"Merry Christmas! :)"?

[Enigma_Nova]

Is anyone else annoyed by this pop-up that Harkonnen installed into his latest patch of Civ4?
I loaded up Civ4 on christmas, hoping to spread some Generic non-religion-related Love (Fallout) to my friends (Enemies), and instead I get a pop-up that is annoying on 3 counts.
1: Merry Christmas. Way to spread christian propaganda, Civ tried to be as religion nondescript as possible and you put this in.
2: The game doesn't load in the background. You have to acknowledge the window saying "look at me! I want attention! Give me attention or you don't get to play!", which is just damn annoying.
3: The only button available is 'OK'. This is infuriating. What if my christmas is NOT happy, and I am NOT okay? Am I obligated to feel cheery or something? If I've had to endure an hour with crappy relatives, and I feel like nuking something, I do NOT want to say OK. I'd prefer there be a second option.
"Merry Christmas!"
[ OK ] [ No, Go Screw yourself. Give me Civ4. ]

Harkonnen's patch is great, but I'm irritated by this apparently intended feature!

[player1]

Install patch 1.52 then and foget about harkonen unofficial fix...

[El Conquistador]

Merry Christmas to you !

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by player1
Install patch 1.52 then and foget about harkonen unofficial fix...

Patch 1.52 doesn't help with my problem.

[Aro]

Harkonnen's patch did it?

[player1]

But helps for his...

[Harkonnen604]

Yes, my patch did it and it will end doing this 1st January. Also 1.52 replaces 'zlib1.dll', so installing 1.52 will remove this as well.

There will be one (or two) more messages later on sundays between 9th and 20th for example if decide to stay with 1.09 and my fix. Further versions won't have this or... will they?

All of these are safeguards from Firaxis silently using my DLL. Well, they didn't do this anyway

P.S: Firaxis is also spreading christanism (catolic version) by releasing 1.52 close to 25th December.

P.P.S: Merry Christmas!

P.P.P.S: Following taoism, I don't know why I write all of that...

Enigma_Nova
P.P.P.P.S: Thanks for creating a seaparate thread for this; your nature too was imbued with good by this fix

[GeoModder]

Originally posted by Harkonnen604
Enigma_Nova
P.P.P.P.S: Thanks for creating a seaparate thread for this; your nature too was imbued with good by this fix

And since this seems to be the "unofficial" Christmas thread: M3RRY XM45 dud3s!

[Yolky]

Merry Christmas and lighten up. It's his patch and he can do what ever he wants to do to it.

If anything you should have emailed him privatley to discuss this instead of making it public rant. He made the patch (or what ever it is, I never even herd of it, havn't been here is a bit) out of his own time so when ever you download someone elses mod it's user be ware. At least it wasn't a virus.

Merry Christmas to everyone and Happy New year.

[Solver]

Originally posted by Harkonnen604
All of these are safeguards from Firaxis silently using my DLL. Well, they didn't do this anyway

Ne nado bitj takim paranoikom. Ne rossijskaja zhe kompanija v konce koncov!

And anyway, using your DLL would mean that they can't use the one with their own fixes, eh. Not to mention that there are far better ways to build in some check in your program .

[chuckdelicious]

Feliz Navidad.

/me scurries back to his marathon huge map game

[Harkonnen604]

Solver

Ne nado bitj takim paranoikom. Ne rossijskaja zhe kompanija v konce koncov!
(don't be so paranoid, that's not a Russian team after all...

Well, bearing in mind what they released prior to 1.52 and seriousness of that problem, I could afford being that paranoid and expecting 'russian' behavior... Also this was a safeguard not only (and not so much) from Firaxis, rather than from some another "decoder" claiming authorship of the fix and selling what I've done with some "clever" words why s/he won't release the source

P.S: As I've said at CFC, I'm ready to release the source when I see no reason to continue working with the fix. Right now I'm waiting for people opinions about 1.52. Some get freezes in several turns, and I think I know why... so probably this story isn't over yet...

[Solver]

I didn't say not a Russian team, I said not a Russian company .

You have to admit, though,that you won't be able to fix anything as effectively as people who have access to the actual game code and engine code, that is, Firaxis. The 1.52 patch fixes the outstanding memory problems with Civ4, while freezes... well, I can't say much about that now because I don't know the reasons.

BTW, sorry if I come across as if I don't like what you're doing - I quite appreciate the work you've done on your fix.

[Harkonnen604]

Solver
That's ok Team/company... About 'russian' I mean attitude to what is considered as "possible in mind", not as "possible in law". Well, laws never stopped those whose minds were wishing something alternative... but that's for another forum.

As about the code - you are right, but provided that that codebase is used properly. The fact that these changes are performed in a working product speaks for the opposite... Changes in 1.52 look to me like rush porting from say Java to C++ for speed reasons. Such optimizations should be undertaken when engine begins, not when it's glued to every piece of code...

My fix is the same kind of porting, yes Should AI code and entire game logics be available, I would consider recoding entire civ4.exe instead of D3D patching...

[Solver]

Don't forget that there's always the question of programmer decision. I think that not freeing memory the way it's freed in v152 previously was a conscious decision. It definitely was the wrong decision, though, given that Civ4 turned out to be extremely RAM intensive and given that, when these changes were implemented, they provided a really noticeable performance improvement.