Please, please, Allow Civ 3 to be played in a window

[Alexander's Horse]

This is very important to multiplayers, who need to keep in touch throughout the game via icq or aim.


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Founder, Dear Leader and Great Helmsman of the People's Republic of Topics www.delphi.com/prot1

[GaryGuanine]

Hey! Stealing my idea!

Just kidding. I agree with you wholeheartedly. I guess you didn't really steal my idea, since I never even thought of the multiplayer implications, another very valid point.

Gary

[connorkimbro]

couldn't there be some sort of ingame chat feature? enough other games already have something like that.

but i agree, civ3 in a window WOULD be nice, as long as it doesn't detract from gameplay/graphics/whatever.

[Alexander's Horse]

quote: Originally posted by connorkimbro on 04-23-2001 11:27 PM couldn't there be some sort of ingame chat feature? enough other games already have something like that.

Er, there already is an ingame chat feature. This is not the problem.

The problem is when the game hangs or a player drops - we use icq to communicate and trouble shoot during play.

Also Multiplayer turns can be very long, many players minimise the game window and do other stuff during play, incuding usuing aim or icq to chat. The game pops up again when its your turn. This is a very handy feature.

Everyone is afraid civ III won't be in a window like Civ II is.



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Founder, Dear Leader and Great Helmsman of the People's Republic of Topics www.delphi.com/prot1

[Roman]

I agree that Civ 3 should run in a window. This is much more convenient than running it full-screen.

[MidKnight Lament]

Maybe this is the non-multiplayer in me talking, but I'd be disappointed if I couldn't run it nicely in full screen. You lose a lot of atmosphere in a window. Obviously the best case scenario would be to have the choice, but that's probably unlikely.

So I have to admit I'm a bit torn...

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- MKL ... "And a sun that doesn't set but settles" - Augie March
Shameless Plug: http://www.poetic-license.org ............. All welcome.

[Alexander's Horse]

Could the single players and eye candy freaks please get the hell off this thread

The multiplayers are talking.



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Founder, Dear Leader and Great Helmsman of PROT -the People's Republic of Topics www.delphi.com/prot1

[Ceci n'est pas Snapcase]

Hah! Good luck getting that, it'll be DirectX all the way, baby...

Snapcase, Single Player/Eye Candy Freak.

[Lawrence of Arabia]

Most of the time, alt-tab-bing our is bad for the program

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Its okay to smile; you're in America now

[Alexander's Horse]

I don't think the games marketers have any idea just how big and growing the multiplayer community is. If they did they'd pay more attention to what we say.


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Founder, Dear Leader and Great Helmsman of PROT -the People's Republic of Topics www.delphi.com/prot1

[SerapisIV]

The problem is that turn-based multiplayer is too long. Most Civ players don't bother with it. Not to exclude multiplayers but with Civ style games, companies focus on the core purchasers who play mostly single-player. They're maximizing their effort to benefit the most players. Hopefully CivIII will have some new features to help that (Sid mentioned similar thoughts in a past interview).

[johndmuller]

If it's a full screen application, you most likely can do enough task switching what with CTRL-ESC to bring up the Task bar and/or ALT-TAB to move among active jobs (and probably other methods as well). As to the aesthetics, all the Windows framing and assorted things that go around even a minimal window, do take away at least a little. A hot spot on the screen, like a little Windows logo (or other OS symbol), which, when clicked (double clicked or whatever) would minimize or reduce the game giving relatively easy access to other apps, would be, IMHO, a convenience.

Of more importance to me would be the investment, by the programmers, of a generous amount of resources in making sure that there is the MAXIMUM amount of (windows) environmentally friendly behavior. That includes, among other things on a long list (which I am sure that many of you could supplement), trying to avoid hogging the audio system, messing around too much with the video settings and so forth. To the extent possible, having the program work around things such as system font selection, screen resolution, palettes, etc. would make the program more civilized. I'm sure that some of these are technically challenging or absurd (like trying to run it on a CGA). In some cases, the user could be given advice like "playing with fewer than 256 colors is not recommended" but still run with the users settings in windows mode or asked to choose between full screen mode (where the game messes with the video settings) and windows mode (where the game tries to live with the existing windows settings), but the more time the programmers spend on dealing with lots of variations, the more flexible (read better) the game will be. This could also make installation and setup less traumatic; not many of us want to custom configure our systems to different settings for different apps.
[This message has been edited by johndmuller (edited April 24, 2001).]

[MidKnight Lament]

quote: Originally posted by Alexander's Horse on 04-24-2001 06:02 PM Could the single players and eye candy freaks please get the hell off this thread The multiplayers are talking.

Always a charmer.
Good to see you haven't changed, mate.

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- MKL ... "And a sun that doesn't set but settles" - Augie March
Shameless Plug: http://www.poetic-license.org ............. All welcome.

[Jarouik]

I, for one, rarely or never play multiplayer Civilization, but would definitely want to have Civ 3 in a window anyway. All those countless hours of single player Civ 2 were partly made possible for me by the fact that the game is easily available and can be left on all the time while I surf the net, read email, use ICQ, listen to music and whatever else I might be doing - if the game e.g. changes system-wide video settings in any way, like SMAC, it would render other programs so ugly as to be unusable.

If you can't have it in a window, it had better be full-screen so that it is easily minimized and maximized and alt-tabbed out of and into like most games without affecting any other programs, not the way SMAC does it changing the whole system to 256 colors. A window, however, is the best option, since I have two displays and I love nothing more than being able to have any other programs open on my secondary display and clicking and using them any way I like while Civilization is still visible and open on my primary display - if you alt-tab out of a full-screen game, it will no longer be visible!

(Edited spelling)
[This message has been edited by Jarouik (edited April 25, 2001).]

[Roman]

I also play almost eclusively single player (though I do play hotseat quite a lot). However, running Civ 3 in a window is still much better than full-screen. I don't care for eye-candy and windowed programs allow much better multitasking even for those of us who play mostly single player. I hope Firaxis will listen.