Damn you Windows Vista! (part 342)

[Catfish]

Timbatron's patched exe. Hadn't realised there were 2 others involved with patching, but it's kind of academic in terms of asking for help on CFC, as I can't log in anymore. I've e-mailed the site owners twice, but never received a response unfortunately.

If anyone has problems running Civ2 on 64-bit operating systems, they should at least try MastermindX’s 64-bit patcher. As far as not being able to log in, you could always create a DL. My Wobbegong account there was a DL. But that message was meant for anyone here reading this. I’ve seen on a number of occasions people posting issues here about utilities and patchers, when the development threads are over there. Pointless. If I’d never posted in the CPU usage thread, Timbatron would probably never have made the patch for ToT.

Also been playing Civ IV recently, or at least the superb ' history of three kingdoms' mod for Civ IV. This game sh1ts from a considerable height over any version of civ2 and is highly moddable.

I’ve played a fair bit of Civ4 myself recently; far more than Civ2 anyway. Mostly it’s been Fall From Heaven stuff. I’ll check out The History of Three Kingdoms when I reinstall Civ4. I’ve only recently installed Windows 7 (32-bit). I had a couple of issues with my WotR scenario, which I was able to fix. Video playback was the biggest worry. I’ll play it through one more time and then update the installation instructions.

[curtsibling]

Civ4 was OK, but I found it annoying to play at times...Hard to know what effect the
city screen was having on trade, etc. I guess it technologically is superior to CIV2,
seeing as it came out a decade or more later. But I when is comes to chess-like fun,
I can never find anything that comes close to CIV2...

The only other game I am playing at the moment is the Star Wars mod for Mount & Blade.

[civ2units]

I´m also thinking about using Windows 7 instead of XP. Does anyone knows if ToT works on Win 7? I´m still running ToT with the compatibility mode of XP, I´ve also heard about something like that is available in Windows 7. But I´m not sure if a program which needs Win98 runs on Win7

[Catfish]

Yes, there are compatibility modes in Windows 7. I’m running a 32-bit version of Windows 7. ToT works on that without the need for compatibility mode, but I plan to play a game right through before concluding that it’s fully compatible. So far, the only problem I’ve encountered (not including batch files) involves the playback of Indeo-encoded AVI files: I’d get a black screen. The Indeo 5 DLL is present in the System32 directory, but it’s not registered. After registering the DLL, videos worked fine. I never needed to run ToT, or any version of Civ2, in compatibility mode on Windows XP (32-bit).

If it came to the crunch, you could always use Windows Virtual PC to run Windows XP Mode in Windows 7 – a pretty straightforward process if you have Windows 7 Professional or higher. Your hardware also needs to support virtualisation. It allows you to run a Windows XP environment inside Windows 7. You’d start up Windows XP Mode just like any other application, and install and play Civ2 inside the application window.

[curtsibling]

I love the way Windows assumes that no-one is interested in any computing programs before 2005.

A bunch of nitwits...

[Catfish]

Microsoft would not have bothered with compatibility modes if they did. Why else would they include XP Mode – for an operating system released in 2001? And I just managed to install and run the original vanilla Civ2, released in 1996, on Windows 7 without compatibility mode. I think there’s plenty of legacy support in Windows. If you’re bitching about 64-bit versions of Windows not being able to run antiquated software, then all I can say is that you picked the wrong operating system. I'm no Microsoft fanboy; I'm just calling it as I see it.

[civ2units]

Good to hear that civ2 and ToT runs on your Windows 7, Catfish

This gives hope that it also should run on my computer. A life without Civ2, it would be a nightmare for me. Civ2 is the only game which I played since the release.

[Harry Tuttle]

Installed ToT vanilla original CD on Win 7, 64 bit - XP mode virtual machine. 4 GIG RAM. Install went fine, program ran fine at startup. Started a new fresh game no problems. After game started game functions extremely sluggish to the point where closing out of a game took probably 20 seconds.

Installed and running PSPro 8 in XP mode with no lag. So ToT problem not machine.

Installed Civ 2 vanilla original CD. Install went fine. Started new game, same results as ToT.

Ideas, besides installing a 32 bit OS?

[Catfish]

I’ll see if I can get my hands on a 64-bit version. When I upgrade to 4 GB RAM (no hurry there), I’m pretty sure I’ll switch over. There is 3rd-party virtualisation software, like VMware and VirtualBox, that might be worth trying. At the moment, I’ve still to work through a full game of ToT with the current setup.

[Mercator]

to everthing you've said in this thread, Catfish.

I'm running 64-bit Windows 7 too as of a few days ago. I "installed" both ToT and FW in XP mode too (I just copied the folders from my previous machine, plus some registry settings for ToT). I haven't really played yet, just started them up to see if they worked at all and loaded some savegames/walked around some settlers, and they were running just dandy.

@Harry: I'd suggest trying the CPU fix Catfish linked to earlier in this thread. Or at least check the CPU activity in the Task Manager...

[Harry Tuttle]

Yeah, I had the same thought too. I will DL the fix hopefully tonight and see if that'll cure it.

[Harry Tuttle]

Looks like Mercator had the right idea. I copied my already patched MGE folder over to the XP virtual partition and it worked no problem. Same with ToT.

[Catfish]

It’s looking like Windows 7 64-bit Professional or higher (Windows XP Mode), or any version of Windows 7 32-bit are the options for the Civ2 player. If your system has 4 GB or more of RAM, you’re probably going to go with the 64-bit version.

[Radyserb]

to everthing you've said in this thread, Catfish.

I'm running 64-bit Windows 7 too as of a few days ago. I "installed" both ToT and FW in XP mode too (I just copied the folders from my previous machine, plus some registry settings for ToT). I haven't really played yet, just started them up to see if they worked at all and loaded some savegames/walked around some settlers, and they were running just dandy.

Did you try to found cities too??

[Harry Tuttle]

I was able to found my first city... Is there a problem with the second?