Report: Civ3 + VPC 7 on G5

[prof_hoop]

After setting up Virtual PC 7 for work purposes on my Mac (a dual 1.8 G5 w/ 1 GB RAM), I thought I'd give Civ3 a try.

The good news: CivEdit 1.29f installed easily on the virtual PC and allowed me to palce units and cities on an edited map. I then dragged the file over to my Mac Civ3 file and opened up and played the scenario just fine. (Of course, the PC in my closet will do the same thing, but hauling it out would ruin the minimalist aesthetic of my desk).

The bad news: Civ3 and PTW installed just fine but wouldn't run. The splash screen comes up, and then nothing. Perhaps there's a problem with the way the virtual machine reads the CD, or maybe its a deeper issue. Who knows?

Overall, VPC7 is pretty (dare I say) snappy, at least compared to VPC6 on my old iMac G4. CivEdit runs great, but I suspect Civ3 itself would bog down (if it's possible to get it running).

 

[prof_hoop]

Okay, so I rebooted the virtual PC and now Civ3 starts up just fine, so that's all that it was.

World creation and all non-graphic processing run at acceptable speeds, but ALL animation is (not surprisingly) really, really slow. WAY slow.

But like I said, this is no surprise. But now we can stop wondering.

 

[iamliberal]

Hi prof_hoop, thanks for the post, I've been anxious to hear of someone trying civ3 on vpc7. In your first post, I gather that Civ3 ptw did not run, but the editor does. But in your second post, did you mean that ptw did run afterall but just the animation is very slow? I believe there is a way to turn the animation off right?

I plan to purchase VPC7 when the XP home edition is out (nov 26 according to amazon.com) for a diabetes software program I need to run. I have a single processor 1.8 G5.

 

[prof_hoop]

Yeah, I immediately turned off all animation, but workers are still animated, and their animation plays at about 1/8 of the usual speed, which bogged down even the opening turns. It was way too slow for me.

For now, VPC is a great way run CivEdit 1.29f on a Mac (or any small, side program that you have to use but which doesn't come in a Mac version). But it's not a replacement for a gaming PC.

 

[renichms]

On my Mac, VPC will not run Civ3 with XP. Trying to find ways around it now.

RN