More on Civ4's problems

B

Brad Oliver

Civ3/4 Mac programmer
Joined
Jan 9, 2002
Messages
843
Location
Glendale, AZ
OK, I've missed the forums for a few days, so I have some catching up to do with reading on the old posts, but I do have some news to share about Civ4 that is hopefully useful to you all.

1. Kernel panics

Looks like these will happen with *any* version of 10.4.7, and mainly on Intel Macs with ATI cards (iMacs and MacBook Pros). This is actually a driver regression and happens with some other apps (World of Warcraft is also affected) and we're working with Apple on a solution. In the meantime, as some of you have discovered, there are two categories of solutions. One is to downgrade to 10.4.6. The other is to turn off multisampling or run Civ4 in a window.

2. Bad performance

We've isolated a major performance problem that affects some, but not all, Macs. If you are seeing very high CPU usage on dual-CPU Macs (like 180%) or it's super-choppy on single-CPU Macs, then you are encountering this specific bug. We've got a fix in testing for this now.

3. Sound problems

We've been able to reproduce these here with great consistency. As some of you may have noticed, downgrading to a different version of OSX is not necessarily a solution for this, so we don't have a short-term fix. However, our sound programmer has been working on a fix for this one.

I'm really sorry about all this. It's been an unusually rough launch for us, but we hope to have a patch out very soon that addresses 2 of these 3 issues (the kernel panics being the exception).
 
Brad,
Regarding Problem 2; do you still think the "performance problem" on single-core units is related to audio changes by Apple, and if so is that going to be addressed by your sound engineer as well in the patch?
 
JotaDe said:
Brad,
Regarding Problem 2; do you still think the "performance problem" on single-core units is related to audio changes by Apple, and if so is that going to be addressed by your sound engineer as well in the patch?
Click to expand...

No, at least not that we've seen. In a few other apps, it's definitely the case that OpenAL and 10.4.7 caused massive performance problems, but when we dug deeper, the problem for Civ4 turned out to be elsewhere, at least in the cases we've seen to date.
 
If you can fix 2 and 3 soon, then the game will be much, much more playable.

I'm no programmer, but can you explain at all how the sound could be so messed up? I mean... seems like a simple IF THEN type command... IF this happens, then play this .wav. I know it's more complicated than that... but I am very curious.
 
Zaimejs said:
I'm no programmer, but can you explain at all how the sound could be so messed up? I mean... seems like a simple IF THEN type command... IF this happens, then play this .wav. I know it's more complicated than that... but I am very curious.
Click to expand...

With the caveat that I have not worked on the sound code in Civ4, my understanding is that there are a few issues. One is that OpenAL/CoreAudio are problematic on anything less than 10.4.7, so sometimes sound triggers are not firing. The second is that the game is apparently running out of sound buffers extremely quickly and thus thinks there are no more slots in which to play new sounds. I'm paraphrasing, but this is what I've heard from the sound programmer. I'll be personally taking a look into it later this afternoon as well.
 
Gatekeeper said:
Hmm. Will Apple have to release 10.4.7b (current version is 10.4.7a) in order to fix the kernel panic issue?
Click to expand...

I did hear that a future software update would be the solution. Whether that is 10.4.8 or some intermediate update, I do not know. When I do, I'll post here if I can.
 
Well, I prefer to play in the windows mode anyway, since I multi-task when I'm on the computer, so it likely won't be a terribly big issue for me. Still, kernel panics are scary (no pun intended) things, IMO. Speaking, of course, as a person who's going to have his first OS X experience w/i the next few days.

Gatekeeper

P.S. It's good to see you pop up in the forums, Brad. Your presence, along with others from Aspyr, is a good way to keep the public informed of progress in developing a patch for Civ IV.
 
Thanks Brad, looks like my 2 PPC machines may get a boost sometime soon! Any idea why it is crashing? Yes, I know I am under spec, but it seems to be happening to many others above minimum spec.

So far I am thrilled with the game (choppy as it is on my below spec machine). Boost performance and get more of the sounds working and most of the complaints will go away.

Any chance we can get a "snap to" rather than scroll to camera move option? It would make the game seem so much faster.

And a super duper low low low rendering path (crayons? braille?) for us low/min spec folks. Now I am dreaming!
 
enkiduMT said:
Thanks Brad, looks like my 2 PPC machines may get a boost sometime soon! Any idea why it is crashing?
Click to expand...

When you say crashing, are you referring to the kernel panics on Intel or something else? I haven't seen much in the way of actual crash reports, just the kernel panics. Of course, they may be getting lost in the noise of the larger issues.

And a super duper low low low rendering path (crayons? braille?) for us low/min spec folks. Now I am dreaming!
Click to expand...

Let's see what the patch brings. It is my expectation that it will address most of the reported performance issues on PPC Macs.
 
Brad Oliver said:
When you say crashing, are you referring to the kernel panics on Intel or something else? I haven't seen much in the way of actual crash reports, just the kernel panics. Of course, they may be getting lost in the noise of the larger issues.
Click to expand...
I sent at least one Crash Report (i.e. not Kernel Panic) off to Aspyr Support. There are at least two in my log files. The response I got mumbled something like "We know about this" and "hooks left by drivers".

I've had both ordinary crashes and kernel panics. Even had a kernel panic last night playing in windowed mode with no scouts to be seen.
 
Just wanted to throw my configuration into the mix, since I haven't had too many problems except the sound issue and some choppy graphics.

My Machine: Mirror Drive Door Dual 1.25 Ghz G4, 2GB Ram, ATI Radeon 9600 Pro (256MB VRAM), 10.4.6

It's funny but I got the graphics card so Warcraft would look better, but then dropped that game as soon as Civ IV came out ;) . Anyway, the things that I have noticed are:

1. The choppy sound issue. Seems to be pretty consistent with any setup I use.
2. Graphic issues - Mainly, when my units fight other units, there's no animation. There's a little bit, but seems to be random. Then, when my turn is over and the other civs move, the movement is choppy. The only other things is at one point playing far into a game, all my units turned into black silhouettes. When I loaded that same game back up later the units were normal, but it was pretty strange.

As far as overall gameplay, it's not too bad. I've been pretty happy with the performance on my machine. I'd also like to thank Brad for having a presence in the forums and helping us out. I remember back to when I was playing Civ III and Brad was always in here, helping us out.

So, thanks in advance as usual Brad for all the help you provide.
 
Skippy_Kangaroo said:
I've had both ordinary crashes and kernel panics. Even had a kernel panic last night playing in windowed mode with no scouts to be seen.
Click to expand...

Yeah, it's not limited to scouts. Do you have multisampling turned off? Having it on definitely exacerbates the problem.
 
Brad Oliver said:
Yeah, it's not limited to scouts. Do you have multisampling turned off? Having it on definitely exacerbates the problem.
Click to expand...
No - it was set at 2x when that happened. I'll probably turn it right off now. (To be honest I haven't been aware of much difference in how it all looks with multisampling - but, hey, everyone uses premium petrol if they can get it don't they?)
 
Glad to hear the multisampling and sound issues are being taken care of. With my intel dual core imac, other than those issues, i am having a great time. well, ok, at later game stages on large maps, even a latest-greatest system from apple with 1.5 GB of RAM can see some graphics-related slowdowns. but it is still playable, though the sound fixes would be great to have.

having a developer from the project at this forum is also a very good thing.
 
Brad, to echo the other comments: thank you so very much for keeping us informed!!!:goodjob: It makes all of this so much easier to handle. Having said that, you might want to throw a ball of paper at whomever is responsible for the Support section of the Aspyr site. Based on the deafening silence, one would assume that either there are no issues or that Aspyr is turning a deaf ear to complaints. Neither of course is true.

I look forward to the patch. Thanks.

BTW: I'm on an iMac G5 1.8 GHz/512/GeForce 5200 64MB/OS 10.3.9
Major issues: no sound, choppy/slow graphics and turns, painfully slow panning from unit to unit during moves (I second the "snap to unit" suggestion from enkiduMT). However no crashes or panics.

Is there any other info that we could provide that would be helpful?
 
FOTBarMitzvah said:
Brad, to echo the other comments: thank you so very much for keeping us informed!!!:goodjob: It makes all of this so much easier to handle. Having said that, you might want to throw a ball of paper at whomever is responsible for the Support section of the Aspyr site. Based on the deafening silence, one would assume that either there are no issues or that Aspyr is turning a deaf ear to complaints. Neither of course is true.
Click to expand...

We've been in talks about putting something on the support section. The problem is that we're just now getting correct info. That is, before we thought 10.4.6 was a good cure, but it turns out it wasn't the entire solution. Then we thought the 10.4.7 "a" update would eliminate the kernel panics, but that ended up not being totally accurate (it helps a bit, but they still happen). I believe shortly we'll have some info on the support site for Civ4.
 
Hi, thought I'd post what I'm seeing.

In addition to sound problems (mostly no unit sounds... background sounds are intermittent, city sounds work when close), I'm also having mouse issues. Mainly, the scroll will stop working. Additionally, and more importantly, at the same time, the rollover popups stop working. Fairly important when I'm trying to figure out what to build. btw, I'm using a logitech laser desktop s530, current drivers, at least as of 2 weeks ago.

Also, when I zoom out to globe view, instead of geography (for the explored area) I'm seeing a low res picture of a leader, usually Caesar. Is that normal??

And occasionally, after a certain amount of play, my units become dark shaded. Not a gameplay problem, more of a graphics problem.

And finally, general stability seems ok, doesn't seem that slow. Then again it shouldn't be, since I have a fast mac. 17" 2.16 mbp. I've tried with options generally set to the default, which is low. Which begs the question, if a $2800 computer can only run this game at low settings, WTH kind of computer is needed to run it at high???
 
cheesewhiz said:
Additionally, and more importantly, at the same time, the rollover popups stop working...

Which begs the question, if a $2800 computer can only run this game at low settings, WTH kind of computer is needed to run it at high???
Click to expand...
I have noticed something like what you mention. The popup in the lower left will get stuck on some unit other than the one that is currently highlighted. Furthermore, the game behaves like your unit is the one described in the popup. For example, the popup will imply a worker unit but will have a military unit selected; it won't allow me to attack with the military unit until I click on it again or otherwise unstick the game. This seems to be a problem with the automatic rolling to the next unit that the game does. (I've also seen some incredible time to build estimates in these broken popups.)

I have a 15" MBP and have experimented with the settings, you should be able to play the game with everything at max except antialiasing multisamples with no problems. The only reason not to use the AAMS is kernel panics; that should eventually be fixed by a software update. Alternatively use a window to minimise kernel panics.
 
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