New Editor: Adding New Civs?

[smithsonian]

Okay, this is what PC users used to have to do to add totally new civs to the game prior to their new and spiffy editor:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=21622

I haven't upgraded to OSX yet, but I'm strongly considering it now. However, if I can't add new civs, there's very little incentive for me to do so on account of this new editor. Has anyone tried to follow these instructions to add new civs to the Mac game with our editor?

Brian

 

[DiamondzAndGunz]

Sorry, no. We won't be able to add civs unless brad "hacks" our civ 3 editor, or until we get the 1.29 patch and 1.29 editor.

We can't really add anything new; no new units, no resources, civs, etc. Yeah, it sucks. But at least we have an editor now...

 

[jbouklas]

This is humorous. We wait for so many months, and when we finally do get an editor, it isn't nearly up to par with the PC version. On another thread, Brad gave the impression that an update to version 1.29 for both the game and the editor is "unlikely," which means we don't get it at all or we'll have to wait for PTW, if and when it comes out. It's very annoying. People blame Apple for programs coming out late, slow to update, etc, when it's not Apple's fault at all. It's the fault of the developers.

-Jim

 

[DiamondzAndGunz]

Originally posted by jbouklas
It's very annoying. People blame Apple for programs coming out late, slow to update, etc, when it's not Apple's fault at all. It's the fault of the developers.

Well, watcha gonna do? Some companies just do that. Others actually keep promises, and release stuff simultaneously for mac and pc. Hopefully, we may some day get more companies to follow the example of these select few.

 

[smithsonian]

The link I posted is a tutorial for adding new civs with the 1.21 editor. Why won't it work?

Brian

 

[DiamondzAndGunz]

Originally posted by smithsonian
The link I posted is a tutorial for adding new civs with the 1.21 editor. Why won't it work?

Brian

It's a tutorial for adding new civs with the hacked 1.21 editor. There were some hidden buttons in the 1.21 editor, and someone hacked it to show those buttons. Those buttons where the Add/Remove buttons. Without a "hacked" editor that has those buttons, we can't add stuff.

 

[Mavfin]

Well, jbouklas, there's only one Blizzard. Are there any other companies out there that routinely release games on dual-format CDs? They do the betas PC-only, but, you know, I was able to use a PC from my work to play the D2X and WC3 betas, and will find one for the WC3 expansion beta. But when the WC3 expansion comes out, it will be dual-platform, I'm sure.

What I don't quite understand is this: Companies don't want to make Mac versions because they don't make as much money at it, they say. Yet, Blizzard, who could forget the Mac users and STILL make tons of money, is one of the best at doing them. They even *went back* and did Carbon versions of Starcraft and Diablo 2/2X a long time after release. Maybe those were testbeds for War3, but, for whatever reason, they work great. I'm very loyal to Blizzard, as long as the game looks interesting. I've bought the last three games the day they were released, and have all the others. World of Warcraft, I won't get into, as I don't have the time for an MMORPG, but I bet it's made for Macs, too, when the time comes.

The point is, It must not be all THAT hard or expensive to port these games, but these companies act like it's all money down the drain to get the ports done. Grr. This means that I buy one or two games a year, usually, and spend a lot of time playing them. So, Civ3 is still fun, but it's irritating to be left so far behind the rest of the gaming world in this. Especially since the OTHER game I bought last year is very much on the same page as its PC version AND can play multiplayer with its PC version....



(Of course, if I'm not mistaken, Blizzard is owned by Vivendi, who also, IIRC, owns some *educational* game companies who release dual-version stuff all the time. Maybe they just leveraged some of the Mac expertise from there....)

 

[BuddhaBubba]

well, yeah, we can't make any units with the editor but at least we can creat maps and scenario's now, right?

 

[sirromdivad]

While I share the frustration about the lack of patch/editor parity, I think it should be mentioned that we've all known for months now that our editor, when finally released, would be the 1.21 editor and therefore not able to create new units, place cities, etc etc all that stuff the current PC editor does.

I'm not saying that this is right or makes it any less frustrating, but it's not like "They" pulled a fast one on us. It was always very clear what we would be getting.

And here's hoping that the situation changes for the better.

--sirromdivad

 

[Brad Oliver]

Originally posted by Mavfin
The point is, It must not be all THAT hard or expensive to port these games, but these companies act like it's all money down the drain to get the ports done.

The difference is that with Blizzard, it doesn't matter how much it costs to develop the Mac version, within reason. The money they make off the PC version more than compensates for any deficit they'd see from Mac development. It's also worth pointing out that with Blizzard, the money all goes to the same place: they have the same publisher on the Mac and PC side, and the development money is also shared. This is very rarely the case with the typical Mac port done by Aspyr, MacSoft or MacPlay.

 

[jbouklas]

If they're losing so much money, why don't they just leave the business? I dare one of these companies to put its money where its mouth is. Either another company wil handle it, or it will give me an excuse to run a PC next to my Mac for gaming. As it stands right now, I am annoyed. OK, you're losing money. So, do something about it. Market more aggressively, work more closely with Apple to get more advertising, or give up. But don't stagnate. Don't deliver only half-done software and then provide lackluster support. That's no way to run a respectable business, profits or no profits. I can't see how much work it is to port a game like Civ3 to the Mac. The programmers at Ambrosia Software published a great game called Escape Velocity years ago. Now, they're on EV: Nova, and it sells like hotcakes. They want a Windows version. They started from scratch in July and their very close to making it Golden Master. It took a long time. But, they made a Mac-only game with no intention, at the time, to port it to Windows. If a company develops a PC game with the intention of a Mac port in the back of its mind, that time span should be cut significantly. The point is: they put the time and effort into this program, and it looks like it will be a first-class game, up to par with their Mac version, and completely compatible with all 3rd party modifications, maps, etc. It has taken them almost 8 months, but it looks fantastic. I could be wrong about this, but I think we've waited a similar time for the Mac port of Civ3, only we get late updates, mediocre scenario editors, and no commitment at all to even another update, bringing us on par with version 1.29 on the PC. Moral of the story: Ambrosia makes money, where, as it has been said again and again, MacSoft doesn't.

-Jim

 

[Brad Oliver]

Originally posted by jbouklas
If they're losing so much money, why don't they just leave the business?

Who said they were losing money?

Spending the money to port the game is, in itself, typically profitable as that amounts to anywhere from 3-12 billed man months of time. The editors typically add anywhere from 3 (in the case of Civ3) to 12 (in the case of Neverwinter Nights) of man-months to the Mac port. Games that bill out at 12 months are typically only given the green light if they are guaranteed to sell a bajillion copies. If you do the math, you can clearly see that it becomes prohibitively expensive to port the editors in addition to the games in most cases. It's not a matter of lazy or apathetic Mac publishers, incompetent developers or any of a number of other conspiracy theories. It's simply a matter of numbers.

You mention EV:Nova but you ignore a critical aspect. It was developed on the Mac as a Mac-first title. Typically when you do this, you as a programmer have to create editing tools to create the content for your game anyway. This is why a number of PC-first games have editors to begin with, and why creating an editor for a Mac-only game like that is, by comparison to porting an existing PC editor, fairly straightforward as well.

So it's not a matter of "leaving the business" so much as it is picking your battles. Put simply: the Mac game market isn't large enough to finance 12-24 months of work on a game exclusively. If someone can find a way to make that work without having to rely on subsidies from PC sales (as Blizzard does), then they would quickly dominate Mac game development. That this hasn't happened in the many, many years of Mac games development should tell you something. That most of the work on Mac Civ3 after its release was done gratis should be another clue.

If I had the spare time available to me, I'd continue to work on the editor and the 1.29f patch for free. I'm a Mac user just like you, and it annoys me just as much to see this happen to Civ3 as you guys, believe it or not. Heck, if it weren't for the editor, I'd have done the 1.29f patch a long time ago.

 

[Txurce]

Brad Oliver:

Heck, if it weren't for the editor, I'd have done the 1.29f patch a long time ago.

Don't remind me!

 

[jbouklas]

I know companies find it prohibitively expensive to keep Mac versions up-to-date when they first release a PC version. Ambrosia, with their Pillars of Garendall seemed to have kept both the Mac and PC version up to date on a relatively close timetable. It is a matter of profits. But don't tell that to the consumer! Consumers expect to be treated well for their money, and to say that it is prohibitively expensive to keep this product up to date is of little concern. It boils down to: I paid the same $40 as a PC user, only I have to wait many months to get updates, after the PC user gets their updates. It's frustrating. From what I can see, Brad Oliver has been doing a great job, and I am not criticizing him. I am trying to give MacSoft (or whoever now owns it) some feedback.

-Jim

 

[Brad Oliver]

Originally posted by jbouklas
It is a matter of profits. But don't tell that to the consumer! Consumers expect to be treated well for their money, and to say that it is prohibitively expensive to keep this product up to date is of little concern. It boils down to: I paid the same $40 as a PC user, only I have to wait many months to get updates, after the PC user gets their updates. It's frustrating.

Absolutely, and I agree 100%. I was mainly trying to explain the "why" of the situation. I agree that in a perfect world, this should all be invisible to the person who plunks down the money to buy a copy of the game.