Full of bugs? Not really.

[Stone-D]

CIV4, for me, is one of the few games I have seen for a long time that is this stable at initial release.

The ATI 'packed files' issue, as it turns out, is not limited merely to the ATI crowd.

Start a custom game, exit to the main menu and start a new custom game. Repeat this two or three times - the first time, for me, it results in a massive pause when the game makes the initial autosave. CPU usage is at 99% and the computer appears to have locked up.

The second time is usually a CTD, but sometimes the machine does a cold reboot.

The third time is almost always a cold reboot.

Now, by unpacking the art files, this problem goes away. This suggests, to me, that somewhere in the binary code someone forgot to close a file handle or three. Or maybe they released or reused the filehandle pointer before closing the file. I have experienced symptoms like this when coding file I/O routines in assembler, and that's generally what the error was.

[Kuciwalker]

There's also the memory leak issue. Of course, when you have 2 gigs of RAM, it takes a while to notice

[Dolph]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker
There's also the memory leak issue. Of course, when you have 2 gigs of RAM, it takes a while to notice

2 gigs of RAM here and maybe that's why I have not noticed any problem. Everything works excellent in my PC, though on a game that I play now (large map - 9 civs) after the medieval era it is a bit slow.

[Stone-D]

I'm currently on 768 megs of ram, on a pruned XP install (no IE, no extraneous MS fluff). I *have* noticed the memory leak, but only upon exiting the game or switching to the desktop.

However, I have not particularly noticed such a leak ever since I unpacked the art files.

[Robert]

My 1GB RAM is full quiet quickly in the end game on a huge map

[Dolph]

BTW, what are these art files?
Some official patch or what?
Where do I find them and should I use them if I don't have any serious problem until now?

thanks

[Fuzzyhead]

Originally posted by Stone-D
I'm currently on 768 megs of ram, on a pruned XP install (no IE, no extraneous MS fluff). I *have* noticed the memory leak, but only upon exiting the game or switching to the desktop.

However, I have not particularly noticed such a leak ever since I unpacked the art files.

Tell me, how did you remove the (Internet) Explorer out of the WinXp kernel?

[Stone-D]

Not in the kernel, mate - shell32.dll, yes, explorer.exe, yes...

[GodSpawn]

With regard to the memory leak, and 2GB RAM:

You don't really need lots of RAM to avoid problems with a memory leak. You just need a humongous page file. The reason is that if memory is leaked, it is never accessed, and can therefore be paged out to the page file (in 4KB chunks), swapping out for physical memory that is going to be used.

Of course, you still have all the overhead of the data being written to disk, but it shouldn't have a HUGE effect.

If the paged-out memory is accessed after being paged out, then it has to be read back from disk again which causes a huge performance hit if it happens often. BUT then, by definition, it isn't a memory leak, since the memory is still being used...

So: Make yourselves a huge page file.

[GodSpawn]

Originally posted by Dolph
BTW, what are these art files?
Some official patch or what?
Where do I find them and should I use them if I don't have any serious problem until now?

See here, and scroll to near the end:

http://www.2kgames.com/civ4/support_ati.htm

[Shogun Gunner]

Perhaps I would agree that the SP seems to be somewhat free of bugs and that's worth a

However, the multiplayer stuff needs a lot of work. There are several bugs.

1. Opening the game from a mail message - automatically launching cIV will cause you to overwrite your info into the Player 1 slot. cIV PBEM Thread

2. The SMTP "automail" from the game doesn't work if your SMTP address requires authorization (account/password). See same thread listed above

3. There have been problems with people getting kicked off from the Gamespy lobby. Connection problems, etc. that go beyond the usual telecomm difficulties.

4. The MP game can crash in the middle of playing. This has happened twice to me when my oppponent and I both experienced a cIV crash to our desktop at the very same moment. We were doing nothing extraordinary in the game.

5. Others?

Anyway, I hope that Firaxis addresses these, the Pitboss persistent server feature inclusion and other MP bugs soon.

[player1]

This is one thing I noticed.

Due to some bad circumstances I can't boot from my regular HDD.
So I boot from old slow 8GB HDD, and then play game that is still installed at regualr HDD.

Now, obviously game is slower (much slower on loads) since virtual memory and game cache are on slow drive.

But this made me notice one thing.
"Play now" starts new game much slower then custom game with same options.

And I have no idea why it is like that.

[Fuzzyhead]

Originally posted by Stone-D
Not in the kernel, mate - shell32.dll, yes, explorer.exe, yes...

So if you only delete iexplore.exe, what does that do for you? Microsoft Update doesn't work, a heap of built-in HTML-features in other programmes doesn't work, you get registry issues with every major Win update.... And all that trouble for what?

Just install Firefox and forget iexplore.exe.....

[baboon]

Originally posted by Fuzzyhead


So if you only delete iexplore.exe, what does that do for you? Microsoft Update doesn't work, a heap of built-in HTML-features in other programmes doesn't work, you get registry issues with every major Win update.... And all that trouble for what?

Don't try this at home kids..

[Aileron]

Originally posted by Fuzzyhead


So if you only delete iexplore.exe, what does that do for you? Microsoft Update doesn't work, a heap of built-in HTML-features in other programmes doesn't work, you get registry issues with every major Win update.... And all that trouble for what?

Just install Firefox and forget iexplore.exe.....

I agree, deleting iexplore.exe could be dangerous. Use a different browser for web, and setup your software firewall to block all net access for iexplore.exe