Working with E-mail games

[hogscape]

Hi folks,

I've recently started a PBEM game with my PC friend in New Zealand (I'm a Mac user). We've never had any compatibility problems however...

I seem to remember that when I played CIV4/Warlords on my now defunct PC, I could double-click on the file in my received e-mail and Warlords would open with my PBEM turn. Also, when I wanted to save my turn, the game would automatically send the file to my competitor (assuming I had set up his e-mail details).

These features don't appear to work using the Mac. When I receive my file I need to save it to the PBEM folder manually and when I've completed my turn I always get the message "failed to send by e-mail"; again I need to send the file manually.

Is there a solution to this or will I have to live with it (I can live with it, CIV4 is worth it)!?

Many thanks

 

[AlanH]

Double clicking a save does open Civ4 or Warlords, because that's a Mac OS function.The double click goes to the OS, which checks what application handles that file name extension, and opens the app.

However, the OS then sends an 'Open file' Apple Event to the application, and Aspyr in their wisdom have not made Civ4/Warlords capable of accepting any Apple Events - not even those that are considered the minimum for a respectable Mac application. So you have to open the file from within the application. There is no workround for this that I am aware of.

I've no experience of trying to use PBEM, but it doesn't surprise me that the software is incapable of sending an email. Aspyr's available effort to adapt Civ4 to the Mac OS environment was mostly focused on getting sound and graphics to work!

 

[hogscape]

Thanks for the info - I thought I was doing something wrong!

 

[the Falcon]

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[dojoboy]

By now, I'm starting to believe that this all and the delays are not really Aspyr's fault but rather testimony to Firaxis's crappy coding. They seem to have created something that is just incredibly difficult to port (something that Aspyr probably would not have known before they accepted the job). It would behoove them (Firaxis, that is) to make more portable code in the future and not think so Windows-centric.

No, Aspyr would surely know beforehand. Porting companies always get a source-drop to assess the job. The inability to use the in-game email feature is a known bug. There are patches in testing (for Civ4 & Warlords), perhaps a fix is in the mix.

 

[the Falcon]

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[AlanH]

I think all their efforts were focused on getting the core game working. Releasing a non-working game is far worse than releasing one that requires a small number of PBEM players to perform a few extra clicks to receive and send emailed saves.

It's pretty easy to get an app to open a double-clicked file or to send an email, but those features would require reworking, regardless of how Firaxis implemented them for Windows.

As with all these things, I don't think it's easy to pin down who dropped the ball. The big technical issues Aspyr confronted when porting the software were not in areas like PBEM. Remember they were doing this at a time when Apple had rather unceremoniously brought forward the transition to Intel CPUs, making a Universal Binary mandatory for the first release. Apple were also wrestling with stabilising their graphics and audio libraries across the platforms. If you think that estimating porting effort in such a climate is easy, I guess you should be working for Aspyr

 

[the Falcon]

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