Running Windows versions of Civ4 on a Mac

[AlanH]

[ :cough: I'll pretend I didn't read that you are planning to break the license on OS X and run it on non-Apple branded hardware. - I'm not sure you even needed to mention it ! ].

Crossover *is* Wine, packaged to run on OS X. I haven't been able to persuade it to run Civ4 ... or, indeed, any other Windows-only software I want to run. I haven't tried incoldblood's installation method, but since the problem for me is that Crossover will not cope with the DVD-based copy protection, I doubt if that's a solution for me.

I wanted to try the Steam option so that I could give first hand advice here, but I refuse to pay Steam for a *third* copy of Civ4 and friends. So I signed up with Steam via Crossover, and tried the BtS demo. I couldn't get it to run, so my Crossover experiences so far are a total failure. Maybe it's just me

I can run Civ4 and all its variants, including Colonization, in Parallels and Windows XP. It allows me to run in an XP window, moveable to either of my screens (even that is more than the Mac version can do); and its performance is more than adequate for my needs on my 1st generation 2.66 GHz/4 GBytes/Geforce 8800GT quad-core Mac Pro.

 

[z0wb13]

:cough: I'll pretend I didn't read that you are planning to break the license on OS X and run it on non-Apple branded hardware. - I'm not sure you even needed to mention it !

i didn't know that, that they could tell me how to use something that i own, but oh well, i guess i'll just run with ubuntu. i wouldn't dream of violating the terms of usage willfully, so thanks for pointing that out i still use my sawtooth running tiger for around 90% of the things i do, but it shows its age when playing newer games. still play fallout2 every once in a while and civ3. i call it the longtooth.

i digress. does Wine work, then, under ubuntu? it says that it does with a few glitches wrt anti-aliasing. can anyone attest to this? and, just to be clear, parallels is an emulator for osx, and is different from bootcamp?

 

[AlanH]

You don't "own" Mac OS X, you own a license to use it under the Apple Ts & Cs. The publisher (Apple in this case) retains ownership. That's true of all software products, and you are required to read and agree to the End User License Agreements that come with them before using them.

Parallels is a virtualisation application for Mac OS X that allows you to run any other OS in a virtual machine on an Intel-based Mac. I use it to run Windows XP and Centos 4 (Linux). Virtualisation is not the same as emulation, as there is no translation of software byte codes from one CPU to another. The code can run at near-native speed on your hardware.

With Parallels you can run the "guest" OS's at the same time as Mac OS X, so I can have Windows XP and/or Linux screens running within normal windows on my Mac. It also offers a "Coherence" mode where the Windows windows float separately among the Mac OS windows giving a high degree of integration of the two environments.

Bootcamp is just a set of drivers and a configuration utility provided by Apple that allows you to install Windows as a dual boot option on Intel-based Mac hardware. With Bootcamp you can only run one OS at a time.

I also have a G4 Sawtooth. It's upgraded to 1 GHz/1.2 GBytes and a Geforce 4MX GPU. It runs Civ4 for Mac if you don't mind waiting . You can't run Parallels or Bootcamp on that, of course, as it has a PowerPC CPU. There used to be a Microsoft VirtualPC product that would allow Windows to run on PPC machines. That was an emulator. It was never very fast, and would certainly not cope with Civ4.

 

[Blondel58]

The Saving Issue is still a bit strange:

- I select "Save Game" from the menu.
- The Save Dialog appears, with the complete correct path in the line on the top, and the correct name in the bottom line.
- I click on "Save"
- I get an error message (in German, since I'm from Austria - I try to translate): "A file with this name doesn't exist"
- I click "OK" -> the Save Dialog quits without saving

I am able to save only if I click the correct path through the whole directory tree - a bit boring

 

[AlanH]

Are you sure that the path that appears at the top exactly matches your real directory structure, complete with any German translations of the folder names? What are the actual paths, and what is the original error message in German?

On my system the actual directory path to the BtS Single saves folder is:

C:\Documents and Settings\Alan\My Documents\My Games\Beyond the Sword\Saves\single

When I select Save in BtS the Folder filed shows:

My Games\Beyond the Sword\Saves\single

 

[Blondel58]

The line shows the last used path. I did now edit the path like yours, and I got the error message again:

The file doesn't exist.
Please enter a valid name

Then I clicked OK, and the dialog was gone. It seems I have to click to the whole path every time

 

[AlanH]

Did you check the following?

Are you sure that the path that appears at the top exactly matches your real directory structure, complete with any German translations of the folder names?

What are the answers to ...

What are the actual paths, and what is the original error message in German?

 

[Blondel58]

Sorry for taking a long time for answering - I tried to make a screenshot, but I don't know how to manage that from inside CIV in Parallels.

Now,

The shown path (which is the correct one) is:

Z:\Documents\My Games\Beyond the Sword\Saves\single

The dialog is:

Achtung!
Die angegebene Datei existiert nicht.
Bitte einen gültigen Dateinamen wählen.
Weiter

 

[Blondel58]

OK, I finally managed the screenshot. Here it is:

Spoiler :

 

[AlanH]

If you look carefully at the paths I posted above, you will see that the path that appears in the top field is: 'My Games\Beyond the Sword\Saves\single'. In order to make a full save path, the system puts 'C:\Documents and Settings\Alan\My Documents\' at the front of it to make:

C:\Documents and Settings\Alan\My Documents\My Games\Beyond the Sword\Saves\single

'C:\Documents and Settings\Alan\My Documents\' is embedded in the Windows Registry, and defines the path to my Windows "Home" directory.

If it does the equivalent on your system, using the information I see in your screen shot, it will get:

<path to your Windows 'My Documents' folder>\Z:\Documents\My Games\Beyond the Sword\Saves\single

I'm not a Windows expert, but I doubt if this is a valid path. I assume Z: is a mapped network drive path to your OS X Home directory? I suspect BtS can't handle that, as it assumes all saves are in your C:\....\My Documents root, as defined somewhere in the Windows Registry.

This may be a result of Parallels being too clever, and trying to make your Mac and Windows file systems behave like a single system. I have folder sharing disabled on my Parallels system, as I distrust Windows too much to give it unfettered access to my Mac files.

 

[Blondel58]

I agree with you. When I first tried CIV in Parallels, I didn't manage to save at all. But I realized the Auto Save, and then I looked for the Auto Save files, and that is how I found out the usable Saving Path. Perhaps I should try to move the whole CIV directory to my virtual C drive - maybe Saving (and Loading) works better then.

 

[AlanH]

That's where mine are. Note that there are normally two default Civ4 directory paths - one in the C:\Program Files\ path, where the actual software is installed, and one for each variant of Civ4 in C:\Documents and Settings\....\My Documents\, where your saves, CivilizatinIV.ini and other user-level data are held.

Game designers - and Windows designers in general - are notoriously bad at allowing the user total freedom as to where they save things. It's usually not a great idea to take the Windows installer up on that offer to change the directory from the default installation locations.

 

[Blondel58]

Well, I've tried to change the saving paths - with no success. And, to be honest, I would be glad if someone could offer me a recipie for adjusting that thing, but it's not at all THAT important for me. I think I'll use that clumsy way of saving.
Anyway, many thanks for your help.

Another question: Do you know wether it is possible to play MP CIV WL Mac and Windows mixed in one LAN?

(I know, it's the wrong topic, but since I have you here at the moment )

edit: never mind, I've found the correct thread

 

[Methos]

I'm having trouble getting my Civ4 Complete to run using Parallels 4.0 for Mac. Civ4 boots up, stated it was lowering the graphics, and then begin to continuously blink. Whenever the mouse pointer was within the civ window it would automatically jump to the top most option every time the screen blinked. I couldn't even exit out of the game, so I had to just shut the VM down. I have my RAM for the VM set to 1 gig and video set to max, which is 256 mb. Is there a way to increase the video memory, or is that not the problem? I'm using a 15" MBP 2.53 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo with 4 GB of RAM. I have the Geoforce 9400 and I'm using 10.6.1.

Edit: I'm using Parallels 4.0.3522.

 

[AlanH]

I don't think Parallels has ever been that bad for me, so I doubt if it's a version issue. Though mine says it's Build 4.0.3846 (August 29,2009). I s'pose it could be a Snow Leopard thing, so upgrading to the latest wouldn't do any harm.

Your video RAM should be plenty. I only have 128 MBytes set on mine, and I start BtS plus Hires Blue Marble in High graphics mode. Mine's a 2.66 GHz/4 GBytes quad core Pro with GeForce 8800GT. I'm only running Parallels in one core, so the other three are not available to Windows.

I assume you have checked "Enable 3D acceleration" in the video screen? Have you installed the Parallels tools in Windows?

 

[Methos]

Turns out it was a Direct X issue. I didn't have the most up-to-date version.

 

[yanner39]

Hopefully this older thread will get answered

I am looking at getting Paralells for my Mac Book Pro. Here are my specs:

Mac OS X 10.6.7
2.66 Ghz Intel Core i7
4GB 1067 MHz DDR3

For the video card, I'm not too certain. The "built-in" says Intel HD Graphics 288MB but then there is another one below it NVIDIA Gforce GT n330M.

I'm just wondering if it would be playable. I've heard that switch from Mac to Windows, there should be any difference in performance but I'd just like to confirm with the real experts on these forums.

 

[AlanH]

You can select which video option to use depending on what the software demands. The nVidia 330m card is the high performance graphics option on your system, and you also have an Intel integrated video system that is less power hungry - good for battery conservation but probably not so good for Civ4.

Bootcamp is the fastest performance mode for Windows software on a Mac. The Bootcamp software is provided on the disks that come with the Mac, but you need a Windows installation disk as well. The Mac hardware is then operating as a high performance PC, and Windows drives the video card directly. The downside of this option is that you have to reboot into Windows, whereas you can run Parallels alongside/inside Mac OS X.

Parallels runs a conversion layer of software to convert Windows DirectX graphics into commands to drive the Mac's video cards. There is some reduction in performance as a result of this, but reviews indicate that Parallels gets closer to native performance than any other virtualization option.

Depending on how demanding you are about frame rates, and how big the games you want to play are ( measured in map size and number of civs ), your best bet may be to set up Windows in a Bootcamp partition, and install Parallels to share that Windows installation. The you can see if Parallels operation works well enough for you, and if not, you can reboot into Windows as you wish.

 

[Bdoom The Crazy]

to install window via bootcamp, you have to follow these steps:

1. put in your install disk for xp or vista
2. reboot your computer while holding the option key.(hold the option key until step 3)
3. you should see a screen with a picture of a hard drive with macintosh underneath it, and a cd. Click on the Cd.
4. install as directed.

 

[ChrisShaffer]

I've just moved my old Windows machine into the basement and switched to my laptop as my primary computer. I'm running OS X 10.7.2 (Lion) on a new MacBook Air 1.7 GHz Intel Core i5 with 4 GB 1333 MHz DDR3. On this machine, I'm running VMWare Fusion with a Windows XP image. The Windows versions of Civ4, BtS, their updates, and the HOF Mod installed fine. There is flickering on the startup screen. I set all Civ graphics options to the absolute minimum including setting resolution to 1024x768 (the lowest setting). I turned off unit animations, movies, etc.

Unfortunately, none of this fixes my problem, which you can see in this picture:

Spoiler :

Those panels radiating out from the active unit are waving back and forth, with the bottom segment always visible and the top 2/3 of the image blocked.

Suggestions welcome.