Take2Games says patch is coming!

[Leezell]

This reminds me of my fun and games with Civ 3.......

I built my first computer just before Civ 3 came out. Among other items, it had a Gigabyte board with IDE RAID and an MSI video card.

After I built it, Civ III was the first game I played on it. Obviously, I was hooked, played nothing else for 3 days straight.

After a few days of playing, I got into the 20th century, and the wait times got longer, and the computer was working harder, then.........boom, BSOD.

I reboot the computer. Guess what? The boot directory has been corrupted. So I reinstall XP, do it again. Get to 20th century, boom, corrupted.

I look around, try and figure out what the H**L is wrong with this. Can't find anything on the MS website.

So I write a BIG long flaming ugly email to Firaxis, etc., telling them how this evil vile game of theirs has destroyed my computer, they are all incompetent, they should all go jump in a lake, etc. Man, I felt better.

2 days later I find a Gigabyte FAQ page for my board, notice that my board is incompatible with about 50% of the video cards on the market at the moment. Seems that when the video card starts chugging hard, it's got a nasty tendency to corrupt data on the IDE RAID drives.......

So to sum up, I wonder just how many of those with problems happen to have that one itsy bitsy quirk that isn't in the developer's computers (methinks it's porn).

Of course, I haven't fired up the game yet, so we'll see if I have the same porn......

Lee

[Leuenberg]

Originally posted by Locutus
The T&L issue is a hardware requirement, it is necessary to be able to play the game, this was announced over 6 months ago.

Humm, I did check the official site and noticed this:

Minimum System Requirements
DirectX 9.0c-compatible 64 MB video card with Hardware T&L support ( GeForce 2/Radeon 7500 or better)

So, OK let's say it's a requirement and hence could not be considered a BUG and subject to patching

Originally posted by Locutus
If your graphics card is so crappy it doesn't support T&L (and this is true for many Intel cards -- if you're a gamer you shouldn't have an Intel card to begin with), you're out of luck.

On that I disagree ...

First, I AM a gamer, but one interested in strategic games like AoE, EUII and CIV which are not supposed to be graphic demanding like any FPS (BTW AoE III run very well on my config).

Second, spending $80 on a new graphic card supporting T&L may seem obvious for some of you, but like many future ex-CIV-ers here my configuration is a *laptop* and a fairly recent one. I do not intend to buy a new one just because 2KGames did a wrong choice with this T&L hardware requirement, thus excluding 80% of the laptop owners !

Originally posted by Locutus
It's simply not possible to include T&L support for this game without rewriting large sections of it, killing a couple of features and taking a big hit on performance. If it was possible it would've been done from the start.

I'm still hoping your answer is not totaly authoritative based on the fact that Intel say T&L software emulation is doable. I sent an email about this issue to the support team of 2KGames and hope a formal reply before I return my CIV

[deKoven]

Re: No need for a patch.

Originally posted by Master-Mike
Well i dont have a need for the patch.

The game is awesome out of the box. No installing problems, no graphics issues, no crashes, no bugs noticed in game. Maybe there are tweaks and balance issues or interface imrpovements that can be added over time.

This is one happy gamer, the more i play the more i want to do that one more turn before i sleep, ah who needs sleep anyway there is CIV IV to play.

I'm with you, bud. I've had zilch for problems. Well, there WAS the initial problem that my disk 2 was labelled "Play Disk" but a very quick check on the net and I found the answer to it. Other than that, nothing, nada, as I said, ZILCH for problems!

[inca911]

Re: Re: Take2Games says patch is coming!

Originally posted by asleepathewheel
Germans bomb Pearl Harbor!

Nice Animal House reference!

Maybe next release they give to to all of Apolyton first, and we Beta test it as a group....

[Mayfield]

If they fix the occasional graphics glitches, the memory leak (game slows down after a few hours of play , and the ATI bug I think most of us will be happy until the expansion!

[Traelin]

Originally posted by Provost Harrison
They'd better get a move on - this has been an incredible failure in quality control to let the horrendous instability of this game to get through...

Hmm. Maybe I'm one of the lucky ones, bu after the rendering issue was fixed, I have only had minor bugs. One of them is annoying but not deal-breaking (Civ occasionally crashes when I try to load a game), and the other one I only saw once (corrupted shading/coloring on farms). IMHO it's pretty stable for a game that's !patched.

[gregules]

Would one of you that have had no problems mind posting your computer profile? Just curious.

Gregules

[padillah]

Originally posted by gregules
Would one of you that have had no problems mind posting your computer profile? Just curious.

Gregules

(off the top of my head mind you...)
MSI K880 Delta (mainboard)
AMD Sempron 2800+ (not my fault, I couldn't find a 3000+ at the time)
1 Gig RAM
nVidia GeForce FX 5900Ultra AGP 8x w/256Meg (I forget the brand name, prolly PNY)
SoundBlaster Audigy2 ZS sound card
Plextor 716A DVD+-RW DL
20 Gig IDE HDD
80 Gig IDE HDD
200 Gig IDE HDD
300 Gig SATA HDD
Maxtor EIDE card (I forget the model number)

And thus far I have LOVED THIS GAME. It works and runs and I couldn't be happier.

I am still trying to get enough time to get to the middle ages and see what happens on a big map after a few turns but I'll let you know...

Until I find out if it boggs down I'm a happy man! Thank you Firaxis!

Tom P.

[gregules]

Thank you padillah.

[Shogun Gunner]

Re: Re: Re: Take2Games says patch is coming!

Originally posted by asleepathewheel
Germans bomb Pearl Harbor!

Originally posted by inca911

Nice Animal House reference!

Just remember that it wasn't over when the German's bombed Pearl Harbor.

Great movie. Funny line.

Back to the topic. Guys, this is just standard software develoment stuff. There's a phase in the project plan - post release - to start collecting information regarding problems and requested enhancements. The information is organized according to criticality, risk, and cost. Then a budget is set, and work is performed.

There will be a patch. It will fix problems -- maybe not all of them, but the big ones will be addressed. I think Firaxis is actually pretty responsive in this area thinking over the Civ3 experience. Sure, there were a lot of patches, but that game had a lot of issues. They stuck with it and got the job done.

[Stuie]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Take2Games says patch is coming!

Originally posted by Shogun Gunner Sure, there were a lot of patches...

Actually, I like the fact that there were more than two patches for Civ 3 - that shows some dedication to the game and its users. With Rome: Total War, a bug was found (a real nasty one that crippled the AI) after the publisher mandated/budgeted two patches had been released, and that bug became a "feature" until the expansion was released (along with a free patch admittedly... but still, that was a long time to wait for a fix for a bug ID'd late last year).

I hope Civ 4 receives the same level of support that past Civ games have - technical issues aside, there may not appear to be a lot that needs patching right now, but I'm sure stuff will come out as more and more people play further into the game.

[gregules]

does anyone want to take a guess at when we might see a patch? This week? Next week? this month?

[Shogun Gunner]

I didn't get the Rome game. Yes that's too long to fix an important bug.

What was interesting in the Civ3 series of bug patches, that significant changes were made in the game between v1.08 (? -- I think that was the number), v1.15 and v1.22.

Different people like different patches. I'm current playing out some civ3 PBEMs -- some are v1.15 and most are the v1.22. It's tough remember the changes that impact strategy (like Forbidden Palace impact for example) between the games.

We will have to see if a similiar situation develops for cIV, but I agree with you that having a bunch of patch releases shows committment.

[ryhelm63]

One thing I'd like to see is having auto save taken off. I can't find any place in the menu to stop it. Slows the game a little. Is there a patrol option for units yet or have I just missed it?

[Stuie]

ryhelm63 - you can switch it off in the Civilization4.ini file. Just change the "0" to a "1" for the autosave line.