[vcutag]

I'm about to buy a 24" iMac and I'm wondering how well Civ IV would play through Parallels or Boot Camp if I were to install the Windows version of it. I currently have Civ IV for OS X, but I really want to pick up Beyond the Sword, which isn't out for Mac yet. I'm thinking about picking up the Windows versions, but I'm not sure how well they'll play.

Anybody out there play Civ IV for Windows on this (or a similar) Mac? Or know if a Mac version of Beyond the Sword is coming out soon?

[P]

You don't mention what GPU you have in that iMac, but I play Civ IV BTS on the HTPC on occasion. It's not particularly demanding.

[vcutag]

Originally Posted by P 

You don't mention what GPU you have in that iMac, but I play Civ IV BTS on the HTPC on occasion. It's not particularly demanding.

HTPC?

Sorry, forgot to include the specs, 3.06GHZ Intel Core 2 Duo processor and the NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GS w/512 MB of VRAM and 4 GB of RAM.

I don't think it'll be an issue, I'm just worried about how Parallels or VMware would affect game play.

[P]

Home Theater PC. Wintel box in the living room that I use to watch TV programs and moveies (upconverting DVDs) but also occasionally for gaming, as the Mac is an old G5.

With that GPU, you should not have any problems under Boot Camp. The latest version of Parallels apparently improves gaming graphics as well, but I have no experience of well it works.

[besson3c]

Civ IV works perfectly through WINE for Linux, although I've never tried it under WINE for OS X.

[- - e r i k - -]

Any idea when this might be ported to the Mac version? I thought since the whole game was written in Python and XML it would be a breeze to keep expansions in check on the Mac.

[- - e r i k - -]

…and to answer my own question:

"I'd love for us to do Civ: BTS for Mac. I can't say absolutely we'll never do it (thank goodness!) but also can't say 100% we are going to do it. There are non-technical reasons it hasn't come to the Mac yet, and being in Development, those are out of my control, unfortunately. In a perfect world we'd have ported it and released it simultaneous with the PC (which we could have done technically), but for no single person's or company's fault it didn't happen that way.
Glenda"

That's Glenda Adams, Developer, Aspyr Media.
http://www.insidemacgames.com/forum/...hl=&pid=340724

So yeah, purely political/business - technically there was nothing to stop them. Sigh.

[- - e r i k - -]

…and:

Originally Posted by [email protected]

I can understand you wish to know more about how we choose titles to port to Mac. We continually evaluate games to be brought over to the platform, looking at several factors including its popularity, whether the Mac market is interested in the game, whether the company that owns the rights is interested in having a Mac version, and how hard it would be to port over (for example, if a game using the same software engine has already been ported, it becomes much easier for us to have it done). Our customers are one of the sources of determining interest, so we thank you for your mail.

However the Civ 4 series is a bit different. Warlords did not produce a great number of sales, far less than was expected. There is also the problem of programing for Civ 4, now as I said above using the same engine as previous game usually makes porting new titles easier, that is not the case for the Civ 4 titles. While the actual game is fairly stable (not perfect of course) the code behind it on the PC side is a mess. This kind of thrown together code makes it difficult to port the game and fix problems that arise in the port. Due to the sheer number of problems we have encountered with working with the PC code for the Civ 4 titles it may be that production does not wish to have to go through it again. For instance when patching games it usually takes a couple of weeks or as much as eight weeks. Civ 4 patches take us months to program and test because of constant problems.

I wish I could give better news about BTS for Civ 4 but at this time we have no plans to port the expansion.

Have a nice day,
Aspyr

[turtle777]

Originally Posted by vcutag 

I'm about to buy a 24" iMac and I'm wondering how well Civ IV would play through Parallels or Boot Camp if I were to install the Windows version of it.

I'm playing Civ 4 on Bootcamp, works w/o a problem on a 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo iMac.

I never tried using CrossOver, but their website states it's compatible.

-t

[besson3c]

If you are going to run it in a VM environment you need to make sure that the game and VM host work together to support 3D acceleration. You aren't going to have any fun with a game like Civ with no 3D support.

[turtle777]

Originally Posted by besson3c 

If you are going to run it in a VM environment you need to make sure that the game and VM host work together to support 3D acceleration. You aren't going to have any fun with a game like Civ with no 3D support.

I'm not sure if CrossOver does, but we'll know in a moment. I'm installing it right now.

-t

[turtle777]

Originally Posted by turtle777 

I'm not sure if CrossOver does, but we'll know in a moment. I'm installing it right now.

Unfortunately, no dice.

-t

[besson3c]

Crossover is not a VM, nor is it an emulator. It will support DirectX and provide 3D acceleration. My wife plays Civ IV all the time under WINE for Linux.

[turtle777]

Originally Posted by besson3c 

Crossover is not a VM, nor is it an emulator. It will support DirectX and provide 3D acceleration. My wife plays Civ IV all the time under WINE for Linux.

I guess I must have done something wrong with the install. Don't have time right now to tinker with it tough.

-t

[Proudest Monkey]

Anybody play Civ IV on a MacBook using Boot camp? (MacBook, 2.0GHz, Intel Core 2 Duo, 2GB DDR3 Memory, 160GB hard drive, NVIDIA GeForce 9400M graphics).

I'm thinking of doing this if it works.

I also want to play Sim City 4 so if anyone has any input on that I would appreciate it as well.

[vcutag]

Originally Posted by besson3c 

If you are going to run it in a VM environment you need to make sure that the game and VM host work together to support 3D acceleration. You aren't going to have any fun with a game like Civ with no 3D support.

Update: I've since bought the iMac (24" of amazing computer goodness) in question and have set up a Boot Camp partition that I'm accessing through VMware Fusion. If I try to run it through VMware, I can't run Civ IV. If I reboot into Windows, it runs fine, except for the audio sounding like it's coming through a tin can telephone.

The error message I get when I try to run through VMware is this:



Any ideas how to fix? I'd really like to be able to run everything through VMware instead of having to reboot.

[Proudest Monkey]

Originally Posted by vcutag 

If I reboot into Windows, it runs fine, except for the audio sounding like it's coming through a tin can telephone.

Does it sound bad through external speakers or headphones too or it is just through the iMac's speakers?

[vcutag]

You know, I'm not sure. Haven't tried it with headphones, I'll have to do that and get back to you.

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by vcutag 

Update: I've since bought the iMac (24" of amazing computer goodness) in question and have set up a Boot Camp partition that I'm accessing through VMware Fusion. If I try to run it through VMware, I can't run Civ IV. If I reboot into Windows, it runs fine, except for the audio sounding like it's coming through a tin can telephone.

The error message I get when I try to run through VMware is this:



Any ideas how to fix? I'd really like to be able to run everything through VMware instead of having to reboot.

You can't. As long as VMWare's Direct3D acceleration thing is enabled, it either works or it doesn't - it's still considered experimental.

Your best bet for any and all 3D Windows games is WINE. I don't know how far along WINE/Crossover are on OS X, but they work well under Linux.

[vcutag]

Originally Posted by Proudest Monkey 

Does it sound bad through external speakers or headphones too or it is just through the iMac's speakers?

After checking, it sounds like it's a problem with the speakers in all Windows apps; my guess is a driver at this point. When I play the game with headphones, I can hear a subtle difference from the way it's supposed to sound, but I chalk that up to the earphones. It's nowhere near as tinny as the speakers.

What I don't understand is that I used the system discs to install Windows drivers for the Mac hardware. That should have taken care of it, right?