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Answers From The Civ IV Team
My only question for Civ4 concerns the AI: Have you made it a crafty enough opponent yet that it can compete at the higher skill levels of the game without resorting to the "cheating" that we've seen in previous incarnations of the game? If so, how?
Soren Johnson:
A great deal of effort has been put into making the Civ IV AI the best yet. For the first time ever, we have received direct input from
the world's best Civ players during the game's development, via a very selective, closed beta that began very early. This feedback
allowed us to iterate on the AI's design much more quickly and effectively than ever before.
Much of the information cheating has been removed from the game (such as knowing where a resource is before it is discovered, sending off galleys with settlers to undiscovered lands, targeting cities with fewer defenders, etc.) Further, the heuristics it uses to make decisions, such as for diplomatic demands and declarations of war, are the same ones available to the player (such as from the power chart on the Demographics screen). However, as with all versions of Civ, the AI has production and research penalties at the lower levels and bonuses at the higher levels. The level of the bonuses are lower than they have ever been before; in fact, the AI never receives any bonuses whatsoever for building wonders - a far cry from the "free AI wonders" in Civ 1. Noble and Prince are the difficulty levels where the AI's rules are closest to the human's.
2. DRM in Civ IV - by Lord Ender
Civ III requires the installation CD be inserted every time you play, even though none of the content on the CD is used by the game
after installation. This annoys your customers by making them juggle CDs, unnecessarily wear out their hardware, and shorten their
battery life. Consequently, many of your customers install "No-CD Cracks" to fix this flaw in your software. How do you feel about the
existence and use of such cracks? Will you include this CD requirement in Civ IV even though it does not prevent copyright infringement
but still inconveniences your customers?
Soren Johnson:
Like our previous games, Civ IV requires the CD to be in the drive on start-up. The funding we get for all of our games, which allows us
to hire developers to work on the AI, graphics, interface, etc., is a direct reflection of how many copies our previous games have sold
in the marketplace. Thus, I hope people will understand that making sure that our games are purchased instead of stolen is very
important to us. Frankly, I do not agree that requiring the CD to be in the drive "does not prevent copyright infringement," even though
I understand that this is almost always true for the technically adept. This is a sensitive issue, but the future of game development
depends on preventing piracy, so I hope people will have patience with the basic safety measures we have used.
3. Politics - by MosesJones
How much will CiV4 use political shifts in countries as a cyclical change in approaches?
Soren Johnson:
Each of the leaders in the game has a certain political leaning that will become clear over the course of the game. Mao may pressure you
to adopt State Property while Roosevelt would encourage Universal Suffrage. Indeed, playing off these various interests is a core part
of the diplomatic game. We do not, however, have political shifts modeled - outside of the anarchy that occurs whenever the player
chooses to change Civics. Perhaps it is an idea to consider for the future.
4. Family Gaming - by carambola5
Growing up, playing games with the family meant getting out classic boardgames like Monopoly, Risk, etc. The Civilization games seem
like a prime candidate for breaking into the family-game-playing field. What, if any, steps has your team taken to bring your game(s) to
the level of "game night with the kids?" What technologies, such as display and control, need to be developed before such an environment
is realized?
Soren Johnson:
Civilization is a great game for families, especially now that true team-based play is possible. One could easily imagine a parent and
child playing together to Take Over the World. However, that situation does require a couple computers...while hot-seat is the option for
families with one computer. I am sure more could be done in this area, but the assumption of a single mouse and keyboard is certainly
the limitation. On a console, "family-night" may be more viable as multiple controllers would be available.
5. Portables - by BMonger
Is there any chance we'll get to see some of the Civ titles moved to portables? I think the game would play wonderfully on the
DS.
Soren Johnson:
We are very intrigued by the idea of Civ on a portable. Certainly, turn-based gaming has proved quite viable on that format - many of us
are big fans of Advance Wars. The fact that Civ can be put down and picked up at any time makes it a good fit. There are, however, no
official plans at this time.
6. The Civ4 AI - by freidog
Is the AI going to be as moddable and customizable as the rest of the game content? I know Mr. Caudill mentioned an 'AI SDK' for
'experienced programmers' over on the IGN Civ 4 preview to tailor the AI to their desires. But it was mentioned as a seperate entity
from the XML unit files and the basic Phython scripts. Basically I was hoping you could go into some more detail on what AI and other
more complex modding might entail.
Soren Johnson:
The AI for Civ IV is written entirely in C++. However, all the AI code (as well as game code) is compiled into a separate DLL which can
be replaced with a modified version. Essentially, the SDK release will be all of the files required to build this DLL. Thus, changing
the AI and "core" game rules (such as terrain, movement, production, etc.) is possible - one could implement a completely different
combat model, for example.
7. Alpha Centauri - by squiggleslash
I'm wondering if plans are afoot to work on Alpha Centauri, and if so, how the original will be improved upon. Some of us see AC as
the best in the whole (greater) Civilization series. Awesome game.
Soren Johnson:
There are no official plans to make a sequel for Alpha Centauri although it's certainly an idea we kick around every now and then. In
many ways, Civ IV is an attempt to incorporate many of the things which were great about SMAC into the core series. Civics obviously
derives directly from Social Engineering. Also, the promotions system can be seen as a more reward-based version of the Unit Workshop.
The increased role of leader personalities is also inspired by the diplomacy from SMAC. Thanks for the feedback...it definitely pushes us
to take a closer look at the idea of making a new version of SMAC. We'll keep you posted.
8. Python+XML vs lua - by SumDog
My questions are:
Why did you choose the language that you did (python + xml files)?
What are the advantages to this approach?
What are the disadvantages you've found using these technologies?
Soren Johnson:
We chose to use python because we wanted a well-supported scripting language that could extend our core code. Indeed, we wrote much more
code in python than we were expecting, including all in-game screens and the main interface. It was a huge win for the project because
writing code in a language with garbage collection simply goes faster than writing code in C++. The fact that users will be able to
easily mod the interface is a nice plus as well. The downside of python was that it significantly increased our build times, mostly from
linking with Boost. XML was chosen because it is a very flexible system for storing data, which is important for a game like
Civilization that is essentially "built" from numbers. Using an off-the-shelf XML editor, anyone from our designers to end users could
modify our game data. We also have a high-level file system which allows you to override any specific art, sound, python, or XML file
simply by setting a specific "mod directory" that contains only the modified files. If a specific file is not found in this directory,
the game just uses the default one.
9. Macro and Micro Management - by kenp2002
How did the Civ team address macro and micro management aspects of the game? RTS games are forced to place heavy consideration into
managing in real time units and control and the scope of an RTS prevents a snowball effect. Turned based games become burdened by
logistical considerations as a result of not having that same focus on micromanagement. Managing 55 workers in Civ3 along with 35 cities
becomes a logistical nightmare when governor AI doesn't learn from your play style. Which Direction is Civ4 taking?
Soren Johnson:
Removing unnecessary micromanagement from the game was a high-level design goal for Civ IV, one which paid off huge dividends in the
final product. We systematically looked at every piece of micromanagement from which Civ 1-3 suffered and figured out ways to remove it
without altering the underlying game dynamic. Pollution was removed in favor of a high-level health system. Beaker and hammer overflow
was introduced to end the incentive for min-maxing your citizens each and every turn. City riots were simply turned into angry citizens
to take away the need to continually check on your cities' happiness in case something went wrong. Workers now have two moves so that a
move and an order can be given on the same turn -reducing the number of times the player deals with an active worker by half. Also, some
high-level controls to allow micromanagement were added. For example, workers can be grouped together and given an infinite number of
sequential orders. Multiple cities can be selected at a time, allowing the player to change all cities on one continent to build tanks
with just two clicks.
10. Do you think 3D graphics will enhance gameplay? - by Anubis333
As a long time Civ player, I would have to say that I really didn't understand why it moved to 3D graphics. Will having the engine be
entirely 3D in Civ IV actually add to the gameplay in any way, other than have objects occlude one another? When I say 'add to the
gameplay' I mean, add to the game experience in a way 2D sprites couldn't. For example: Physics, multipls views, wind, etc.. (I have
only really seen the 3D globe, and like the idea).
Soren Johnson:
Graphics succeed in a Civilization game when they provide a good representation of the world's state. Simply put,
what-you-see-is-what-you-get is a lot easier with 3D than with 2D. Wonders and buildings now appear on the map, so the player doesn't
need to reference an advisor screen to see which city has the Pyramids. Improvements like farms and mines animate differently depending
on whether a city is working them or not. Multiple units can now be used to signify hit-points, instead of the old red/green bars. Now,
most of these ideas could have been executed in 2D, but certainly with more difficulty as everything displayed in 2D requires an
algorithmic system which must be built from scratch. From a pure design perspective, 3D provides an incredible amount of flexibility for
free.
A Mac version? Please? I know women of loose virtues with whom I could aquaint you! And gee whiz, with enough alcohol my virtues are known to flutter around a bit! Let's make a deal!
The AI for Civ IV is written entirely in C++. However, all the AI code (as well as game code) is compiled into a separate DLL which can be replaced with a modified version. Essentially, the SDK release will be all of the files required to build this DLL. Thus, changing the AI and "core" game rules (such as terrain, movement, production, etc.) is possible - one could implement a completely different combat model, for example.
It is surprising that the AI was not written in Python, which is highly integrated with this game. Indeed, Python is just the sort of language for writing such code. However, was it not done this way due to the slower execution speed of Python code, relative to C++?
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
I'd happily fax over my receipt if Firaxis provided an executable with no-cd check. Make it so that I'd have to have the CD in the drive to patch the file. Then the file is patched and the CD can go back on the shelf.
Good questions, good moderation, good answers. Nice work, all around.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
The Civilization games seem like a prime candidate for breaking into the family-game-playing field.
Isn't Civilization loosely based on a Wargame of a similar name? i.e. Thus the use of a hex grid and all? Maybe I'm wrong on this, but I could have sworn I saw it in a list of board games a few days ago. (I'm currently learning to play Starfire, for those of you who know what that is.)
Ah, here we are. It's under 'C' on this page. The link to the website seems to be defunct (along with the company?), so I really have no way of verifying this. Anyone?
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
It was pointed out that Civ for the family is hard because it would require multiple computers. I was in the Discovery Channel Store over the weekend at the Fashion Centre at Pentagon City and they had Civilization the board game -- I don't know for how many players but it was [obviously] multiplayer and looked a lot like Risk. If it wasn't selling for $49.99 I would've bought it.
...they got rid of pollution. Easily the most annoying aspect of Civ3. The ability to select multiple cities is also good news. Can't wait for my copy to arrive!
Why do you have to ask this stuff anymore? So you don't have to waste your breath, here is the response from every software company till the end of existence:
"We don't care about the customer's convenience, we want to get paid"
Thats it. Feel free to use my quote anytime.
Someone should have asked why the CivIV team didn't test it with ATI video cards.
It is an inconvenience unless they find another way to protect their IP. What it sounds like from his response was that the investors who paid money to produce this product wanted this in as a requirement. I don't think they like it either, but if it's a decision between making the game and having some DRM or not making it at all.. i'd choose for making the game.
"Thus, I hope people will understand that making sure that our games are purchased instead of stolen is very important to us." Maybe I don't really understand the issue here, but how exactly does DRM stop a person from shoplifting their game? Either they're barking up the wrong tree with their DRM scheme, or perhaps they should say "infringed" instead of "stolen".
Socialism: A feeling of discontent and resentment caused by a desire for the possessions or qualities of another.
Yes, god forbid that people be allowed to make games that people actually want to buy, so they can turn a profit. I would much rather the government decided what games were made. It's no surprise that games developed in China currently dominate the market. Imagine, without the profit motive how much work everyone would put into coming up with original and polished games! Surely once they can't make any money on it they'll do so much better. You know, because people are always more effective when they have no incentive to get anything done.
Feel free to mod me "-1 - Angry Jerk".
It should only take a competent programmer a couple of days, if even that, to become well accustomed to Python. And it's often far easier for your average person to learn than C++ is.
I reject your hypothesis on the basis that the assumptions it makes are incorrect.
Perhaps somebody will embed the Python (or Lua, etc.) interpreter into such an AI DLL, allowing for the AI to be written in a language that is often better suited for such complex tasks.
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
"Intellectual property" is the invention of greedy racist capitalist oligarchs bent on finding new ways to screw honest people out of their money.
I wonder if they have a patent on it...
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
"Deaths from MMORPG overload is a real issue affecting real people."
Won't somebody think of the CHILDREN!?!
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
Final Score:
python: 1
semicolons: 0
- my userid is lower than yours
Thus, I hope people will understand that making sure that our games are purchased instead of stolen is very important to us. Frankly, I do not agree that requiring the CD to be in the drive "does not prevent copyright infringement," even though I understand that this is almost always true for the technically adept. This is a sensitive issue, but the future of game development depends on preventing piracy, so I hope people will have patience with the basic safety measures we have used.
I wonder how not making the game available in the UK for another week affects piracy. I see that copies are already available on P2P, yet I have to wait till Nov 4th for it to go on sale here. I've pre-ordered it (so I probably will get it even later than that), but at least I'm paying for it; if I hadn't, it'd be mighty tempting to download the cracked version instead. Hell, it's mighty tempting to get the cracked version now anyway, and just read the manual of my 'proper' copy when it turns up, so I don't have to worry about the CD check.
Remember kids, it's all fun and games until someone commits wholesale galactic genocide.
Publishers demand it because retailers demand it. It's basically retailers like Wal-Mart pushing their weight around... they want to sell only games with copy protection because they save tons of time and money on fradulent returns. (I'm sure the publisher doesn't mind reducing returns themselves, for that matter.)
Comment of the year
I'd like to hire you. I'm willing to pay you NOTHING, because you tell me that people do much better work when they have no financial incentive to do so. Too bad you posted AC: you're missing out on a lot of great opportunities!
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
Yes, I thought about performance reasons. You obviously didn't bother to read my initial post on this matter:
However, was it not done this way due to the slower execution speed of Python code, relative to C++?
See, I specifically covered that very topic.
With a game such as this, increased AI "intelligence" could very well mitigate the slightly slower execution. Python allows for extremely complex systems to be developed very quickly, at the expense of runtime performance. Neural nets, for instance, can be implemented far easier in Python than in C++.
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
What, is it too difficult to comprehend that such a game would be extremely popular on OSX?
Ooooh, is it too difficult to comprehend that they can only afford so many programmers working at any one time, and that ports have to be done by the same people who are working on the original platform?
Infuriate left and right
It seems that the team didn't give too much thought to Lua. Which is fine, because Python is much more well-known than Lua. Still, Lua is a very nifty little language, and its integration API is much much cleaner and safer than Python's, IMO. No reference counting, all memory management is done as a black box. Plus, it's supposed to be faster for a lot of things. And, finally, it can be used for both script code and directly storing raw data.
http://zero-to-enterprise.blogspot.com/
If that's true, you'd better come up with some new ideas, because the way you are thinking now guarantees that games development has no future.
we want to get paid
And why not? If you want people to do work for free, move to Russia and time travel about half a century back.
And yes, I understand free software and all, but it should be the developer's choice to release the software as free. And most developers who spend at least 40 hours a week working on software aren't willing to work for free.
If you want a Civlike game without paying, freeciv does exist. If you want Civ IV, you'll have to pay.
Inconvenience for the customer is a valid reason for protesting CD requirements. Not wanting to pay isn't.
Go read Atlas Shrugged. You'll probably hate it - and there's nothing wrong with that - but you should at least see her viewpoint.
How about 1 copy of the game can run on 4-6 PCs on a LAN? I'd hate to have to buy 3 or 4 copies of the software just to have a family game.
Hotseat would work, but if you have the extra PCs, why go that route?
Sean D.
"Hmm. I am to metaphor cheese as metaphor cheese is to transitive verb crackers!"
Burn a copy of the original CD and just use the burned copy when you're playing the game. That's (still) allowed under fair use.
I suspect, however, that this isn't your REAL gripe with copy protection...
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
I have an issue where I can no longer play Civ III because my game CD cracked in the center and is no longer readable.
There's no real solution to this problem except for me to buy a whole new version of the game which is a total waste.
IF you're going to demand my CD, you should give me an easy/free way to keep on playing if something happens to my original disk.
The real refreshing thing about this game, is that it actually includes real documentation. Its amazing how many games, especially console games, have absolutely hideous docs. The late 80's/early 90's PC games usually came with heavy duty docs.
It's a shame there isn't a Colonization 2 in the works. Granted some of the political issues may be in the matter, but that doesn't stop us from playing bad guys in other games.
.63.
For those who have not played it, it looked like Civilization without science advances and with resource management.
It also plays fine in DOSbox
Something different does need to be done in this area. I hate having to have the CD in the drive as well, and I doubt it really helps much. And, as several people pointed out, I suspect it hurts sales by almost as much as it helps them.
I think that copyright law is broken in this regard too. It doesn't reflect the reality of what's easily possible. Games occupy a category that's more closely similar to music than software. Perhaps similar models could be adopted for funding games in a 'copies can't really be controlled' world. I would've pre-paid (in escrow) Firaxis $50 or more to produce them game if there was going to be a Linux version.
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
I hate to admit it, but I would probably be willing to accept some kind of DRM that was tied to my hardware in exchange for doing away with CD checks. The main reason is that I'm a laptop user and I quite frankly need the extra slot for a battery. Yes, I can just swap the CD drive in and out, but I generally don't carry it with me and then if I get the urge to play a game, I'm screwed. Well not really but I'm certainly not doing things the "white-hat" way.
I don't see why every media company...traditionally the most anti-computer bunch on the planet...can grudingly let go of their precious content when it's wrapped in DRM protections like Apple's FairPlay and Window's DRM...but computer game companies still dragging their feet. What if the game used FairPlay? You could install it on as many computers as you want and have two registered (I'd like five but I'm sure the bean counters would have a fit) If you wanted to play on a different computer, you would have to unregister one of your existing computers. That way I could install a game like Civ on my computer and my laptop, and those copies would only work on those devices. No crappy CD hassle, but no single authentication that can be passed around the office.
I know I'm advocating the spread of evil, but in this case, it's the lesser. It seems clear that after more than a decade, CD checks are not going way. Regardless of how painfully easy they are to bypass. I'm not even talking "techie" type easy. I'm talkind download CloneCD or install Daemon Tools type easy. I know nine-year-olds that know how to copy a game CD for their friends for crying out loud. That's not even counting the people who actually crack and release No-CD checks (which break needed game updates).
I applaud the Civ team giving an honest answer. They could have totally blown that question off. But I will bet a million imaginary dollars that there's not a single developer at the company that was swapping out CDs every time he compiled or tested the program. It's not about having patience. It's about someone telling that the emperor has no clothes so he can finally get a clue and go cover up his saggy pock-marked ass because we are tired of looking at it.
-JoeShmoe
.
-- I wonder which will go down in history as the bigger failure: the War on Drugs or the War on Filesharing
Here is a quick snap of the documentation included in the special edition.
I generally just bit-copy the cd and use daemon tools to avoid "enter cd 1" issues.
Not that I've actually purchased a game in a while that has copy protection of that sort on it (I just play mmo's these days which seem to think "valid account" is good enough protection).
Of course, I'm far less inclined to even consider purchasing programs that have intrusive/annoying copy protection schemes. If I have to inconvience myself to use a program I rightfully purchased I just crack the thing. Or get a copy from Juarez.
Off topic?? Come on, this is humour!!
Over in the Mac realm, we can usually make a virtual disk image of the original CD, and just load that before playing the game. Worked for SimCity 4 and a few other games. Apple's Disk Tool can copy a disc to the hard drive. When you double click on the copy, it mounts on the desktop as a virtual version of the original. Not sure if Windows has something like that as I've not had the need to do such a thing in Windows.
There is a site that has cracks for all new games. They come out almost immediatly after the game, they are updated with new patches, etc. All you do is download and use them, no technical skill required. Anyone that wishes to copy the game illegally will have no problem doing so.
However for those of us that want to stay legit, it would be nice to have a legit way to do it. I don't like having CDs in my drive because I'm careless. I like to install teh game, put the orignals in their box and put the box where it won't get damaged. A CD on my desk is just asking for trouble.
You know, theres plenty of games being made without profit motives right now. The vast majority of them are horrible.
How's this for a real gripe, then? I can use Nero to make a playable image of a CD, something I do on my older titles so that they can go on my laptop computer and I don't have to lug the original CDs with me (this was very useful when I was having CD-ROM driver issues that wer elocking up the computer [since fixed]). Games with the requirement of having the original CD don't let me do that.
You would see a lot more originality in games and less uninspired clones in the software "market" if the profit motive is done away with.
Sorry, there are only so many different versions of Tetris a man is willing to play in his lifetime.
God damn, someone give the man a mod!
People who would have a more difficult time managing normal life even without video games.
It's not the games, it's the people.
Work on the person, not the medium the person uses to do themselves harm.
Civanon.com was funny, if you found it offensive then I'm sorry to say you won't find a world sterile enough for you to be happy in.
Hmmm witty sig or funny sig? Maybe elitest techy sig!
http://www.mininova.org/get/138917
I was going for Funny or Redundant, or both. But Offtopic??? WTF??? Second post, and I didn't even modify it.
PC desktop and Mac laptop - both nVidia. And that's usually a bad thing! ;-)
any quick first off the hip impressions for a civ iii addict who is itching to get out of rehab?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I submitted the review for Civ 3 in Slashdot almost 4 years ago to the date - yowzers - http://features.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/11/ 02/0237227&tid=9&tid=10
I have not yet bought Civ 4. - I have enjoyed many a great hour with Civ3 and it's expansions - I recently upgraded to XP which prevented me from finishing the game on Space Race but for the most part, still enjoyed it although I've been migrating to console games lately.
I'm apprehensive on the 3d engine - I hated Panzer General 3D - a sequel to my beloved 2D wargames Panzer and Allied General - I want the game I enjoyed years ago, and it just feels like it's changing too much -
but at the same time, I remember how much I didn't like the old look of Civ 2 with it's 2D graphics and no depth or the old Civ 1 which was just a flat down view - and how changes made to every game eventually made me appreciate it more - who needs spies that can take out City Walls or that whole Spy network when you can pay an automated spy network and get past the micromanagement.
So I'll buy it when I get back - I'm eager to write another review.
RB
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ah honey, we're all resplendent - Bill Mallonee
Exactly how many CDs do you currently have to "lug" around? If I go on a trip with my laptop, I don't find the burden of 2 or 3 CDs that much of an inconvenience. Perhaps I just have a greater tolerance threshold for life's little irritations.
Some games actually look for this software and won't run if it's enabled. I think Flatout did that.
The global economy is a great thing until you feel it locally.
and as that wasn't bad enough - I gave the Civ 3. Limited Edition tin to a friend and I think he used it to hide weed in - LOL -
RB
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ah honey, we're all resplendent - Bill Mallonee
I don't understand why they don't take the path that Blizzard took with Starcraft. Have a spawn option that allows the use of installation of a multiplayer only version for use in local networks. Then you still need that one original installation with the CD. I think one thing that made Starcraft so popular was that at work you could easily create spawns to play after hours, then buy your own copy to play at home/online.
Bitter and proud of it.
Are there any decent reviews of civ 4 around? I'd prefer something not on a mega-corporate game site like gamespot, because they are just way too annoying. Whatever happened to user-run games sites? I miss the old games domain...(sigh).
robsanheim.com
> And why not? If you want people to do work for free, move to Russia and time travel about half a century back.
Just for the record, I have several former-Soviet-citizen-friends, and they report that they did, indeed, get paid. Ironically, the engineers got paid less than the brick-layers. But they still got paid.
Another way to look at it, though, would be that many got paid for doing no work. It's the quality of work that goes away when there's no incentive.
What's the exception? The enthusiast. In this environment (Slashdot), we are afflicted by a tremendous bias. Because *we* are hobbyists who "would do it anyway", "even if we didn't get paid", we feel that the Open Source movement has a chance. And it does, because it's an industry that can be driven by the few who "would do it anyway".
Bad model for the whole society though. We are *not* representative.
-Ant Slayer-
You --> Ignorant
Dude, you *have* to have the original game disk. Its part of the copy protection.
You can copy the disk, but the copy won't work because of fSafedisc. That's why its called "COPY PROTECTION".
Penguino, you are able to get around it.
Wearing out a cd drive a little is hardly spitting in someones face.
It sounds like you're waiting to buy a used copy, how many copies of that cd key do you think could be sold, if it's just the key/license number being mailed around? Keys do help keep honest people honest. It's very easy to try a game at friends house, and then not uninstall it immediately, and such a shame not to play until <whatever>...
I don't know how many other people have noticed this, but the game runs very slowly on my relatively high-end system. I had to change the resolution down to the minimum and the GFX down to medium before I got a decent frame rate and it's still fairly choppy. The windows install is pretty fresh and since the newest UT plays just fine I'm hard-pressed to see it as a system issue. Anyone else having performance issues?
My spec:
Athlon64 3500+ on a ASUS SLI motherboard
1 GB DDR400 RAM
GeForce Quadro FX 1300 (128 MB GFX memory, PCI express)
300 GB Western Digital SATA HD
WinXP (32 bit) Professional SP2
-- Political fascism requires a Fuhrer.
I would like to give a preemptive screw you to all the developers of Civ IV for my failing grades during finals week.
I blame you developers.
I hope this'll make it easy enough to rip the CD image and just mount it with Daemon Tools to play.
I hate CD swapping.
Hmmm witty sig or funny sig? Maybe elitest techy sig!
You can buy the game here: Sid Meier's Civilization IV Presell Edition. And if you use the "secret" A9.com discount, you can save an extra 1.57%!
On the one hand, I find it sad that some gomer would immediately put up a link to a download of this game. On the other, if I decide to buy it, the link might come in very handy as I would be able to avoid the requirement of a CD every time I play.
Still, at the very least posting such a link is quite disrespectful given the Civ IV Team has been very forthcoming in their answers.
People have been inventing stuff for a long time, regardless of the profit motive. In a socialist society those who want to make games will do so regardless (I'm not talking about Stalinism or State Capitalism, I'm talking about real socialism where people are free to work for themselves in a democratic manner).
Surely the United States leads in technology, but there's something screwy with the notion that people would do something simply for profit rather than the benefit of society.
--
As for working for nothing, I can't do that in a capitalist society. I'm a socialist but I'm not stupid.
You know, there are plenty of games being made for profit right now. The vast majority of them are horrible, too.
There are plenty of serious discussions about Python vs. Lua for game development. These two languages are easily the most popular choices (besides home-brew languages, which is pretty much an inferior choice to using something already developed like Lua or Python).
/ 2154222&tid=206&tid=156/
The really short version of the debate I've heard is:
1. Lua is easier to setup and integrate intially.
2. Python is a much more full fledged language, and generally better the larger the project is.
Also, in reply to your particular comments, modern Python is very good with memory management (it has added mark-and-sweep in addition to reference counting), and Python is fairly reasonable for "directly storing data". More specific to Civ4, however: Turn based games are not going to be as concerned about speed (where Lua often does win). (For instance, World of Warcraft uses Lua for the interface, and it really does need to be as fast as possible.)
Further Reading (says it better than I can).
http://lua-users.org/wiki/LuaVersusPython
http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/09/15
http://mozart.chat.net/~jeske/Projects/ScriptPerf
http://www.gdconf.com/archives/2004/ (search for 'Lua')
http://www.pygame.org/
- Jodiamonds
This comment by Soren really caught my eye:
Also, some high-level controls to allow micromanagement were added. For example, workers can be grouped together and given an infinite number of sequential orders.
My computer only has finite memory, so I'm curious how they are able to take an infinite command sequence and compress it to fit? It seems like I could take two arbitrary commands, assign them to represent binary 1 and binary 0, and then encode any arbitrary binary sequence of infinite length within the game.
Where do they store this?
I see how they can trivially consume all available physical memory and disk space on the local host, and assume that once that is exhausted they begin uploading the data to some network storage. But even Google and the NSA combined don't have infinite storage, so then what?
How do they encode data once they have exceeded the total capacity of all mass storage ever produced by humans?
Where does the data go once they have surpassed the storage capacity of the Universe?
This "infinite command sequence" is the most amazing thing I've ever heard come out of Firaxis, I've got to know more!
Soren, please answer!
Civ 3 Complete had a check for that on the PC side.
If you have Daemon Tools or Alcohol 110% installed it would refuse to start until they were removed.
They'll porbbaly use this in Civ 4 as well.
"Go read Atlas Shrugged."
Not really an appropriate comment. As someone can believe that people should get paid for their work but disagree with the much broader principles of AR's exercise in moral fiction.
Also 'go read' comments tent to make you look like you are avoiding the point. Surely there is a more succinct way of expressing the need for people getting paid for their work than going trough AR's 1200 page suma-in-search-of-an-editor.
Finally you seem to misrepresent the poster's view.
"We don't care about the customer's convenience, we want to get paid"
You seem to interpret as "Nobody is justified in wanting to get paid" but it would seem to me that the person is in fact saying "There are people who are willing to exchange customer convienience - which impacts their paychecks for something that ( rationally or not) they percieve as protecting their paychecks."
The funny thing about Atlas Shrugged to me was that it showed how real a force labor had become in the half century up til the time when she wrote the book. Before that time, her protegonists would simply have been able to exert their will upon whomever via hiring / firing or by unabashed graft and corruption.
Once labor organized and provided and provided a counterweight, the industrialists were all of a sudden Rand's heroic victims. Phooey i say. When the unions hire Pinkertons to murder executives, then we can talk victimization.
But then again, with the death of American manufacturing, the rise of the service industry and union murdering tactics like California's Prop 75, I guess it's really a moot point now anyway.
As Mr Lebowski said, "Your revolution is over, Mr. Lebowski. Condolences. The bums lost."
Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known. -- Carl Sagan
Something that existed in CivNet that has not existed since is the ability to play concurrently in multiplayer mode. This could lead to some aggravation (haha I attacked with my chariot before you could attack me with yours) but overall really sped things up and made it much more enjoyable for me. Any chance this is in the new civ?
People have been inventing stuff for a long time, regardless of the profit motive. In a socialist society those who want to make games will do so regardless (I'm not talking about Stalinism or State Capitalism, I'm talking about real socialism where people are free to work for themselves in a democratic manner)
Name one invention from a socialist non-Stalinist economy. Heck, name one socialist non-Stalinist economy. (The Ilse of the Utopians in More's Utopia does not count)
Explain how game writers whose games are not accepted by the players in the socialist economy would be supported by the other workers any more than game writers whose games do not sell well in a market economy. Why should the other members of the socialist society support the writers of games they don't want? Finally, since history's cup overflows with examples of failed socialist economies (and no success stories), who the heck in one has time to play video games and support game writers whose games no one wants to play when everyone's too busy scrounging for food?
We're clearly talking about different kinds of "horrible." The quality of industry-made games are far and above your average non-profit hobbyist game. Speaking as a hobbyist game developer.
Chris Sawyer? You out there? People like it when they're trusted with changing the numbers to mod the games. Amazingly, an even stronger community develops when you try not to hide the code. More people talk about it, more people purchase your game, and heck, sometimes even the developers are surprised. Unless the ego is too high for that.
I know this sounds rantish, especially since it's his code. But a lot of potential creativity with the game engine from the first RollerCoaster Tycoon was stifled for a long time because they were trying to undo run-time RLEs and other instant-crash modifications. Somehow, I can't imagine that putting them in there benefitted him at all.
-Rob
Biblical fiscal responsibility
If I download Civ4 using BT, have I deprived Firaxis Games of its property? No, they still have source and binaries and all of their distribution CDs.
What we're talking about is copyright violation. The parent notes that he's being pedantic, but with good reason. There is a difference - if I steal an orange from a vendor, he has one less orange no matter the alternative. If I download a game, the vendor still has the game. In fact, if it's a game I never would've bought in the first place, I've not deprived them of any revenue. That's why all of the figures about far-east 'piracy' costing the software industry billions is just rubbish. Most that illegally copy software never would've bought it in the first place.
The word 'steal' w.r.t. digitally copying software, music, and other IP is just misused - a very careful contrivance on the part of these industries to demonize those that do it.
People should be happy that you're taking over the world. I wonder how easy it will be to just turn off their ability to get pissed. From the article, it's not exactly clear about the angry citizens doing what, but it sounds like this problem was mostly taken care of. That will be nice. The idea of being able to manage idle citizens automatically is also nice. I always have them optomize science so I can win the space race, but I think it would be great if they could help with production every once in a while too.
This sig isn't original enough, it's time to come up with something witty...
I second that. I'm in law school; when I read the news a while back that Civ IV would shortly be going gold I went,
"AWESOME
Civ has remained continuously on my hard drive in one incarnation or another since 1990. Can't wait to try this one.
A preposition is a terrible thing to end a sentence with.
You know, I can't help but wonder if the current problems with copy-prevention* software actually stem from the idea that copyright infringement is stealing, which the RIAA have been creating, (for entirely different reasons of course, they need to make sure middlemen still exist). Understanding that copyright infringement and stealing are very different things is very similar to understanding that the problem isn't how to stop "piracy", but how to encourage purchasing. And once you understand that, not just intellectually but naturally as well, then it becomes increasingly obvious that pissing off your customers more and more isn't the cleverest way to go about it.
*"Copy-protection" is of course another example of inaccurate terminology designed to make people think about something in a distorted way that can be found within this field, going all the way back to the time a concept was named "copyright" rather than "copyrestriction".
3) Voice your complaint so the company gets an idea of what their market base wants. Just not buying doesn't say why you don't buy the product.
4) Buy it, and crack it.
I perfer a combination 3 and 4.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Thank you for filling my screen with the same goddamned text I scrolled past just several seconds ago. No, wait, I don't thank you at all and I don't think it's funny. My god, I thought QA sucked on the web in general but TWO FUCKING COPIES of the same story within 5 screenfulls of text?
Offtopic and deservedly so. Wish I hadn't used my last mod point in the last article or this would be even further down the drain.
i am a soviet space shuttle
"The vast majority of them are horrible."
Same is true about games being made with profit motives.
Pain lasts, kid. Its how you know you're alive. Sometimes I think this growing up thing is just pain management-TheMaxx
"... ..."
This is a sensitive issue, but the future of game development depends on preventing piracy,
This is false. If getting sales depend on your cds being uncrackable, the gaming industry would have collapsed by now.
Anone with even the slightest technical skill, or just curiosity, can get a crack to any game.
It also assumes people who can do that, won't buy a game. I can do this, and I will download a crack so I can play a game I have purchased without needlesly wearing md cd, and have to listen to it spin up and down.
"...so I hope people will have patience with the basic safety measures we have used."
No.
nice of you to relate useless CD protection with safety. I'm sure without it we would have many more CD game playing related injuries.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
It might have been funny the first 10 times. Then it might have been funny the next 100 times as retro-chic. But by now it has just become dull. I'm more interested in seeing more innovative posts please mods.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
Even though you bought the game, the simple act of circumventing this 'copy protection' makes one a criminal. Regardless of whether or not you let friends copy it. It ain't right but there it is.
Blar.
Dude, if you don't like their piracy counter measures then you already have the freedom to deal with them in a number of ways. You can start by simply not buying or playing the game. Make the value trade off. Either you value your principled stand on piracy counter measures or you place more value on playing to game so you'll compromise and accept the counter measures. Another option for you is to develop and distribute a great computer game and do so without any piracy counter measures. It should be easy for you. Is there anything standing in your way?
Civilization (the computer game) does not use a hex grid. It's a regular grid of squares that is rotated 45 degrees and squished a bit, but it's not in any way a hex grid. Each cell has 4 direct heighbors and 4 diagonal ones.
My real gripe is that I can't play it under wine. Simple as that. I'm not paying for something crippled so that I can't use it with my OS of choice.
I am trolling
Haha. You don't need a CD Check. The damn Civilopedia is sooo terrible in this game you can't play it without the hard copy reference material anyways. That's how you ensure people purchase the game. No other version of civ has required me to use the book/tech chart. Better be one of the first things they fix. Then they can worry about the ATI owners and the mislabeled play disks ;)
Its not nearly as bad with games being made with profit motives. In any given months, there are 2-3 games that I'm interested in buying, and there can be 2-3 more that are pretty good quality. The rest can be pretty average, but by no means horrible.
In hobbyist developement, most games never even get finished. Of the ones that do get finished, most of them range from pretty bad to horrible. Every once in a while you get a nice gem, but nowhere near the amount of good games that the industry puts out. And when the games are bad, they're really bad.
The torrent is not too a cracked version of the game. It is a disc image including the copy protection which is then mounted via Alcohol 120%. Which means you need to have the DVD file stored on your hard drive, eating up space. Some recent copy protection has proved very hard to crack, so of course the pirates work around the problem. Sometimes they distribute "mini images" which are disc images only containing the protection components the game checks for.
I know a lot of people think Valve's steam is a horrible thing, but at least I was able to buy it and download it and play. I'm still waiting for my Civilization 4 preorder to ship (the special edition wasn't available locally) from Amazon. Meanwhile, pirates are already enjoying the game.
Sometimes my arms bend back.
someone mod parent up!
i certainly am not the only one here interested in this info
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I mean, it's all good, and it's very nice. It's both good and nice. I think the goodness and niceness together of this article as well as the resulting good and nice discussion should be recognized, both for the fact that it is nice and also because it's good.
---GEC
I'm but the humble pupil, seeking to snatch the scratchbuilt pebble from the master's fully articulated hand
"We don't care about the developers getting paid, we want it for free!"
Seriously, it's NOT that big a freakin' deal to stick a CD in. What "wear and tear" is there in spinning a disc for a few seconds?
"Sufferin' succotash."
I appreciate the desire for the authors to safeguard their sales by making it harder for people to violate their copyrights.
Unfortunately, what I'd really like to do is play CIV on my laptop on the plane. When I travel, I do not typically take the CD drive with me (it takes up too much space in my carryon bag) so requiring me to even have a CD drive at the time I play the game is going to dissuade me from buying the game. Sure, I could wait till I find a no-CD crack that is claimed to work, and then buy the game, but I'd really rather just buy the game and go.
Sorry guys - I think you've just lost a sale.
they want to sell only games with copy protection because they save tons of time and money on fradulent returns.
Yeah right, like any retailer accepts opened game returns.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
I am but a lowly nobody, but when I play a game that I own and it requires me to have the cd inserted during play, I generally just image off the disk and mount it on a utility such as daemon tools, which allows you to play the game because it is using a virtual drive and it can also emulate various protection types. This way the game thinks that you have the disk in, you get to play it without having to go through the horrible work of lifting, ejecting and inserting that large cumbersome CD over and over like 2 times a day for the next 5 months. I know that this work will eventually lead to some form of debilitating condition so go with a utility that keeps you from doing this.
Those of us that don't want to break the law want a legit way to stop using CDs. It's annoying and like I siad, problematic. I screwed up my Starwars Battlefronts disc a couple months ago. I had it sitting on my desk out of it's case (like I said I'm careless) and it fell and I scooted over it with my chair. Ok no huge loss, the game was pretty much a waste of money, but still.
Now I know, I know, I should be more careful but you know? Nobody's perfect. I'm a messy person and careless with things like CDs. I would much rather just leave them safely in my closet until needed, which I do with games that will allow that like World of Warcraft and UT2004.
So the point is the people that are willing to break the law will do it anyways, regardless of the company issuing a legit no-CD version. A better tactic would be for the company to do as the orignal poster suggested and use some proof of purchase to get a unprotected copy.
Sure, people could use that to crack illegit copies, but they can do that anyhow. As it stands, the people obeying the law are the only ones that get screwed.
Aaaarrgh, kill me now! Steam is one of the worst ideas ever, from the standpoint of end-user rights. Never mind problems with updates unsynching clients and servers, etc., why in the HELL should I have to be connected to the internet in order to play a single player game???? That is MUCH more annoying than a CD check. With a CD check at least I can play anywhere on my laptop as long as I have the CD with me; if I had to use steam, I would only be able to play in those few places where I have an internet connection. Please, no centralized authentication. I hated it when Half Life had it (it caused nothing but problems), and I hate it now. That's one of the main reasons I haven't gotten Half Life 2 (that and the fact that the bastards refuse to reduce the price even though the game has been out six months or whatever - and their excuses for why it costs the same retail as over the internet; "It's not OUR fault, it's these damn agreements with the publisher that are FORCING us to sell at the same price as retail and SWALLOW all that damned PROFIT!"). Okay, I may have wandered a bit off topic there, but the point is that using something like Steam for authentication is a step in exactly the WRONG direction. Using something like Steam is like saying "okay mr. police officer, you can insert that radio transmitter under my skin so you can keep track of me wherever I go even though I haven't done anything illegal - just as long as it communicates to you by itself, cause I don't want to be inconvenienced!"
I remembered that there was a promotional video about upcoming n-gage games and that there was a shot from civ2 there... And so here it is, mobile version on civ: http://www.n-gage.com/en-R1/games/gamedata/civiliz ation.htm
Frankly, I do not agree that requiring the CD to be in the drive "does not prevent copyright infringement," even though I understand that this is almost always true for the technically adept.
That requires almost as much technical knowledge as circumventing the RIAA's protection - the shift key. Seriously, anyone who is technically adept enough to install the game in the first place will be able to find google and thus the game crack.
You're nothing; like me.
"why in the HELL should I have to be connected to the internet in order to play a single player game???? That is MUCH more annoying than a CD check. With a CD check at least I can play anywhere on my laptop as long as I have the CD with me" I meant it as an alternative, NOT as a replacement. For me having to put in a cd is just plain annoying. This is especially true because I have a silent computer and the cdrom is loud as hell. Just being able to run the game without having to juggle cd's would be nice.
Graphics succeed in a Civilization game when they provide a good representation of the world's state. Simply put, what-you-see-is-what-you-get is a lot easier with 3D than with 2D. Wonders and buildings now appear on the map, so the player doesn't need to reference an advisor screen to see which city has the Pyramids. Improvements like farms and mines animate differently depending on whether a city is working them or not. Multiple units can now be used to signify hit-points, instead of the old red/green bars. Now, most of these ideas could have been executed in 2D, but certainly with more difficulty as everything displayed in 2D requires an algorithmic system which must be built from scratch. From a pure design perspective, 3D provides an incredible amount of flexibility for free.
Seeing Pyramids on the map and farms worked on are all great (don't multiple units make too much clutter?) but I really don't know why they require a 3D map. I think they would be easier in 2D.
I can't name an invention that came from a Socialist society, however in the times that there have been successful implementations of socialism, productivity has gone up and general contentment of the population was positive. Until the people were crushed by outside force (these societies never fell from within, only from outside).
As for non-stalinist socialist economies, they exist through out the world in small communities, but they are not good examples of something more large scale and inclusive of the modern day issues.
Well I shouldnt be too surprised. I just received and installed my copy of Civ IV today, and after the 2 disk install process, the game is unable to start as it cannot find the cd that is in my drive. If I am unable to make this work, it will just be going back to the store, which is a shame as I have been waiting for this game for quite a while.
The most amusing part about it is the error dialog has a link to their site. The link goes to a blank page.
And they wonder why we complain about stupid copy protection schemes.
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
Anonymous Coward's critique on the ongoing efficacy and perceived necessity of copy-protection:
A: All copy protections are cracked. (Some people skilled in the art just plain enjoy doing it.)
B: Cracks are widely and rapidly distributed after this point, in a form unskilled users can utilise without much difficulty.
C: Aggressive copy protection techniques may be cracked slightly later than flexible ones.
This is, however, commonly counterbalanced by the crackers' sources often predating release; currently up to 7 days late for the most aggressive and new techniques, but this is extreme; typically from 24 hours before release, to 72 hours afterwards only. Widely available commercial wrapper-and-callback-style techniques (SecuROM, Safedisc, StarForce, what is it with S's?) have made the crackers' lives easier by presenting greater homogeneity than, say, in the 80s where schemes were relatively bespoke. And crackers actually target more challenging and aggressive schemes, because they often do it for the challenge.
D: As the aggressiveness of a copy protection technique increases, it is subject to more incompatibilities (deliberate "bad software" blacklists, unforeseen hardware advances tripping old your-machine-couldn't-possibly-be-this-fast sanity checks, etc).
E: Retail copies have copy protection. Warez copies might be slightly later (by point C), but don't have copy protection anymore. (By point A.)
F: By point E, only retail copies are affected by D. Given the competency of the average cracking and testing team, warez copies are actually often more likely to work than retail copies.
Therefore, only legitimate users are substantially negatively affected by the aggressiveness of a copy protection technique. The warez scene just sees a slight delay.
Does delaying a warez release by just a few hours or days actually have any statistically significant impact on sales revenue?
Is that impact greater than the - potentially very serious - customer service issue (returns, refunds, replacements, possibly even recalls) of serious incompatibilities resulting directly from overly aggressive copy protection?
Seriously; to make a legitimate business case for copy protection, rather than simply it's-how-we've-always-done-it plus the distaste of people freeloading something you have put a lot of emotional and economic investment into, you should consider funding a serious scientific study on this issue.
In the absence of serious scientific studies with one game with various protected and unprotected control groups, all we have is anecdotal evidence. But it's always very fresh anecdotal evidence, and there's no shortage of it; it's hard to ignore.
Maybe you could ask about the return rate on the DVD release of F.E.A.R. That was this month alone, with a copy protection with blacklists so aggressive, many gamers - including high-profile members of the gaming community like Tycho - just couldn't get it to work legitimately. If there wasn't a CD release available with a less aggressive copy protection, I suspect the copies bought:copies warezed ratio would not have been in the publisher's favour at all.
I might add: gamers are not, by and large, in a holy crusade against the evils of copy protection. Yet. They like games as much as you do - that's why they're called gamers, and they want you to keep making games they enjoy. Many can appreciate your wanting to protect your investments.
My warning is this: many publishers are now using copy protection so utterly paranoid it's become tweaky, obnoxious, and very very flaky. Gamers are increasingly not willing to put up with it, because it doesn't work right.
What you could, and should, to be asking yourselves, is why use an aggressive, but bought-in, copy protection technique, risk pissing your customers off, and STILL getting your game warezed more or less as soon as it's in stores, or at mo
I feel exactly the same way about CD copy protection. It's just a huge annoyance to me to have to have the CD in the drive, and its offensive to be treated as the criminal while the *real* infringers download a *more functional* version of the program that can run without these arbitrary restrictions.
:) Because it had this fucking Starforce thing on it that disabled my CD burner until I figured out what driver it was and uninstalled it. Thanks for wasting my fucking time by sabotaging other software I had installed on my computer, Ubisoft. I wonder if there's some sort of anti-spyware law I could sue them under, or something. I guess I'll settle for not buying any more of their copy-protected games.
In fact, I often create cracks on my own machine for the games I've bought, just so I can put the CD on the shelf and not have to insert it in the drive anymore. (I don't share them with other people or anything, this is just a convenience for myself). If I'm able to crack it within an hour or so, I'm usually satisfied and get on with playing the game. But there's at least two games that I've bought that I wasn't able to crack, and guess what? Those are collecting dust on my shelf, and one of them (Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory published by Ubisoft) made me so mad at the publisher that I actively avoid any games with the Ubisoft label on them now. (yeah I know, it's hard
As the original parent poster advocating the abolishment of Intellectual Property laws and the inequality of capitalism, I would like to comment on the state of free games and games made without the profit motive.
Just like any media, there will always be media that is of little value to most people, but great value to a minority of people.
The free or low cost games are made freely by those who participate in making them. However, most people don't have the resources of Bill Gates to use their free time to make the next great game. So obviously they have to cut corners in order to get their vision playable to the masses. If games were open source, and/or if it was easier to collaborate talent to attain certain goals, then these games can be a lot more enjoyable for a majority of people.
In a socialist society, where people don't have to worry about paying rent, or wondering if they have enough Ramen noodles to get through the week, then people would be free to do better and greater things. On the other hand, one can argue that the threat of starvation can encourage the programmer to do amazing things, but what does that say about society in general?
I tried this with Warcraft 3. Wouldn't recognize the disk. I'm sure I could have fiddled around and gotten it, but there was copy protection nero didn't wanna copy.
When cryptography is outlawed, bayl bhgynjf jvyy unir cevinpl
Well, after speaking with the nice chap from take two, I found out the play and install disks are mislabeled. You need to put disk 1 "install disk" in the drive, not disk 2 even though disk 2 is labeled "play".
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
As it stands, I'm upset that I own a game that is likely to become unplayable forever unless the publisher has the forsight to prepare a patch that utterly removes the Steam requirement. I'm not paying Valve another dime.
"The Devil does not know a lot because He's the Devil, He knows a lot because he's old." -- unknown
Frankly, I do not agree that requiring the CD to be in the drive "does not prevent copyright infringement
Then you're a mental midget, and I can't possibly see how you could oversee a successful project of any size. As such, I will not buy Civ IV. Please let us know what else you're working on in the future so that I can avoid those products as well.
A person would have to be even stupider than you to be completely stymied by the inability to actually use a piece of pirated software. This is 2005. People don't simply give in and buy the retail box when "insert disc into Drive D" appears on screen. They get the crack online. Or they ask the kid next door. Or what-have-you. Thinking otherwise is like thinking that a car thief is going to be baffled by the emergency brake preventing the car from going after he's hotwired it.
Actually, no. That's ascribing too much skill to the average pirate. Your mistaken belief is analogous to a shoplifter being unable to open the wrapper on a stolen candy bar and then paying someone to open the wrapper for him. It just doesn't happen. Ever.
The sole result -- the only result -- of disc-dongle copy protection is to annoy the paying buyer. You sir, are a fool.
www.kitchengeek.com -- Nosh for
They're relasing version IV of a consistently high selling game, so clearly the way they're thinking about it has sustained their development for a long time.
So I wonder how you foresee that conditions will change to make their attitude start guaranteeing their ultimate failure.
I've been a Civ player for years. However, as an anarchist, I continue to be annoyed at how the game slanders anarchism and anarchist players. The game should use "chaos" to describe to the periods during government change. Anarchy and anarchism describe societies that rely on a decentralized system of freedom and economic cooperation. You would think that in an era of anarchistic free software and open source movements, that our games would be more savvy about political systems.
On an unrelated note, given the recent spate of nautral disasters, has anything been built into the new version which throws problems like disasters at a civilization? That would spice up gameplay. How about revolutions?
This is easy. Just rip the CD to your hard drive, then mount the resulting .ISO image as a CD. Hard drives are so big these days that you're not going to miss the 650MB you have to waste on the CD image.
The most rabid believers in American Exceptionalism are the exact same people whose policies are destroying it.
My god, I thought QA sucked on the web in general but TWO FUCKING COPIES of the same story within 5 screenfulls of text?
You'll get to read it a third time once the dupe gets posted.
Since disk mounting is completely integrated into the OS (it's for example how most software is distributed), on Macs it's a little harder to do that. I do know some games don't like the standard mounting that OSX does (like Homeworld2) but I've found that mounting the image using roxio's toast (which shows the image to the system as a disc) works fine. Also, toast doesnt need to be running once the disc is mounted, so there's nothing to check for.
For the record, I do own the games I play, I just don't like carrying around all my cds with my laptop, and I can afford the space.
"goodbye and hello, as always" ~Prince Corwin, from Zelazny's Amber series
Ok, we'll put our best people working on it right away.
No offense, but i prefer Rise of Nations over Civilizations...
:(
-1 offtopic ~ just watch... or maybe flamebait, i'm not sure
<overrated>Insert Sig Here</overrated>
"but there's something screwy with the notion that people would do something simply for profit rather than the benefit of society."
I'm guessing someone else is paying your living expenses for you. Am I right?
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
Didn't want to ask them about the drugs, huh?
Chickens!
Pingus.
(semi-working Windows [unofficial] version)
I personally think it's fun enough to dedicate my time to its development.
I reserved Civ IV 4 months ago. It finally came in and it doesnt work with my Radeon X700 Card? Whats up with that? I had to shell out the 200$ to get it to work with battlefield 2 so it should be good enough to work with civ IV. Fatal Error: cant initialize renderer. I called Take two and apperently this is a widespread problem that theyre working on. ATI has a huge portion of the market. Should have tested it more guys........ :(
No plans for Civilization on a portable machine? So what is this: http://ngage.ign.com/articles/637/637897p1.html
Colonization rocked!
As the parent poster pointed out it runs perfectly in dosbox.
I'd also like to point out that there is a GPL clone. It's not perfect but as most GPL clones of commercial games, it has potential.
http://freecol.org/
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
How? (serious question).
Do you keep a blog somewhere?
It doesn't look like Aspyr's status page tracks ongoing progress.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.Read more of this story at Slashdot.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
has exactly that
While it has trouble with saving games (i.e. it doesn't) CivIII has been running on wine for a while.
I don't even have 3d acceleration enabled and my 1.6ghz, 64MB, 1GB system can run CivIII just fine under Gentoo Linux.
World Changing - News for Humans, Stuff about our planet
> it's a little harder to do that
Key word being "little". I highly doubt that OS X makes the difference between a virtual and a real disk totally invisible to the enviornment. On Windows these things are usually implemented as device drivers and therefore can easily see the implementation details.
I suspect that the CD Checks on Macs are half-assed because the developers are already shipping the product many months late(r) and are simply treating it as a checkbox feature per the whims of the original developer.
Whenever I hear the word 'Innovation', I reach for my pistol.
Ah well, you can go screw yourself then. If you can't think of any ways other than annoying your honest customers (and creating a broader market for pirated copies in the progress, since actual buyers will go looking for no-cd cracks), I don't feel your priorities as a developer are where they should be. I bet the game is full of such stupid design decisions as well and you will probably have put more effort into releasing the game before christmas than into testing it and fixing bugs. It's safe to assume that it will be as bug-ridden as Civ3 was at its release. For the record, both more expensive and more popular products than your latest incarnation of the worn-out Civ series exist that get it right and do not annoy customers with CD copy protection. Some examples: World of Warcraft, Microsoft Windows, Adobe Photoshop, ...
"I love my job, but I hate talking to people like you" (Freddie Mercury)
I am financially independent. I don't see the relevance whether someone else pays for my living conditions or whether I paid for it myself. But in case you're wondering, I own my own house. I've put in the the hard work and sweat to build my own foundations for me and my loved ones. Even in times of hardship, I've always taken the time to help those in need, because I know that I can fall back on my family if the situation ever got desperate. Fortuantely, things turned out well for me because if you help the community, they will help you in return. Now I devote some of my free time trying to spread social democracy.
I used to be a right winger when I was a young lad, but life taught me that many "virtues" that the right promoted were lies to justify all kinds of insanity.
Anyhow, I don't want to spend much time trying to justify my position; this is Slashdot were most of the members tend to lean right (fiscally conservative, socially liberal, like the Libertarian Party). My arguments are most likely to fall on deaf ears, though recently I am pleased to see more socialistic commentary on recent articles by the Slashdot community.
Civilization is coming to at least N-Gage soon:z ation.htm
http://www.n-gage.com/en-R1/games/gamedata/civili
Saving games? You mean, like, quiting the game and coming back to it later instead of playing 27 hours straight?
When did Civ introduce this feature - I wish I'd known about this when I was in college!
Pug
An Invisible Entity of Vast Power whose existence must be taken on faith alone: Liberal Media
Have you tried Triptych?
d /triptych.htm
It's really cool.
http://www.download-free-games.com/tetris_downloa
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Yeah, we know. Nothing good out there at all
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I can't name an invention that came from a Socialist society, however in the times that there have been successful implementations of socialism
But you are able to name one, just ONE successful implementation of socialism, aren't you?
A) The Kalishnokov Rifle. Obvious, yet true. Predates (I believe) Stalin.
B) Define Success Story. Poverty rates? Access to health care? Education? Literacy Rates? Ability to spend time with your family? All measurements that the U.S. tends to fall short of compared to 'Socialist' economies like Sweden, the U.K., Canada, France, et al.
Of course, if your measure of success is the capability for Bill Gates to amass a fortune 1 and 1/3 million times the average U.S. Salary because for his efforts, or the average CEO salary to be 400 times as much as the average salary of the workers that produce the product they sell, then you're undoubtably right, there's nothing quite like U.S. Capitalism.
Yay.
(Yeah I'm off topic. He started it!)
Pug
An Invisible Entity of Vast Power whose existence must be taken on faith alone: Liberal Media
Or, you could learn to take care of your shit better. Do you bitch about tire companies not giving you a free, new tire for your vehicle when it gets fucked up when you run over a nail, or something? No? I didn't think so.
I respect what you have accomplished in life. You should recognize, however, that our current capitalist system allows you to be charitable out of your own good heart, whereas socialism (and other forced wealth-redistribution ideologies) compells it. That's the difference between freedom and tyrrany.
Even though I do lean in that Libertarian direction as you suggest, I try not to dismiss or disparage alternate views.
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
I have an issue where I can no longer play Civ III because my game CD cracked in the center and is no longer readable.
There's no real solution to this problem except for me to buy a whole new version of the game which is a total waste.
IF you're going to demand my CD, you should give me an easy/free way to keep on playing if something happens to my original disk.
Valid enough point if they employ disc protection. There is a NOCD crack for it IIRC. But anyhow in the past they offered a low cost disk replacement program. I admit I couldn't get an Amiga version but I could understand there were issues like no longer having the hardware to make copies. I remember hearing that there wasn't really a replacement program in the UK, but US and Canada there was. Try looking in the box, if you still have the box. Try e-mailing them or mailing via post a polite letter with a nice photo copy of your damaged disc.
There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary. SHUT UP! There is no shut up. There is no shut up.
Well, I had the same feelings as you about PG3D, but I am really enjoying civ 4 so far. 3D isn't a problem if it's done right - and the graphics really become quite a bit better. (At least with 4X AA enabled) ;P
Civ III gives you the option of playing past the end of the game (by which I mean the point where a player wins, or turns run out).
ok, so in the real, pragmatic, non idealistic world.. there's this thing called funding..
if game developers had the currency to make, ship and market a game all by themselves, i'm sure they'd do it.. actually, i can think of a few examples (popcap spring to mind..)
the thing is, for a title of this magnitude to get off the ground, some form of third party funding is required. that means investors & publishers. these people generally have a business interest and model that they require recipients of their funding espouse. in layman's terms, we call this 'towing the party line'.
as much as i dislike DRM in general and agree with those people who have pointed out that cracks are easy to come by, if soren even accidentally implied that this scheme was as little as an inconvenience to legitimate customers, rather than the correct and proper piracy foiling measure that we all know it to be.. let's just say that *if* a civ V was *ever* released, it would probably be by a different team.
the publishers currently have the industry by the balls. there are several people looking to change this, and i can only hope they succeed..
All he wanted was his rug back, it really brought the room together.
Well I've wrestled with reality for thirty five years doctor, and I'm happy to say I finally won out over it.
I think you deserve that "insightful" mod more than I do.
Sorry, but the autoloading rifle was already invented. Just because there is a different model does not mean some new thing has been invented.
'Socialist' economies like Sweden, the U.K., Canada, France, et al.
Last I checked, Saabs, Land Rovers, and Fiats were for sale for money and the workers at the factories were paid wages that they were free to spend in stores as they see fit. You mistake countries with some socialized institutions for socialism, which is not a correct analysis. (The poster who started this thread was promoting complete socialism.) Here in the US, for example, there is socialized medical care in the form of Medicare and Medicade and there is socialized living in the form of Welfare. These programs go through staggering amounts of money raised by taxes, they just aren't as big and invasive as in the countries you list. If you are in the US, perhaps you've seen those bumper stickers that read "Work harder - Millions on welfare depend on you!".
Furthermore, as high as taxes are here in the US, they are MUCH higher in the countries you've listed. Socialism vs free market boils down to one question: Do you think government beaurocrats spend your money more wisely than you? I think not because I think I spend my money wisely. From your blistering criticisms of markets, it seems you do not and would rather someone else do it for you.
Of course, selling computer games is screwing people out of their money...
Slashdot gets more and more idiotic every day.
The twin joys of being a Mac gamer: waiting and the games are hardly ever discounted. Any chance the Civ3 Complete Edition will be available as an upgrade (and at a corresponding price)? I though not. :-(
Frankly, I got so much less enjoyment out of Civ3 than I did for SMAC/SMAX. Thanks again for the carbon ports for them. I went back to them (under OS X) after Civ3. Actually, after MoO3 -- also disappointing -- which I bought only because Civ3 was not engaging.
I am very much looking forward to Civ4 since it would seem that they are addressing all the shortcomings of Civ3. I am delighted you are on the job!
I paid the going retail price for a Windows screen reader and got a free Unix computer!
While I see your point and I'm not completely unsympathetic how does this differ from anything else? If my VCR eats my VHS tapes or accidentally tear a page out of a book or leave my LPs in the sun the only way to get the object in question to work again is to buy a new one. Yes, yes, the CD isn't the real good only the delivery medium, but that's the case with all sorts of intellectual property. Just because you have no problem going out and buying a new book rather than scanning and running OCR on everything you buy just in case you mess it up somehow doesn't change the fact that you broke it.
The best idea is to imagine that we're back in the old days where the media and the message were inextricably linked. If I screw up my NES cartridge my ability to play the game is over, same as if you happen to break your Civ CD. The fact that it's easier to try and get around the fact that you broke it and still use it is just a loophole, try to treat it as such.
Also, while accidents do happen, it might be a good idea to take this as a lesson and try to be a bit more careful in the future. I know I've personally never had a CD/DVD get scratched or broken and unusuable although I do see how if you treat them carelessly this could easily happen.
I usually keep about a dozen "CD-run" apps like this at a time. It's no so much bulk or weight, as convenience. It also reduces wear and tear on the disks themselves, making it less likely that I will damage the originals. Plus, running from HD makes the battery last longer than running from the CD.