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poulh · May 23, 2003, 03:28 PM

I hate my work laptop. I have xp on it and its slow. Windows take awhile to show up, IE is god awful, and its windows.

But I need something to do at the airports so I downloaded Civ3. IT IS SO MUCH FASTER THAN MY 800MHZ G4 iMAC!

While recent versions of mac os have sped things up, my pc laptop smokes it. i don't know what kind of graphics card is in this thing, but i know its lower than my geforce2mx (can't play warcraft3 on the laptop).

Is this due to opengl wrappers around directx calls, or is this just more performance problems that apple has?

will i need a patch (which probably will never come out) when panther supposedly improves opengl?

bewebste · May 26, 2003, 05:37 PM

I doubt the performance has anything to do with OpenGL, as the game is sprite based and even Quartz Extreme wouldn't really give it any boost. If you turn off the Quartz text smoothing option under OS X, that will give you a large boost in speed.

mac freak · May 27, 2003, 10:34 AM

Civ3 was a slow port; some ports just ARE that way, and for a game like Civ3, it barely matters. Running it under OS 9 would give a large speed increase, though, by the way.

Brad Oliver · May 27, 2003, 12:45 PM

Originally posted by mac freak:
Civ3 was a slow port; some ports just ARE that way, and for a game like Civ3, it barely matters. Running it under OS 9 would give a large speed increase, though, by the way.

I disagree, naturally.

I've benchmarked (to the best of my ability) the performance of the Mac port, and the time it takes to complete turns with saved games is roughly identical on similarly-equipped Macs and PCs.

However, if you have Quartz enabled in OSX, the game will take a performance hit on the Mac. Disable it, and it should run just as fast on OSX as it does on OS 9. You'll also want to make sure you're running the most recent patch, as some performance tweaks were made since the initial shipping build.

If anyone can give me some evidence that demonstrates that the Mac version is underperforming compared to the PC (and by evidence I don't mean just saying that it underperforms), then I'll gladly take a look.

poulh · May 27, 2003, 04:20 PM

i bought the mac version and i have the pc demo version on my laptop at work (both are 800mhz machines althought i know that doesn't matter).

i posted this because the game just 'feels' faster (i know this isn't proof). of course tomorrow i'm getting an upgraded pc laptop so its probably going to be even faster.

ApeInTheShell · May 27, 2003, 09:25 PM

I think game developers don't take in much time to consider if their game will work correctly on a mac.

Aspyr does a good job porting but you can't expect top performance.

For example, the sims loads okay on my iMac.
But since my interest is in adventure games i don't play it much. Yet it hasn't frozen in 10.2.3 even with all the other apps running. But it isn't running past me with the gold medal either.

Give me an interesting game, with high replay value, decent graphics, and correct support for mine or other macs and i will be happy.

P · May 28, 2003, 02:19 AM

In the current Mac version (1.21), autosaves are compressed. This is not the case in the Wintel 1.29 version, which makes it seem faster. Quartz text rendering, if enabled, is also a speed hit. Other than that, they're equivalent IMHO.

Brad Oliver · May 28, 2003, 12:52 PM

Originally posted by P:
In the current Mac version (1.21), autosaves are compressed. This is not the case in the Wintel 1.29 version, which makes it seem faster.

Sounds like you need to get the 1.29 patch:

http://www.brad-oliver.com:8080/~boliver/Civ3_129b2.sit

poulh · May 28, 2003, 04:08 PM

how come the patches for this and alpha centauri are on your website and not macsoft (and whoever ported SMAC/X)?

Thanks for making patches though!

poulh · May 28, 2003, 04:10 PM

does this get us up to having common file formats? if it does you are the man!

Brad Oliver · May 28, 2003, 11:51 PM

Originally posted by poulh:
how come the patches for this and alpha centauri are on your website and not macsoft (and whoever ported SMAC/X)?

They're not final, they're more or less works-in-progress. However, I'd say that the Civ3 patch is pretty close to final. I don't know of any outstanding bugs, just some little things I left out of it by accident (like some screen resolutions that were in 1.21g).

P · May 29, 2003, 05:43 AM

Originally posted by Brad Oliver:
Sounds like you need to get the 1.29 patch:

http://www.brad-oliver.com:8080/~boliver/Civ3_129b2.sit

I have it, it's just that you said over at Civfanatics that you didn't want everyone to have the beta, and I didn't want to spill your secret.

poulh · May 29, 2003, 07:37 AM

Does this fix the problem with starting positions being random?

I just tried one of marla's world maps and the USA started out in europe. Do i need to get an update of her map?

where is the page on civfanatics that lists all of the GOTMs?

Also thanks for telling me to turn off quartz. its real fast now on my iMac

poulh · May 30, 2003, 09:38 AM

stand corrected... turning quartz text off speeds up the game a great deal on my iMac.

also, the world maps made for the latest version of civ3 start players in the correct positions..

brad is the man

Thain Esh Kelch · Jun 1, 2003, 06:51 AM

Strange.. My G4 400 AGP Radeon with 512 Mb ram runs CivIII muuuuch better than my GF's AMD XP1600+.... Granted it only has 256 Mb ram.. But nonetheless...

But okay, it IS one ****ed up PC..

Sosa · 03:02 PM

How do I turn off quartz text effect? I remember seeing this somewhere, but I could not find it in preferences for Civ 3 or my Mac. Thanks.

JohnM15141 · Jun 1, 2003, 05:04 PM

Originally posted by Sosa:
How do I turn off quartz text effect? I remember seeing this somewhere, but I could not find it in preferences for Civ 3 or my Mac. Thanks.

It's in the Startup Game Options. If you don't see it when you start the game it's because the box marked "Don't Ask Again" is checked.

You can bring it back by starting the game while holding down the Apple Command key.

Sosa · Jun 1, 2003, 06:32 PM

Originally posted by JohnM15141:
It's in the Startup Game Options. If you don't see it when you start the game it's because the box marked "Don't Ask Again" is checked.

You can bring it back by starting the game while holding down the Apple Command key.

Dohh!

Well, I don't know about the speed boost but now I remember why I left Quartz on: the text looks cheap, ugly, PC like without it!

poulh · Jun 1, 2003, 10:07 PM

Yeah, I thought the text was ugly at first too. I've gotten used to it though and I've also gotten used to the increased speed in the game

n~s · Jun 2, 2003, 02:51 PM

Originally posted by Sosa:
:Well, I don't know about the speed boost but now I remember why I left Quartz on: the text looks cheap, ugly, PC like without it!

Hmm, PC comprable performance or pretty text...pick one