Running Galciv II on a Powerbook

Is it possible?

from GalCiv2 Forums
I'm thinking about a new laptop and personally I think that the Powerbooks seem to be much nicer than anything I have seen in the form of PC laptops. Not wanting to start a war, just my personal preference.

For me there are only two reasons for running windows:
1) Galactic Civlization 1 & 2
2) Civilization IV

Is there anything available for the powerbook which allows you to run these games? Some kind of an emulation that will still run fast enough to make the games playable. I guess that fast virtualization techniques as VMWare won't work because of the architecture differences but I am still curious.
12,872 views 9 replies
Reply #1 from Stardock Forums Top
im goin to guess theres not, because if there was, then they would jjst release it for teh mac
Reply #2 from Stardock Forums Top
Just wait for the x86 macs and hope somebody ports Wine to OS X
Offworld Trading Company
Reply #3 from Stardock Forums Top
I'm not sure it helps much, but previous Civ games were ported to Mac later on...
As for emulators, no idea. I got the same dilemna you got for compatibility
Reply #4 from Stardock Forums Top
I'd love to see GC2 on the mac, so I could play it whenever I'm traveling... but I doubt we'll see it ever happen.
Reply #5 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Doubtfull at best, it's not just the CPU but there are no emulators that will emulate a DX8 GPU GFX card (And GC2 is a DX9 game). VirtualPC emulates a Trio64 and VMWare has a special GFX card but no 3D support at all.

Considering that emultating a x86 CPU on a PPC CPU, emulating a DX9 GFX card is out of the question.


If there is an option it might be Linux running WINE but AFAIK WINE is only available for x86.
Reply #6 from Stardock Forums Top
if you get a powerbook that has ALOT of CPU power and RAM, and you buy a copy of windows, there is a program called virtualPC that Microsoft makes for mac so that the people onm the mac can have a pc built in, it is hard on the processor/RAM but if you get ALOT, you might be able to play it with the graphics settings turned down a bit on the game,

This is THEORY
Reply #7 from Stardock Forums Top
Hm... Does not seem to be any easy solutions. Thank you anyway for your input!

The virtualPC and the VMWare products do not seem to have 3D-functionality so there is no way around it. Guess that I'll have to buy a Windows laptop this time as well.
Reply #8 from Stardock Forums Top
If you're looking for a gaming laptop, Toshiba and Dell both have pc laptops with great video cards. Alienware does, too, but they're more expensive than Toshiba or Dell. 
Reply #9 from Stardock Forums Top
Sorry to dredge up an old topic, but since you didn't really receive an answer to your question...

I'm in the same boat as you. While I do have a gaming pc, GalCiv is one of those games that just begs to be played on the powerbook.

For what it's worth, GalCiv runs just fine on a 2005 powerbook within Virtual PC. GalCiv II, with it's increased visual goodness, no idea. Hey Stardock, how bout a mac port? I'd preorder that right now.

Civ IV should be out on Mac OS within a few months.
http://www.insidemacgames.com/news/story.php?ID=12295