Attention ATI Graphics Card Owners!

[Speaker]

Thanks, Speaker. (Sorry about the hassles!)

No worries, Sirian. I'm actually remarkably unupset about this. My close friends, who know me, are shocked that I'm not freaking out. But I have a lot of faith in Soren, Trip, (you), and the rest of the Firaxians, and I know there were plenty of fine beta testers who worked their asses off on the game. It's not like it wasn't tested. I know it was--thoroughly. It's too bad that this issue ruined what should have been a great day for Firaxis.

But I am thrilled with their response to it. Trip, Soren, and a couple others were posting at Apolyton as late as midnight, trying to help people get working copies. It was obvious there would need to be a patch of some sort, but they were still trying to help people with a work around. I was one of the first people to bring this issue to Take2 support as well, and their guy spent an hour on the phone with me. It was ultimately to no avail, but he tried his best.

Actually, the only thing that really upset me, although it was no real surprise, was the reaction by the CFC community. It was the first time in three years that I felt like going over to Apolyton would be a more worthwhile experience. I know there are always idiots on any message board, and Sullla would tell me to just ignore them, but these people are calling for Firaxians to be fired, demanding restitutions, already talking about getting their money back and "never buying another Firaxis product again." Relax people. In the video game world and the real world, nobody is perfect. Cars are often recalled. Electronics equipment breaks. Hell, even eggs are broken in the carton sometimes. But no one calls for the chicken to be fired. Or is it the hen? Wait, but who does the Rooster have sex with? SERENITY NOW!

I went to Staples today on my way home from work. I had an NVidia 6200 card in my hand and "showing remarkable restraint" as one of my good friends put it, I walked away. Firaxis will make good as soon as it is humanly possible. They always have in the past, and I trust them. I've found that when you put your faith in good people, you usually end up happy.

Well I guess I'll get off my soap box now.

PS- And I spent 10 hours trying to fix it yesterday. I should be pissed. But I'm not.

[Maniac Marshall]

I'm not pissed either really. I'd go buy a geforce card for my gf except its a labtop, so there really isn't much to be done. Maybe she'll end up getting a new labtop for Christmass instead of something from the Shane Co. this year.

- Maniac

[Speaker]

This just in: go here for a quick fix from Firaxis http://apolyton.net/forums/showthread.ph...did=140859 . God I hate being right. Especially when I took the higher ground. Thanks for the help Sirian! I appreciate it.

Who's ready to have some fun!

[Kylearan]

Hi,

Actually, the only thing that really upset me, although it was no real surprise, was the reaction by the CFC community.

Agreed. I took a peek at their forums several times during the day, and was shocked about the reaction from the people for whom the game (the GAME! It's a game!) didn't work. But then I was also driven away by the numerous "Is it available in City X yet" threads, or the endless polls etc...

That is the downside of the hype that is generated before a game gets released. Firaxis has, as any good company in the media business would have done, fuelled the pre-release hype and raised expectations to an extreme level, and while that supposedly will help selling more copies of the game, it will also result in more extreme reactions when the game won't run for a lot of people. They will have to live with that.

And we're talking about A LOT of people with very common video cards here. In fact I do wonder how that bug has been able to slip through during QA. If I shell out 50$ for a software product, I fully expect it to be working on my standard computer. I can understand some of the anger. No reason to overreact like a lot of people did, though, and I agree that Firaxis seems to be doing a good job trying to fix it ASAP.

In the video game world and the real world, nobody is perfect. Cars are often recalled.

If you buy a car, do you really want to return it to the company four or five times during the coming months for repairs and upgrades before it will be able to do what it is supposed to do, driving you over longer distances without it breaking down suddenly every few miles? Don't get me wrong: I'm not saying Civ 4 is too buggy, it works fine for me (although it *has* a lot of small quirks that could have been fixed before release), but the general state of the (PC) video game market is very sad IMHO. Few other products are sold in such an unfinished and buggy state as most computer games are, and we, the customers, are supposed to happily accept this? No thanks, not in a market that by now generates more revenue than Hollywood. Bah.

Anyway, I hope you get the game working soon; I consider myself lucky that I'm already able to play it.

-Kylearan

[Ozymandous]

Hi,


Agreed. I took a peek at their forums several times during the day, and was shocked about the reaction from the people for whom the game (the GAME! It's a game!) didn't work. But then I was also driven away by the numerous "Is it available in City X yet" threads, or the endless polls etc...

That is the downside of the hype that is generated before a game gets released. Firaxis has, as any good company in the media business would have done, fuelled the pre-release hype and raised expectations to an extreme level, and while that supposedly will help selling more copies of the game, it will also result in more extreme reactions when the game won't run for a lot of people. They will have to live with that.

CFC is merely a microcosm of the mentality of the 'average' PC gamer and it's a sad state, IMHO. For whatever reason a lot of people have this "me, Me, ME" mentality and have zero tolerance for anyone else, but expect all sorts of lee-way if they themselves goof.

FWIW, I don't think Firaxis failed to deliver what they promised, those who have the game, and can run it seem to be thrilled and delighted. To blame the delivery failures of Take2 on Firaxis shows a distinct lack of logical thinking on the part of the end consumer, IMHO.

And we're talking about A LOT of people with very common video cards here. In fact I do wonder how that bug has been able to slip through during QA. If I shell out 50$ for a software product, I fully expect it to be working on my standard computer. I can understand some of the anger. No reason to overreact like a lot of people did, though, and I agree that Firaxis seems to be doing a good job trying to fix it ASAP.


If you buy a car, do you really want to return it to the company four or five times during the coming months for repairs and upgrades before it will be able to do what it is supposed to do, driving you over longer distances without it breaking down suddenly every few miles? Don't get me wrong: I'm not saying Civ 4 is too buggy, it works fine for me (although it *has* a lot of small quirks that could have been fixed before release), but the general state of the (PC) video game market is very sad IMHO. Few other products are sold in such an unfinished and buggy state as most computer games are, and we, the customers, are supposed to happily accept this? No thanks, not in a market that by now generates more revenue than Hollywood. Bah.

Anyway, I hope you get the game working soon; I consider myself lucky that I'm already able to play it.

-Kylearan

Your analogy is a bit off Kylearan. Firstly, not -everyone- with the same video card is havign a problem, so to imply that's the case is missing the mark. Secondly, this game isn't like buying a car, but rather making a "do it yourself" car kit and having people put it together where some can't read the instructions, some use the wrong tools, etc.. Firaxis has no way to know what people have done to their PC's, be it loading pirated versions of the OS, having some weird 3rd party video card or substandard hardware components, not installing the right drivers or the DirectX, etc. Hell, even if people have the "ATI whatever" card, if it was made by Dell, or HP/Compaq or whatever it may not perform exactly as a 'stock' card made by ATI itself, which could have easily passed through QA as "bug free".

I'm not making excuses for Firaxis, but I do hardware & software support daily; it's my job. Until you've seen how individual people can have completely unrelated problems from identically build machines due to user actions on that PC you'd not understand the minor things that can be done to make things fail on a large scale. And I'm talking 300 or so people here, not 300k or 3 million, or whatever. If everyone had identical PC's with exactly rhe same hardware and software, and they hadn't 'tweaked' anything and the gaem shipped as failing them sure, I'd agree that Firaxis screwed up, but with all the variables out there, no game is going to work perfectly 100% of the time out of the box for everyone.

[Sullla]

Take-Two has made a number of unfortunate decisions, from pushing forward the release date (and thereby causing Civ4 to ship before every graphics card could be checked for compatibility) to the French tech tree posters (I wish I had one just for humor value) to their official website, which contained bizarre factual errors about the game (FDR as the 39th President? ) While I have a great deal of faith in Firaxis, I have considerably less respect for their publisher.

[Speaker]

I've got one Sullla. It's quite funny actually.

[Sirian]

Take-Two has made a number of unfortunate decisions, from pushing forward the release date (and thereby causing Civ4 to ship before every graphics card could be checked for compatibility) to the French tech tree posters (I wish I had one just for humor value) to their official website, which contained bizarre factual errors about the game (FDR as the 39th President? ) While I have a great deal of faith in Firaxis, I have considerably less respect for their publisher.

I see the publisher differently.

1. Pushing the date forward had NO negative impact on anything under my care (and that was a fair number of things).
* AI: performing well!
* Game Balance: balanced all the way through!
* Map Scripts: twenty-one of them, no known issues!

2. The ATI cards were a dice roll. We didn't get lucky! Lots of ATI cards were tested. I'm pretty sure this wasn't a matter of more time, but of an obscure hardware shortcoming on a minority of ATI cards. Not good, but in my view short of embarrassing.

3. The mixup on the disk numbers, the French tech tree... Not ideal, but relatively minor errors that the company is taking responsibility to remedy. I agree these are NOT good, and should not have occurred, but this may have been due to the rush from gold to store shelves, in less than a week. Take2 can take the hit for that, but it is THEIR process and NOT Firaxis's with the game development, that bore the brunt of the earlier release date.

4. The Civ4 website glitches... Yeah, well. But they got fixed quickly!


Overall I give Take2 pretty good marks, so far. Let's not be too harsh on them nor judge them too quickly. If they do something worthy of outrage, I won't hold back my views on it. This... is more in the category of having a game that is "going more mainstream" and subjecting itself to a wider variety of customers, including some who will say and do unfair things.

*shrug*

It took Civ3 a YEAR to complete its patching process. Atari, the former publisher, dropped MOO3 like a hot potato when it was released prematurely. Now THAT is what a premature release looks like. THIS is just a few bumps in a fairly smooth road.


My two bits. OK, now back to playing Civ4 because (honestly) I do love it so!


- Sirian

[Speaker]

Lots of opinion about Take2.......

I agree with everything Sirian said about Take 2. The French Tech Tree and Mislabeled CDs are a non-issue in my opinion. Who cares about the Tech Tree? I don't use it anyways. And it took me about 2 seconds to sort out the CD problem. Why would the second CD be the "Play" CD anyways? Bizarre screw ups, definitely, but nothing to get messed up about, and certainly not a sign of a larger failure. More likely some sort of worker error.

My two bits. OK, now back to playing Civ4 because (honestly) I do love it so!

MEEEEE TOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!111

[Ribannah]

I have a Radeon 8500 card not by ATI, but by Hercules. Civ4 will not load, it doesn't even create a log. All I get is this:

An unhandled win32 exception occurred in Civlization4.exe [3980]. Just-In-Time debugging this exception failed with the following error: No installed debugger has Just-In-Time debugging enabled. In Visual Studio, Just-In_time debugging can be enabled from Tools/Options/Debugging/Just-In-Time.

Check the documentation index for 'Just-in-time debugging, errors' for more information.

What now?