ATI is not the problem, Firaxis is

[The_Reckoning]

For popups, I reccomend an alternate browser like Firefox or Opera.


Anyway, the proportion of people experiencing problems must be absolutely huge. It's the second or third day, and look at the amount of people complaining.

Think about over the next month, when most people who want the game will have bought it, when they start complaining about problems.

[OutFlanked]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui

And beyond that, we're arguing about this on a site with pop-ups. Pop ups.

Oh boo hoo! Get a decent pop up blocker if they bother you that much. As stated, the official support for the game is phone and email. This would be a fan site. If you don't like the pop ups no one is making you stay here. Email Firaxis if you are that pissy.

You right, call them. Wait 20 min then be told to call back in 24 hours. Great support. I know le'ts start paying for support. Then Fan Boys like you will be

[Willem]

Originally posted by Styx
I have a SIS661FX onboard VGA card, the game runs but the map is black.
Before you start flaming about installing a better card, keep in mind that this is an onboard card is not dated and designed for P4.

It's not dated but it's still crap. It doesn't support Hardware T&L which is a requirement that is clearly stated by Firaxis. If you don't want to pay attention to what they're telling you, then it's your problem not theirs.

I don't understand why it's so hard for people to understand that you need a half decent video card in order to run this game. If you want to b**** at someone, do it at the people who made your video card, not Firaxis. Hardware T&L has been around for more than 5 years. If Intel and the other companies want to be cheap and cut corners on their gear, then they are the ones who deserve people's anger and frustration.

I buy a game, I have a p4 pc matching far more then the minimum requirements.

But you don't have the minimum requirements since your video card doesn't support Hardware T&L. Why is that automatically Firaxis' fault? What about the responsibility of the video card owner to their customers?

Who has to solve and understand where the problem comes from? Me? I don't think so.

Why not? Why should everyone in this technology driven society be spoonfed and not be forced to figure out a few basic things themselves? Did you even bother to determine whether your video card was compatible or not? Did you even read the requirements?

I will wait till firaxis come with a proper version.

You're going to be waiting a long time then, because the T&L requirements are not going to change. And no doubt you'll be complaining about some other game soon for the very same reason, because that technology is becoming a standard these days. You'll either have to keep up with the times, or be satisfied playing yesterday's games.

This is not more then a beta test version and they are using a paying audience to develop their game.

How cliche. Sorry but if you don't want to make the effort of keeping your system up to date, then you have only yourself to blame.

[Willem]

Originally posted by OutFlanked


You right, call them. Wait 20 min then be told to call back in 24 hours. Great support. I know le'ts start paying for support. Then Fan Boys like you will be

What do you expect? How many thousands of people might be trying to get through at any one time? I've read that 2-3 million copies were sold pre-release. If even 1% of those are having some sort of problem, that's a hell of a lot of people running to the phone lines in order to solve it. And with the problem that was encountered with the ATI cards, it's probably going to be more like 5% of people having some problem. That's 150,000 people worldwide. Do you honestly think that Take 2 is going to be able to get to each and everyone that calls? Get real.

[Onslaught]

Intel

Hello, I run on an Intel. And The Planet surface is black. I've run the PakBuild to no luck. And Have searched google for intel user help, yet agian, no luck

Could sumone tell me What I may be doing wrong?
BTW I moved to the artpak to the desktop the first time.And The second time I moved it to my slave drive and deleted the orginal one. Perhaps I have no moved it to a loction where the game cant find it ?

[Willem]

Re: Intel

Originally posted by Onslaught
Hello, I run on an Intel. And The Planet surface is black. I've run the PakBuild to no luck. And Have searched google for intel user help, yet agian, no luck

Could sumone tell me What I may be doing wrong?
BTW I moved to the artpak to the desktop the first time.And The second time I moved it to my slave drive and deleted the orginal one. Perhaps I have no moved it to a loction where the game cant find it ?

Your video card probably doesn't support Hardware T&L, you may have to consider getting a new one. Other than that, try upgrading your video card drivers.

[Gully Foyle]

Re: Intel

Originally posted by Onslaught
Hello, I run on an Intel. And The Planet surface is black. I've run the PakBuild to no luck. And Have searched google for intel user help, yet agian, no luck

Could sumone tell me What I may be doing wrong?
BTW I moved to the artpak to the desktop the first time.And The second time I moved it to my slave drive and deleted the orginal one. Perhaps I have no moved it to a loction where the game cant find it ?

If it's an Intel integrated graphics card, it doesn't have T&L and can't run the game. These cards are typically found in machines at Best Buy, Cricuit City and other major electronics retailers. It's a way to offer nice-sounding computers cheaply-- they've got crap video cards in them, amongst other things.

You'll need to pick up a new video card.

Your other option is the Map Editor workaround-- apparently people without T&L capable cards are turning off the fog of war and playing the game. It's basically cheating, but at least they can now see the map.

[Onslaught]

K, thanks for the Fog of war ideal. Know I can see the terrian.

[Eogen]

To me, this is simply an issue that we should not have to deal with for a CIV game. Who needs 3d Dancing icons and jumping fish?

I have tried and failed to get it working completely without issues on 3 different machines (two nvidia and one ati, and yes, I have the current drivers) And while I am willing to be patient, extensive tuning of my video system really should not be necessary for CIV. A high-dev first person shooter, maybe, but CIV?

[Willem]

Originally posted by Eogen
To me, this is simply an issue that we should not have to deal with for a CIV game. Who needs 3d Dancing icons and jumping fish?

Firaxis does in order to stay competitive with the video quality graphics being displayed on the XBox systems etc. They have a business to run and that means meeting the bar as far as production values are concerned. New players to the game are going to expect more than graphics that were suitable 10 years ago. They can't just rely on their core players, or the franchise will end up sinking.

[mountainlion2]

Here's a question what would have been your reaction if Firaxis and 2K Games had decided to push back the release date a month or more to do more to work on some of these problems? I bet you'd be lementing and jumping up and down crying foul like a lot of people did when Valve kept pushing pack Halflife 2.

I don't mind these kind of bugs, I know that someone is working on them and with the internet they'll get it out in a hurry. It beats the hell out of the old days of having to write my own autoexec.bat and config.sys files and having a special floppy just so I could play the original Civ. And if you needed help if you were lucky there might be BBS board you could call, otherwise you were SOL.

I don't blame Firaxis for the work they've done and are still doing. Their's a lot of pressure from fans and the bottomline to get it out as soon as possible, problems are not. I have a feeling when it went gold that it worked on a majority of there machines. There is no way to make sure the game will work on every configuration of hardware and software unless you try and see. Fixing these errors is going to take time as well, someone has to go back through the code and find logic error. I know from experience that this is time consuming, tedious, and just sux. I have no doubt they'll get things fixed in time, until then instead of whining about it go out and see the sunshine, because once the game is fixed you know your not going to see it for a long time.

[justanewguy]

No need to get nasty here. It’s understandable that when expectations are high, and those expectations are not met for a given person, frustration factors can run high.

As for the post attacking the user for being “pissy”, if you go back and read the full thread it seems clear that everyone thinks Apolyton is doing a great job, and does not “blame” them for having pop ups in what is clearly a fan site.

I believe the point is that Civ 4 has no “official” forum, which is a pretty common and useful feature for a game, especially an “A+” title to have.

Firaxis or 2K Games (not sure which was responsible) saved a little time and money by directing users to these fan sites instead. Again, no disrespect to these fine fan sites! They are doing a great service for us all! But it is a little hard for a novice user to navigate these waters and find what he or she needs. It took me a little while and I am no novice user!

I don’t believe it is “pissy” to express surprise and disappointment that Firaxis or 2K Games made game support a little less useful/robust than some of us would have expected. Yes, they have phone and email support, but sometimes, especially early on, that alone is not sufficient. We all know how many hours people spent on the phone only to be told to “call back tomorrow” and how upsetting it is to wait hours or days for an email response that contains cut and paste questions that you clearly answered in your initial request for help.

There is no need to go ballistic and throw dead cats the Firaxis and 2K Games developers. Mistakes happen and bugs do indeed sneak by sometimes. But when paying customers express their concern and disappointment (without acting like a two year old throwing a temper tantrum) I don’t think they should be attacked. It’s great if the game works for you, or if you don’t mind waiting around for a possible patch or work-around, or if you are computer savy enough to even get here, dig for, and experiment with the possible solutions you find. But understand that not everyone is in your boat. It’s OK for them to be disappointed (as long as they are not jerks about it) and to expect better.

As I said before, mistakes happen and bad bugs sometimes sneak through. There are plenty of games that have had similar problems or worse on release. But there are also plenty of games that have done it a lot better. Took the extra time, and bent over backwards for their user support. I just wish that this newest version of the game I love so much had fallen into that second category.

I’m disappointed now, but I’m going to hang in there and hope that the fine, hardworking people at Firaxis and 2K Games keep working as hard as they seem to be working, and get this fixed up soon. Until then, we don’t have to agree with or even like each other, but lets try to be at least civil.

My thanks to Apolyton for giving me this place to rant and hopefully find solutions, and even bigger thanks to the vast majority of people posting who are putting up some really helpful stuff!

[nhall70]

I think the biggest tragedy here is that the people who don't have hardware T&L and want the game to run anyway are such a drag on computer games.

You guys have no idea what would be possible if the developers were able to unleash the full power of the graphics hardware that's available today! And I don't just mean eye candy...I mean gameplay as well.

Even Civilization IV doesn't even come close to scratching the surface of what's possible because they have to pander to the lowest common denomonator.

I WANT games that stress my computer! Give me more...hell, if my computer isn't working hard, even sweating...then you're game just ain't good enough.

I shudder to think what Civ4 would have been like if they reduced it to what would run on technology from the last decade. Jeesh, why even bother making it.

Incindentally, I don't know why the people without hardware T&L don't just play Civ3. It's a great game and you know what...it doesn't require hardware T&L.

Cheers

[alva]

Originally posted by liamburke
It's fairly obvious the game was released in a rush. It was pushed up for an earlier released, the CD and tech tree problems. I think it's fairly likely that they did do testing, but then changed something (or perhaps didn't test the finally gold version on the CD very well) and something went horribly wrong.

* snip *

You know that one of the most valuable stamps is one that is printed on it's head and date from the 19th century?
Now I'm not saying that given time your CD will be worth as much, mind you.
What am I saying, is that these things happen and have always happened, the main difference is that now with the internet, the whole worlds knows about it in ten minutes, whereas before only the people who got the mislabeled item were in the know.

[alva]

Originally posted by Gramphos

I've been playing with an Radeon 9500 Pro since I got into the PlaySession. So, it has been tested with ATI cards.

What's ironic is that the majority of testers are running ATI cards.
Mine's a 9800PRO which apparantly isn't on the affected list.