Galactic Civilizations II impressions

[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!

[Renegade 13]

In reference to frequency of crashing, SEIV has only crashed on me once in all the years I've played. Now THAT is impressive! Few games can be played for at least 1000 hours with only a single crash.

Can't even remember what exactly caused the error, it was an RCE but for the life of me I can't remember when it occurred.

[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.

[Kamog]

SEIV has *never* crashed on me since I switched to Windows XP last year. And I've spent hundreds of hours playing.

Now, SEIV used to crash quite often when I had Windows ME, especially when I used ALT-TAB to switch between SEIV and other programs. But it was a Windows ME problem and not an SEIV problem.

[Atrocities]

I have gotten SEIV to crash on me several times. Most often while playing the Expanded Mod with uber huge systems.

I will say though, RCE's are pretty much history. I have not seen an RCE since 1.49. Well one or two since then, but mostly do to issues that were addressed in 1.94.

Supporting a game going on six years after its release has to be a world record. Aaron should be nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize along with having his name in the Ginues Books (sp) for superior game support.

If the big boys played by Aarons rules, games would have a lot longer shelf and life span. SIX YEARS! This is simply unheard of! A First! The Fifth X in 4x gaming, eXceptional support!

[Hunpecked]

SE IV, the first 5X game! I like that.

SE IV Gold has crashed twice for me in about 15 months. Both times I was in a combat replay and a TDM-Tessellate ship was ramming one of mine (Terran). Dozens of other replays with ramming caused no problems, so the circumstances must be very specific.

[Emperor's Child]

I've also gotten SEIV to crash rather reliably with several of the memory-sucking mods that are hod on my paltry 256k RAM: Adamant and Invasion come to mind as games that got to the point I'd be assured of a crash if I opened the mod.

But I know what the problem is and can simply avoid it by not playing those mods.

[Ragnarok-X]

SEIV is barely crashing at all. Within the last years i can only remember about half a douzen crashed, ALL my fault, due to wrong modding and that strange out-of-range something like that error right after processing the first turn. I for one cant remember a single crash NOT *forced* by my behavior. In my conclusion, SEIV is one of the least-crashing games. Look at X1, X2, X3, take Master of Orion, take most RPGs (Temple of ELemental Evil comes to mind, as do Daggerfall series), even take CnC Generals, take the First Decade, take Civ4 they -all- crash occasionelly, be it with or without patches applied.