1 They do have Call to Power 2, which is a Civ game (the first one was called Civilization: Call to Power, but then Activision lost the naming rights somehow).

Uru is one of the sequels to Myst; they all appear to involve the kind of pointless puzzles that I hate, so I've never played any of them.

2

Uru was going to have a bunch of online content and stuff, and then that got cancelled.

As for the Civilization games, if you can get to wal-mart, target, etc., you can usually find Civ 3 for $10 and Civ 4 for $20...altho Civ 4, which I just picked up last night, is a bit quirky as far as the installer goes under Windows 7.

3

Oddly enough, I just ordered both of those games from Fry's for exactly those prices. Should have them by the end of the week.

I don't think I've ever even seen a Walmart. There certainly isn't one within walking distance, and I don't have a car.

4 Rick, the installer for Civ4 was quirky under XP!  The announcement for Civ5 got me wanting to play again, so I tried to install 4 on my system.  I wound up having to copy the contents of both CDs to my main hard drive and install from that, while having the physical disc in my DVD drive... which is the workaround recommended by Firaxis.

5

The big thing I'm worried about now when it comes to games is if they "know" that the screen is 4:3. Some of the games I've got around here are unplayable because of that. "Pandora's Box" is an example; it goes into full-screen 1024*768 mode. My display will support 1024*768, but my display is 16:9, not 4:3, so the aspect ratio is off. Given that a lot of "Pandora's Box" is about reconstructing scrambled pictures, it's a lot tougher since the pictures don't look right even after they've been reconstructed.

One thing that was nice about the GOG version of uru was that it could be played full screen, but you could also window it. It "knows" that the screen is 4:3, but that just means the window is 4:3. (I was using 1280*960.)

On the other hand, it's strange. The window is locked into the upper left corner of the screen -- which is a problem, because I have the task bar on the left side. To play it I had to move the task bar. It also does strange things to the mouse pointer.

Anyway, Civ 3 is the one I really want to play, but that's old enough so it may force full-screen and "know" that it is 4:3. If so, I'll be peeved.

6 I don't expect to play another PC-based game until the convergence is complete. PSP all the way. Also, check out the NDS3D, the news exploded on the Internet today.

7 Civ4 starts in 4:3, but you can adjust it to whatever your monitor's resolution is. 

Civ3 only runs in 1024x768.  However, from CivFanatics.com's Civ3 FAQ page:

By default, the game runs in a 1024x768 resolution. To get it to run in a higher resolution, navigate to your Civilization 3 folder (default: C:/Program Files/Infogrames Interactive/Civilization 3/ -- if you have PTW or C3C, go to that folder inside your Civ3 one), and open your .ini file (named Civilization3.ini for Vanilla, ptw.ini for Play the World, and conquests.ini for Conquests). Add a line at the bottom that says: KeepRes=1 . Now, when you load your game, it'll use your computer's default resolution.

8 Hooboy. I wonder how it would look at 1920*1080?

9 No clue... I wonder if it stretches the screen to 16:9, or if it just renders more of the world?  Can't wait to hear the results... 

10

If it stretches it, then that KeepRes feature is useless. I might as well let the display chip run 1024*768.

What I really wish is that when the display chip is in a mode which has a different aspect ratio than the physical display, that it would letterbox to make the aspect ratio correct.

11

Also, check out the NDS3D, the news exploded on the Internet today.

I'm not going to be interested until I can get a 3D version of this game. (Ahem)

12 Surprised to see you playing this.

Uru was originally designed to be Myst Online, so it's a terrible introduction to the Myst universe. The fiction is impenetratable to people who haven't followed the universe closely, or don't visit its fansites to seek help from the fan community.

You are better off playing the other games in the Myst series, they work much better as self-contained games.

Oh by the way, Uru, as Myst Online, has been released for free (in the sense of "soon to become open source", not in the sense of "free-to-play, pay-to-have-goodies"), so you don't even need to pay anything for it.

>how to save my game
The progress is automatically saved. All the cloths you've touched are recorded. You just need to find all of them; some are hidden behind puzzles.

13

Steven, if your laptop doesn't have the ability to maintain aspect ratio, I'd be shocked.  Mine does:  Civ3 plays 1024x768, and i get vertical bars with the extra resolution.  Civ4 handles widescreen.  Also target and best buy and places like that usually have a decent stock of older games for $10-20.

wonderduck, that's horrifying.  At least the installers for both games ran OK on my Win7-64bit laptop.

Pete, what's NDS3D?  A new version of the Nintendo DS?  that's obnoxious, with the DSi XL dropping this week.

14 I found a control one time that said it would maintain aspect ratio, but when I tried it it didn't work.

15 Hm.  Sometimes there's a BIOS setting, and sometimes there's one on the video card control panel, and of course that's going to vary across hardware.  All I can tell you is I did something and Civ3 plays without stretching, so it is technically possible.

16 GOG have just announced they'll be releasing both Master of Orion and Master of Magic in April.