Re: Galactic Civilizations II impressions
 

It wasn't a problem with having 9.0b. It was a problem where the install routine Microsoft provided didn't upgrade 9.0c installs to the latest version of 9.0c.

Have you ever played more than a half dozen various games? Games have crashed every few hours well back into the DOS era.

Did you make any attempts to fix your computer if the crashes were that common?

Re: Galactic Civilizations II impressions
 

The lead developer certainly cared.
Civ 4 Problems

Re: Galactic Civilizations II impressions
 

SimCity 3 was better after the Rush Hour expansion pack came out. So yes, it was broken at game launch.

Re: Galactic Civilizations II impressions
 

Please don't shift the blame away from Firaxis here. A patch of the game fixed the problems without ANY reinstalls of DirectX or video card drivers. They did not test the environment very well and did not initially make the game able to run well with those older drivers or versions of DirectX.

I have played many games, and stop playing the ones that have inexplicable, repeating crashes. Very few games I have ever seen crash periodically _in the middle of every turn_. Forget every few hours... It is not excusable for anyone to release horridly buggy games. I no longer buy games before trying them out because of this widespread beta-as-release phenomenom.

My computer was never broken or in even slightly bad shape. The computer never crashed, only Civ 4 crashed. In the first version that wouldn't even have the game start, I did attempt to perform the ridiculous procedure that Firaxis posted of reinstalling drivers and the game, but it did nothing to alleviate that problem. After some patches it would run, but crash once the game had progressed to a certain point. There was nothing for me to fix, short of hex editing fixes into the Civ4 exe, since there was never anything wrong with my computer, but with the game. Now that they are finally progressing from the beta stage, the game runs rather smoothly, without any further dicking around with reinstalling drivers and DirectX.

Anyways, this thread is about GalCiv II, not Civ4, so I won't post anything further about it in this thread.

Re: Galactic Civilizations II impressions
 

Running old versions of DirectX and old drivers is the users fault, not the developers.

Then you haven't played very many games at all, and especially not many DOS games as I said. Random, unpredictable, even predictable crashes have always been, and always will be part of PC games.

Please don't attempt to rationalize a justification for piracy.

How do you know? Did you make any attempt to fix the dozen or so problems that all computers have. Did you purge your registry of entries from programs that you uninstalled months ago? Did you update all your drivers? I dislike it when people aren't willing to perform even basic maintenance on their computers before making complaints.

Re: Galactic Civilizations II impressions
 

Borrowing a game from a friend (where he does not make a CD image to keep playing it while you have the CD) is totally within the realm of fair use. I only respond to this because this bizarre assumption of piracy from left field might lead others to believe that it is not. Without a demo, there is no other way to test a game on your machine to see if it will run. You can't return opened games to stores these days (at least in California), since everyone that wants to return software is a dirty pirate.

Re: Galactic Civilizations II impressions
 

I dislike it when people make ridiculous claims like Listen to yourself! Or rather, read. Can you not see just how ridiculous this statement is? That's a candidate for Sivran's Most Ridiculous Item of the Day, AFTER I spent an entire day listening to novice computer users describe their problems to me!

I suppose you're also going to say that Windows 9x/ME could not possibly function for more than twenty-four hours at a time, and that spyware "just happens," and that deleting your browser cache is actually useful in more than a small handful of situations?

Re: Galactic Civilizations II impressions
 

I foresee yelling. Much yelling. And I've got a headache.

Re: Galactic Civilizations II impressions
 

I don't want to wade into the arguement too far here, but this statement is, in my experience not true.

I have bought many games through the years, and few have crashes at all let alone crashes every couple hours.

I also have to disagree that random, predictable and unpredictable crashes always will be a part of PC games, since that implies there is nothing that can be done about it. That is not true. Crashes are inevitable, yes, given the massive amount of hardware and software combinations that exist. Something won't play nice with something else, and cause a crash. However, there is absolutely no reason why the vast majority of such bugs can not be caught by the developer during beta testing. The rest that emerge after release should be taken care of in a patch as soon as possible.

There is no reason a gaming company should have a "finished" product that crashes in more than the most unusual circumstances. Crashes are not an unavoidable part of PC gaming.

Re: Galactic Civilizations II impressions
 

Over 20 years, I have had more DOS "crashes" due to power outages than software problems.

Windows itself is very unstable compared to DOS games.

And just to be clear, attempting to run DOS games under windows dosen't count. Boot to DOS with a floppy, and keep in mind that your hardware is a hundred times more than the game and the OS was designed for. It works damn well.