Civ3 Platform?

[Adagio]

With Win me I only have half the problems as I had when I used Win 98

[korn469]

i just got Diablo 2: Lord of Destruction and it supports (in this order)

Windows XP, 2000, ME, 98, 95, NT SP5 or greater

all i'm saying is that civ3 had better have good windows XP/2000 support if it wants to stay around as long as civ2 did, once October 25th rolls around and windows XP comes out then M$ will stop supporting all other versions of windows except for some interim business support for w2k and will try to get everyone to migrate to XP...i'm saying that in fall of 2004 that most computers will running a version of windows will be running XP or better, and that ci3 wil need good XP support to last as long as civ2 has

[Swissy]

Originally posted by korn469
..., once October 25th rolls around and windows XP comes out then M$ will stop supporting all other versions of windows ...

Actually they will be supporting 98/ME for a long time. One of the features of XP is that it WILL NOT be backwards compatible with all the devices on the market. MS bent over backwards to make ME compatible with everything out there. That is why people have problems with ME, the OS recognizes the device and tries to apply the correct driver whether it is supported or not. XP will not do that, if your computer is more than a year old, better hope there are upgraded drivers and BIOS available or your out of luck trying to use XP.

Also, XP is based on the 2000 kernel, so if a game plays on 2000 it will play on XP.

[Inverse Icarus]

yea. i have a legally acquired, fully paid for and signed for andwhatever other crap you want to say copy of XP, and i installed it on my OLD box to see it before i tried it, (p1 200 w00t). nothing worked. had to get on internet and get drivers.

works now. but this box still uses Debian / ME.

[Jarouik]

Regarding the topic of the thread, I think they are bound to support Windows 2000 as well as 95/98/ME... especially with XP coming, it would be stupid of them to restrict Civ 3 to Microsoft's old operating systems only, and most professionals use Windows 2000 instead of 9x already... Considering that, in addition, most Windows games, even old ones that weren't designed with 2000/NT in mind, work in 2000 just fine, at least for me, I doubt they would deliberately design Civ 3 so that it would not work on Windows 2000/XP...

(I still have a 98 installation on my hard disk, but I haven't booted to Windows 98 a single time since I installed 2000 last autumn - most games I have, including Civ 2 and SMAC, work in 2000 perfectly. The only ones that won't function are old favourite DOS games such as X-COM Apocalypse and Transport Tycoon, which is a shame...)

[Nemo]

Actually Microsoft has publicly announced that they will stop providing technical support for windows 95 in 2002 and will stop providing technical support for windows 98/98se and NT 4 in 2004.

The down side to XP is the licensing...if all reports i have read are accurate and XP does not change prior to going gold, then if you upgrade too many of your hardware components XP will think its a new computer, and you will have to call M$ to reactivate you licensing. Also, they are releasing XP when there are many programs/drivers that have just become win2k/winME compliant not even a year ago...geez, too much crappy product being pushed in too little time, with little significant upgrades.

The good news is that many companies ARE starting to look to XP and producing software that will be compatible with it. Therefore, if it works on XP it should work on 2000 since M$ is slowly merging the 2 O/S' in order to phase out the home edition (or so was the plan 2 years ago -dont know if that goal has changed since then).

[SerapisIV]

I think XP support is vital to Civ3's future as a replayable game. I know that like Civ2, I plan to play the game for a long time. I plan to eventually upgrade my computer which inevitably means XP (face it Mac sucks even more then M$). So I can only hope that there will be few XP bugs relative to the game in general.

[Nemo]

wait a second!

Geez, I just remebered that Civ II runs on windows 2000 without any problems

So, why shouldn't Civ III?

[Sabre2th]

Civ3 will be a heck of a lot more complex than civ2 was, Nemo, so you never know.

For anyone that is trying to run old win95 games on Win2000:
There is a compatability mode for win95 and winnt software that wasn't tested with win2000. This seems to work with most games (with some exceptions).

I am also starting to firmly believe that Firaxis would have to be totally stupid and ignorant to not support win2000/xp.

I'm done now

[ancient]

Originally posted by Nemo


what have you been smoking?
absolutely.

ummm it is i had upgraded to 2000 i hated it and went back to 98 then later i tried me, also hated it and whent back to 98

[Mike Breitkreutz FIRAXIS]

While I can't say what the "official" requirements are for Civ3 (I don't know what they are yet), I can say that I am developing it on a system running Windows 2000 and it definitely runs in 2000.

[tniem]

I have been running Windows 2000 for about a year now and would just like to say a few things about the system.

First of all, yes at first it does have some compatibility problems with drivers. They can be fixed if the company that made them has updated drivers. If not you can try to fake it or upgrade. I upgraded, but that is just me.

Second, I have had zero problems with games. No matter how old school I have gone to see if Windows 2k could handle it, it always has. I have played old Dos games like Colonization and Windows games like SpyCraft without a problem. The Windows 2k kernel is good enough to handle older games even if it wasn't totally reversed egineered.

Finally, those talking bad about Windows 2k, it is by far the best system that MS has made. I have been running the computer I am typing on for over a week without a reboot. For you linux guys that is not big deal, but any older Windows system would have crashed by now. Windows ME crashed hourly on me.

So in conclusion I believe Firaxis will build it with Windows XP/2000 in mind, but if it doesn't I do not have any reason to doubt that it will work any way. Just as Mike just pointed out.

[Jarouik]

Originally posted by tniem
Finally, those talking bad about Windows 2k, it is by far the best system that MS has made. I have been running the computer I am typing on for over a week without a reboot. For you linux guys that is not big deal, but any older Windows system would have crashed by now. Windows ME crashed hourly on me.

I concur - I would never go back to Windows 98/ME. The stability and reliability of Win2K is something you could previously only have dreamed of, provided that you manage to get the system up and running and find the right drivers - older Windows versions admittedly still require less tweaking. Nevertheless, at work I installed Windows 2000 last autumn and it hasn't crashed a single time during the seven months I have been using it eight hours a day, five days a week, for various tasks including playing Civ 2 and posting at Apolyton (my "military" service, which luckily ends in a few weeks). I'd say that is something, even though at home I have been less fortunate, averaging at one blue screen stop error a month in Win2K.

[JellyDonut]

Ah, we have all had the fears of incompatibility. Why, I had a true horror story when I bought Warcraft II. I found out it didn't work on old, broken CD-ROMs. So I bought a new computer with $1200 bucks I had stored away. Was it worth it? Probably not. But this computer is a hell of a lot better than the other one.

Good thing Civ3 will work on Win2000. More scenarios for me in the future. I didn't have to worry; I have Win98.

[Adm.Naismith]

Originally posted by Mike Breitkreutz FIRAXIS
I can say that I am developing it on a system running Windows 2000 and it definitely runs in 2000.

Good! Thanks for the info, Mike.
Would you threat for us your collegues there at Firaxis, to give us some more harmless small info like this (not exactly industrial secrets, I suppose)?

Thank you in advance.