Steam Civ4 Update

[Lewwyn]

unless you live somewhere where that kind of thing doesn't damn your immortal soul.

Welcome to China.

I use ISO disks that I downloaded here in China. But I have physical copies of both the windows and the mac versions of Civ4 and expansions back in the states.

[Lord Parkin]

For what it's worth, I wrote an email. Doubt it'll achieve anything, but who knows.

The recent Steam multiplayer update for Civilization IV - specifically the removal of "Direct IP" - has broken the Pitboss functionality of the game for Steam users. There is a small but enthusiastic community of several hundred people who still play active Civilization IV Pitboss games daily (see e.g. http://www.civstats.com/allgames.php for one of several sites tracking these games).

As of today, Direct IP functionality was removed for Steam users, which means only users with the CD version of the game can continue playing Pitboss games. As a result, a significant number of Pitboss players are unable to continue to play in games they have invested - in many cases - months of their time into.

Pitboss games are hosted locally by individuals on a private server to which other players can connect via Direct IP, with each game typically running for 6-12 months. Pitboss games are not, and have never been, connected through Gamespy or any third party. There is no practical reason why Pitboss games need be affected by the end of Gamespy services. I can only imagine legal reasons (e.g. attempting to make all multiplayer exclusive to Steam).

I would like to urge any parties responsible to reconsider the removal of "Direct IP" from Steam version of Civilization IV. The hundreds of Pitboss enthusiasts are a small fraction of the total multiplayer audience, but they too are paying customers. It does not seem right to remove functionality from their games which is entirely unrelated to Gamespy/Steam services, especially since CD users still maintain full access to Direct IP and Pitboss.

Please re-integrate Direct IP functionality into the Steam version to accommodate the hundreds of Pitboss enthusiasts! If you are unable to help, please forward this email to someone who can. Hundreds of paying customers are awaiting an answer.

[antisocialmunky]

It should probably work. You might be able to replace the exes's and the CVGame core thing in assets (whatever it is called).

[spacetyrantxenu]

I know, faux pas to quote yourself, but this is me from the PB18 tech thread:

Hi there guys, Steam user here. I'm currently connected to the game, seems to be working fine. I got a warning that my game files didn't match the hosts, but that doesn't seem to be causing a problem yet. Do we know whether Caledorn is running the Steam version or has a disc based installation?

Documentation forthcoming because I've tested a lot of different things, but I think simply rolling back to a previous version of the Civ4BeyondSword.exe and CvGameCoreDLL.dll did the trick. I don't know which (or both, or neither) did it yet, though. I'll probably have to let Steam autoupdate and fuck my installation back to the new patched version and fix it again from there.

But there's hope!

[spacetyrantxenu]

Oh, while I was testing things I tried launching the updated pitboss server. It looks the same as the previous version except that it's also missing the Direct IP connection method. I tried to set up an Internet based pitboss game and couldn't connect to it through the new MP lobby. The game was at least visible as a pitboss game though, so it's clearly intended now that pitboss games will connect through Steamworks. Why? Who knows.

I also tried running a LAN pitboss session, I couldn't even connect to that. Basically it just ate up CPU cycles until I killed the pitboss process. The pitboss softwaer either has been maimed to the point of death or it isn't finished yet.

[spacetyrantxenu]

There's no such thing as a change log I guess. Changes:

C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\sid meier's civilization iv beyond the sword\Assets\Python\PitBoss\PbWizard.py - minor editing to remove the Direct IP option from the pitboss client menu.
C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\sid meier's civilization iv beyond the sword\Assets\Python\Screens\CvOptionsScreen.py - commented out code (dropdown boxes) related to selecting audio capture and playback devices
C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\sid meier's civilization iv beyond the sword\Assets\XML\Text\CIV4GameText_Civilopedia_Bonuses.xml - fixed a typo (missed the word "be" in the English Civilopedia description of the Banana resource! )
C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\sid meier's civilization iv beyond the sword\Assets\XML\Text\CIV4GameText_Civilopedia_CivLeaders.xml - fixed typos in the English Civilopedia entries for Greece and Japan
C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\sid meier's civilization iv beyond the sword\Assets\XML\Text\CIV4GameText_Misc1.xml - added a new popup box saying "Steam Account Needed - Please launch and log into Steam in order to access multiplayer."

Consolidated a few Assets(0-3).fpk files into a larger Art0.FPK file

C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\sid meier's civilization iv beyond the sword\assets\CvGameCoreDLL.dll - file is smaller now, probably redid a lot of the network code but I don't know how to open up .DLL files to check them out. The text part of the file is different now, though, but just showing the different file size now.

Removed various .ico (icon) files

C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\sid meier's civilization iv beyond the sword\Beyond the Sword\Resource\Themes\Civ4\Civ4Theme_Common.thm - Changed some text fonts and colors. Why? Just so we'd know something is different?

C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\sid meier's civilization iv beyond the sword\Beyond the Sword\config\config.vdf - added this file, seems to have to do with network testing for finding closer servers to connect to.

C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\sid meier's civilization iv beyond the sword\Beyond the Sword\logs - 3 new files here, logging the new networking system.
C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\sid meier's civilization iv beyond the sword\CvGameCoreDLL (directory -- has been removed! Yeah, the DLL source is no longer included....)

C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\sid meier's civilization iv beyond the sword\testapp2.exe - removed
C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\sid meier's civilization iv beyond the sword\testapp8800.exe - removed

Several of the built-in mods have changes, mostly to their own game DLLs.

Other miscellaneous DLLs have been removed, some new ones added.

This list isn't exhaustive. I had about 900 asset files I couldn't restore quickly from Previous Versions due to the length of the file path/name . I can restore them from online backup but it's getting kind of late for that tonight.

[Jowy]

Does Steam not let you play the game if you disable automatic updates and don't update?

[spacetyrantxenu]

Does Steam not let you play the game if you disable automatic updates and don't update?

If you haven't received the update yet and still have the previously functional version you can disable updates and play using Direct IP just as before. Obviously your Internet option that points to Gamespy won't do anything though. But you can still play the older version game if you disable updates. That's the best option here, if you haven't already got the update.

[spacetyrantxenu]

OK, I was able to log into PB19 (no mod, base BTS) using a Steam installation and didn't crash the game server all to hell. All I did was replaced the updated Civ4BeyondSword.exe and CvGameCoreDLL.dll files with the prior versions.

Civ4BeyondSword.exe File Sizes
Steam version: 12,300 KB
Prior version: 12,528 KB

CvGameCoreDLL.dll File Sizes
Steam version: 4,828 KB
Prior version: 4,834 KB

Anyone logging in with the updated Steam game files (even if you swap back to the prior versions of Civ4BeyondSword.exe and CvGameCoreDLL.dll) will get a warning message when connecting to a pitboss game saying that your game files don't match the host's. That warning was almost surely an anti-cheating warning, but there isn't anything we can do about it for now. If someone wanted to solve that I expect you'd have to find a way to patch into the game some exceptions to the file checking logic that would ignore the Steam update changes, but I don't know how you'd even begin to do that.

If you find yourself without a backup copy of these two game files let's hope some of our members in countries with less restrictive (less stupid) copyright laws than those in the USA can get the files hosted somewhere for you to get them.

[WilliamLP]

For what it's worth, I wrote an email. Doubt it'll achieve anything, but who knows.

Thanks for doing that. It was a well written message and I really hope someone with some sanity reads it.