Galactic Civilizations II impressions

[Graeme Dice]

Imperator Fyron said:
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.

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

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_.

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.

I no longer buy games before trying them out because of this widespread beta-as-release phenomenom.

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

My computer was never broken or in even slightly bad shape.

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.

[Fyron]

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.

[Sivran]

I dislike it when people make ridiculous claims like

one crash every two hours is extremely low for any kind of game.

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?

[narf poit chez BOOM]

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

[Renegade 13]

Graeme Dice said:
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.

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.

[Suicide Junkie]

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.

[Will]

Graeme Dice said:
Running old versions of DirectX and old drivers is the users fault, not the developers.

... *snip* ...

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.

Ok, I was under the impression that the problem was people had DirectX 9.0b, and the game wanted 9.0c... ok, so the release dates for the two versions of the library are pretty distant, so it could be "old" in that sense... but 9.0b -> 9.0c was supposed to be a minor bugfix release, as evidenced by the internal version number going up by only two builds (i.e., compile all the fixes, "oops, there were a few typos", compile again, done). It wasn't something where there were only functions that required 9.0c. There is really no reason why the entire game should crash from that. And any testing department worthy of the title would test the game out under a variety of boxes, under a variety of hardware and environments. That means having computers from low end to high end, cheap no-name video cards, mid-range and high-end cards from BOTH nVidia and ATI, use both crappy on-board sound and sound cards, use Windows 98 through XP SP2, test it with the first release of DirectX 9.0, etc. If you only test it out on the same boxes that the devs use, you're going to find jack [censored] for problems.

And Fyron knows what he is doing with his computer. If he says it's a problem with the game and not the box, it almost certainly is a problem with the game. He knows how to take care of his machine, and he would check on drivers and patches for anything before complaining about it. Most of the people on these boards are the same way. While it is annoying to deal with people who complain about things that they screwed up because they have no clue what they're doing, your assumption in this case is entirely unfounded.

Oh, and I have played quite a few games, including several in DOS. Two hours between crashes is bad. I remember keeping some games up for days by playing a bit in the morning, going to school, play a little more when I get home, and so on. Games should not be expected to crash after as light a load as two hours. Period.

[Alneyan]

Why am I suddenly reminded about this poster ? I wonder... Really, reboots *are* a feature!

[Saber Cherry]

Will said:
Ok, I was under the impression that the problem was people had DirectX 9.0b, and the game wanted 9.0c... ok, so the release dates for the two versions of the library are pretty distant, so it could be "old" in that sense... but 9.0b -> 9.0c was supposed to be a minor bugfix release, as evidenced by the internal version number going up by only two builds (i.e., compile all the fixes, "oops, there were a few typos", compile again, done). It wasn't something where there were only functions that required 9.0c.

According to Graeme's link, "the" problem was people with 9.0c thinking they didn't need to upgrade to Firaxis's 9.0c (let's call it 9c'), and thus a problem with Microsoft's naming convention... or else, people with 9.0c being unable to upgrade to 9c' because the Direct X installer was broken.

I honestly don't believe that. First off, all this "the problem" crap implies that Civ IV had a single problem. Second, the game's graphics were only ~85% functional on my Radeon 9800 Pro, after the 1-month patch. Third, I had DX 9.0b, so I upgraded to Firaxis's 9.0c when prompted, and had major graphical corruption - and a host of other problems. Therefore, I conclude that while some earlier adopters were probably unable to play at all because Firaxis shipped a broken game with a broken DX 9c' installer, the game was still broken regardless of people's DX version, and a straight month of intense bug-fixing by a huge corporation - taking advantage of hundreds of thousands of unwilling reverse-salaried beta testers - was unable to remedy it.

In their defense, I heard of a major game once (forgot the name) that recursively deleted your entire harddrive when you uninstalled, if you had installed anywhere other than the default directory. Whereas Civ IV's uninstall went quite smoothly.

[Phoenix-D]

Actually there were *several* games that did that. Sort of pathetic, really.