procedure works for version 1.29f on Windows. I think the Windows expansion packs (PtW and Conquests) also allow you to put the mods into "scenario" folders to avoid having to back up your original ones.
ejday
King
It occurs to me that next month, we'll be in the unique postion of having to specify whether we're referencing issues of the MacSoft (Westlake) version or the Aspyr version. Sorry, it won't be much help to say the "Brad Oliver" version...
Blue Monkey
Archon Without Portfolio
AlanH said:
Sounds like we may need updated versions of your Mod Installers somewhere further down the road. (As if we aren't all in your debt enough already)
GOTM doesn't need a mod installer for PtW or C3C, as these versions of the games play on the standard product. I doubt if I'll ever get around to producing the PtW installers for Cracker's old mods (GOTM 18-34?) unless someone really twists my arm hard. The drag and drop installer just needs a tweak to its plist file to support installation of mods into PtW or C3C, so that'll be OK, although the installation of mods into the scenarios folders of these versions is trivial.Blue Monkey said:
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