ATI is not the problem, Firaxis is

[troyjgrice]

This is an absolute joke. This product was released to meet unfinished only to meet a deadline. Sid should be ashamed that his name has been associated with a product that was not released in this state.

There are typically 3 people on these boards: 1 Upset ATI owners who've tried everything to no avail, 2. Firaxis apologists who say, "be patient" or "it works fine for me" and 3. Spin doctors who point the finger at the consumers and ATI.

There isn't any problem with ATI. There isn't a single other game that I've ever had a problem with. The problem is with Firaxis for releasing a product that hasn't been properly tested and wasn't ready for the real world.

It reminds me of Sierra when they rushed an unfinished FBPro out in 98 only to recall it and subsequently disolve the entire franchise after the embarrassment.

This is really lame.

[Disk Killer]

http://apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=140859

The ATI fix.

[TheVeryMoon]

agreed

[Comte]

I don't know if Firaxis was directly in charge of the QA, many developers contract out QA to the publishers. I do production QA at another game company, and we're lucky enough to be in charge of both production QA and the contract QA.

That said, I don't know for certain that this is the case, and the ball has been dropped in more than one place here, the blame can't rest soley on whomever was in charge of the QA.

For example, the fact that they don't have forums of their own where I can go for help is inexcusable. Instead I'm directed to a site with pop-up ads.

Even if Firaxis didn't do their own QA, it's unimaginable to me that no one at the company ever even thought to try installing the game on a system with an ATI card, much less play it.

Even broken I played the game for hours last night, but right now I'm not interested in going back in till it's fixed. I'm lucky enough to have a machine at work I can play on, most people aren't.

I suppose the bright side is that the game appears to run OK on both AMD and Intel processors. That would have been something fun, eh?

[Disk Killer]

Originally posted by TheVeryMoon
agreed

With what? The fix?

[TheVeryMoon]

Originally posted by Disk Killer

http://apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=140859

The ATI fix.

still doesn't work for me, ATI Radeon7500, which is the minimum listed by the game, but by all means the game should still work to some extent. I can't even get past the loading screen

[Disk Killer]

Originally posted by Comte
I don't know if Firaxis was directly in charge of the QA, many developers contract out QA to the publishers. I do production QA at another game company, and we're lucky enough to be in charge of both production QA and the contract QA.

That said, I don't know for certain that this is the case, and the ball has been dropped in more than one place here, the blame can't rest soley on whomever was in charge of the QA.

For example, the fact that they don't have forums of their own where I can go for help is inexcusable. Instead I'm directed to a site with pop-up ads.

Even if Firaxis didn't do their own QA, it's unimaginable to me that no one at the company ever even thought to try installing the game on a system with an ATI card, much less play it.

Even broken I played the game for hours last night, but right now I'm not interested in going back in till it's fixed. I'm lucky enough to have a machine at work I can play on, most people aren't.

I suppose the bright side is that the game appears to run OK on both AMD and Intel processors. That would have been something fun, eh?

From what I've seen on the boards, I would guesstimate a failure rate of somewhere under 5% for ATI users. To infer that they (or the beta testers) never even tried it on a PC with an ATI card is nonsense.

This leads me to believe you've never come close to doing QA. I have done software/hardware QA at work for three years on a standardized platform with known hardware and known software and still the issues that we catch at times are esoteric and difficult to debug.

The millions of combinations possible in the PC world cause these sorts of issues to happen. People who absolutely cannot stand PC bugs in their games should move to consoles, IMHO.

That being said, it was a very unfortunate and frustrating bug; kudos to Firaxis for getting a fix out within 24 hours (the problem with consoles, of course, is that the bugs that somehow do slip through are permanent).

[Comte]

The above fix hardly changes anything. The fact that fans had to path the games themselves is disgusting. What about the users who don't know anything about internet forums and don't come here for the fix? Great effort was put into making the game accessable to people not familiar with PC gamer (a good thing) and they just drop this huge pile of crap onto anyone out there who has an ATI card. Many of the people encounting this problem probably don't even know what the difference is between Nvidia and ATI, how are they supposed to find a fix buried on a site that, need I remind you has pop-up ads?

I'm not that angry about wasting my money, I can still play at work, I can still enjoy myself when the renderer is full of butts, hell, as I said, I do QA, I'm used to it.

All this does is turn more and more people off PC gaming. I hear PC gamers lament over the dwindling of our hobby, well guess what guys? This kind of **** is why people prefer consoles.

[Disk Killer]

Originally posted by TheVeryMoon

still doesn't work for me, ATI Radeon7500, which is the minimum listed by the game, but by all means the game should still work to some extent. I can't even get past the loading screen

Do you get an error? What are your system specs? Maybe the people here can help.

[Comte]

Originally posted by Disk Killer

From what I've seen on the boards, I would guesstimate a failure rate of somewhere under 5% for ATI users. To infer that they (or the beta testers) never even tried it on a PC with an ATI card is nonsense.

Oh, yeah, not only is it not a serious problem, I'm also lying about my oh-so-glamourous job. Very insightful.

[Disk Killer]

Originally posted by Comte


Oh, yeah, not only is it not a serious problem, I'm also lying about my oh-so-glamourous job. Very insightful.

So you seriously think they never tried this game on an ATI card pre-release? Seriously?

[TheVeryMoon]

1.4 GHz
512 Ram
ATI MobilityRadeon 7500

not the greatest, but meets all the minimal reqs

This thread documents my struggles in more detail


I'm thinking about tinkering w/ the ATI drivers, not sure if that'll help

[mattcj]

Originally posted by Disk Killer


From what I've seen on the boards, I would guesstimate a failure rate of somewhere under 5% for ATI users. To infer that they (or the beta testers) never even tried it on a PC with an ATI card is nonsense.

This leads me to believe you've never come close to doing QA. I have done software/hardware QA at work for three years on a standardized platform with known hardware and known software and still the issues that we catch at times are esoteric and difficult to debug.

The millions of combinations possible in the PC world cause these sorts of issues to happen. People who absolutely cannot stand PC bugs in their games should move to consoles, IMHO.

That being said, it was a very unfortunate and frustrating bug; kudos to Firaxis for getting a fix out within 24 hours (the problem with consoles, of course, is that the bugs that somehow do slip through are permanent).

Here, here!

[Comte]

Originally posted by Disk Killer


So you seriously think they never tried this game on an ATI card pre-release? Seriously?

You are right, I have no doubt they tried it. I do seriously suspect, however, that no more than a few of the QA machines were ATI, and that the QA wasn't very good in the first place. I found a progression break in the tutorial of all places.

And beyond that, we're arguing about this on a site with pop-ups. Pop ups. The lack of a forum is just boggling to me. This place is 4 clicks deep from the main Civ4 site and after the second click it's poorly organized, confusing, and located on a third party site with pop up windows. Seriously. You call that support?

[Disk Killer]

Originally posted by TheVeryMoon
1.4 GHz
512 Ram
ATI MobilityRadeon 7500

not the greatest, but meets all the minimal reqs

This thread documents my struggles in more detail


I'm thinking about tinkering w/ the ATI drivers, not sure if that'll help

I would try uninstalling the ATI drivers and seeing if Omega Drivers might work better for you... http://www.omegadrivers.net/ - Post the results in your thread and we'll go from there. I've got all the time in the world - no game until tomorrow evening!