INTRODUCING OUR CTP MAC SECTION (13 February 2000, 22:25 EST) On behalf of the Apolyton Civilization Site administration, I am happy to announce the latest addition to our lineup, and our team. The "Mac: Call To Power" website (located here) was started by Mark Hunter a short while ago in an effort to promote the Mac port of Civilization: Call To Power within the online gaming community. Hunter has proven himself to be a knowledgable source for the game, and in conducting himself in a professional manner from day one has helped push his website into the community spotlight. Effective today, Mark and his website have joined the Apolyton crew in its continuing committment to deliver the most comprehensive, up-to-date information on the games that we cover. The "Mac Call To Power" website is now our CTP Mac section, administered by Hunter. Within the next week or so a forum specifically targetted for Mac CTP users will be opened within our forum community, which will moderated by Hunter (aka Baston). Today's announcement coincides with Hunter publicly confirming that he has been privledged enough to work closely with Westlake Interactive, the company who ported C:CTP to the Mac last year, as part of a private beta testing team working on the first patch for the port. The patch will be released tomorrow by MacSoft. In closing, let me be the first to say to Mark: Welcome Aboard! :) -DanQ CTP-MAC SUBSECTION AND FORUM! (14 February 2000, 17:36 EST) Yeap, as of yesterday our CTP for Macintosh subsection is open at http://apolyton.net/ctp/mac and today we opened our CtP-Macintosh forum. The webmaster of the subsection and moderator of the forum is Mark Hunter a.k.a. Baston. Any comments (on the forum of course!) are welcome. -MarkG

Apolyton News 12-19 February 2000

CTP FOR MAC PATCH

PATCH TO BE RELEASED MONDAY 14/2/99 (13 February 2000, 4:18 EST) I Have been priveledged to be part of the Westlake community of beta testers since the 9th and we have tested two patches so far. Mark Krenek from Weslake Interactive has confirmed this Monday as the official release date of the patch and from what i have seen and tested it will be great all round for all us Macintosh Players. Here is a version history of the two patches i have been involved in testing: - Play By E-Mail has been added. - Double clicking saved game files will now launch Call To Power and load the game. You may need to rebuild your desktop to get this feature to work. - Keyboard setup now accepts function keys. Other special keys, such as page up, page down, home end, etc. can not be used. This limitations exists in the PC version as well. - Saved Network Games can now be reloaded sucessfully (The "Scenario not found" bug). - Fixed problem using pillage command on a plasma cruiser. - Saving and loading of single player games now uses the standard Mac save dialog. This means you can now save your games anywhere on your disk. This also helps prevent running out of memory while saving games. - Call to Power now requires a minimum of 75 MB of memory to run. If necessary, use the "Memory" control panel to increase your Mac's Virtual Memory setting. - Call to Power now alerts you if it is not running with the "Preferred Size" of memory specified in the application's "Get Info" window. The "Preferred Size" of Call to Power has been changed to 105 MB. Please note that Call to Power uses more System resources the longer you play it, so you may need to increase the application's "Preferred Size" to over 150 MB to complete long games. - Music should play much more reliably on DVD-equipped Macs.

- Music should continue to play when the Great Library window is opened.

Music should only stop if you have the "Great Library Animations" option turned on.

The Patch will be posted in Macsoft's Technical Support page for Call to Power at:

http://www.wizworks.com/macsoft/
mactech/CivIICall_faq.html -Baston

WHERE`S THE PATCH?
(15 February 2000, 17:25 EST) Well doesn't look like the patch has made it to macsoft's tech support page today... i believe we'll see it some time soon... hopefully this week. I have just written to Mark Krenek asking for any further information on the release date. Admitedly in earlier dialogue he did say hopefully tuesday so we can't hold westlake or macsoft to this day... wednesday maybe?

Fingers crossed we'll see it tomorrow. -Baston

PATCH DELAYED BY A DAY
(14 February 2000, 19:31 EST) Mark Krenek from Westlake just wrote to me concerning the delay on the patch.

"The patch didn't make it out the door because of one last bug. Hopefully, we'll post it tomorrow."

Keep your eyes peeled!
-Baston

LAST MINUTE PATCH WORK
(16 February 2000, 15:05 EST) Mark Krenek replied to my remark concerning the delay and very kindly responded:

Baston: Looks like you weren`t able to post it... :( Is this "bug" anything we`ve been testing?

Mark Krenek: No. The format of saved games changed since the first release and we needed to add code that could read the old files. Should get posted on Wednesday.

Either way it should be here real soon. The last time i checked though it hadn`t been posted. -Baston

PATCH IS DEFINITELY HERE!!!
(19 February 2000, 3:00 EST) The patch has definitely been released.

See http://www.wizworks.com/macsoft/mactech/CivIICall_ftp.html -Baston

CIVILIZATION 2 MAC PAGE UPDATE: SCENARIOS AND UTILITIES (12 February 2000, 18:47 EST) It finally happened, I fixed some links and added stuff to the Civ II Mac page! New to the page is a scenario by Michael Witry along with better descriptions of the existing scenarios. Additionally, two oh-so-cool scenario utilities have been added. Chris Beigner has written an Apple Script for converting PC Scenarios to Mac versions! It is appropriately called Convert Scenario. To go along with the Convert Scenario Script, we have the latest version of GraphicConverter for PPC! If you subscribe to MacAddict, you can avoid the download as it is on the Feb Phat-CD (also known as THE DISC)! Speaking of MacAddict, there is a link to their review of Civ II on the Reviews page. So, now your saying to yourself "what'a bout the OTHER broken links...the OLD MPG page...the nonexistent CtP page...and where's THE DEITY's Gwani scenario???" Yeah, yeah...go and play Mike's W.W.I scenario and by the time the Kaiser is done moping up Europe with you, I'll have some MORE stuff to post! 'til then. - MacUser -macuser IT`S MODPACK NIGHT! (12 February 2000, 15:37 EST) The new year is just 6 weeks old and we already have our fourth database update! This time thanks to my new helper Tim Davis. Tonight we welcome eight modpacks in our growing database. Get those downloads! Lance The Fog of War Ocean and Sea End of the New Republic The Battle for Middle Earth Sea Quest Magic vs. Steel The Terran-Kilrathi Conflict -Sven

REYNOLDS INTERVIEWED BY IGN
(12 February 2000, 12:46 EST) Yesterday, PC|IGN posted a lengthy interview with Brian Reynolds, conducted by Mark Harrison.

Too much to reproduce in whole, Harrison not only asks about Reynolds' educational and professional career, but also about the family behind the man. And Reynolds delivers.

Below are some interesting excerpts:

IGN: Have you played [Civilization] Call to Power? If so, which new features in that game do you feel really add something to the subgenre?
BR: I've only played it a bit, in a professional-evaluation-of-competition kind of mode. It had some cool ideas, like stacked combat, that I certainly would have wanted to adopt for Civ3; I thought its greatest shortcoming was probably the interface...

IGN: Please describe a few of your most important principles of game design.
BR: Well the most important one is to always be playing your own game as you're developing it. Developers who don't play their own games either through not wanting to or because some technical element (e.g. graphics engine) isn't done and therefore prevents it, usually wind up with inferior products.

IGN: Expansions to Civilization II merely involved exploitation of the original engine without adding any new AI or gameplay. To what degree do you feel the expansion to Alpha Centauri has done better?
BR: The Civ2 expansions were done by Microprose after I'd already left, and I have only passing familiarity with them. The Alien Crossfire expansion for Alpha Centauri was done by Tim Train as producer/designer with Chris Pine doing the programming and Doug Kaufman co-designing and balancing. I think they did a great job putting a whole new feel on the game.

Our thanks to Imran for pointing this interivew out to us. -DanQ