Terrain is Dark

joesf35 said:

Yes, and no it didn't help.

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damn... time to look into GalCiv2

Any progress on this yet? I am getting worried this whole chesire cat problem won't be resolved. It seems like the Moblility 9000 are working, but I don't think anyone has the Mobility 7500 going.....that's what I have!!!

I have to agree with you. I am concerned that now they seem to have fixed the rendering problem for a lot of the people, Firaxis won't be in as much of a rush to provide a solution to this problem.

I have also been disappointed by the lack of any news on either the Firaxis or 2K games website concerning these problems. It seems that they do not want to announce the problems for fear of hurting sales.

And by the way, I also tried the "PakBuild" fix for the rendering problem hoping it would solve this problem, but to no avail.... The terrain is as black as ever!

ukimi367 said:

I have to agree with you. I am concerned that now they seem to have fixed the rendering problem for a lot of the people, Firaxis won't be in as much of a rush to provide a solution to this problem.

I have also been disappointed by the lack of any news on either the Firaxis or 2K games website concerning these problems. It seems that they do not want to announce the problems for fear of hurting sales.

And by the way, I also tried the "PakBuild" fix for the rendering problem hoping it would solve this problem, but to no avail.... The terrain is as black as ever!

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Amen bro. Have you tried to reveal all map like some other threads propose? Wonder if it's playable that way.

Ok, to set the record straight, there IS such a thing as a ATI 7500 64mb DDR Radeon, it's an All-In-Wonder card to be specific, I'm using it right now.

So far I'm having the black terrain issue like the rest of you. now, I don't mind seeing all the terrain from the start (a quick game wont hurt, lol) but the trick with changing thexml from >0< to >1< doesnt work for me, like the last post regarding this. one thing to note is that the application itself is resetting the file back to >0< itself. I have saved it as >1< and reopened it to see if the settnig held, which it did. When I loaded the game I ran into the same problem again, checked the xml file and found that the >1< was reset back to >0<. so with that bit of info out, what could be causing the reset of the file and how do I stop the reset from happening?

PC Specs:

2.4 GHz Celeron
512mb DDR RAM 400MHz
40gb HDD Maxtor 7200rpm 8mb Buffer
ATI All-In-Wonder 7500 64mb DDR Radeon
8078 C-Media 6CH sound card

Hey Everyone,

Just tried the "Reveal Tiles" suggestion, worked great.
Gateway 6518GZ
512 MB DDR
(The Dreaded) Intel 82852 Integrated Video ; )

have the same problem, just wanted to sign up to the thread.

if you can use this reveal tiles thing, to get rid of darkness, then surely its a problem with the game, and nothing really to do with tnl ???

Ive got it to work on my pc radeon 9600, but my dell dont work black screen, with intel 8**** built in graphics, and my laptop has same prob, some mobility radeon,

SHoTTy said:

So far I'm having the black terrain issue like the rest of you. now, I don't mind seeing all the terrain from the start (a quick game wont hurt, lol) but the trick with changing thexml from >0< to >1< doesnt work for me, like the last post regarding this. one thing to note is that the application itself is resetting the file back to >0< itself.

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Are you trying to load a saved game? If so, it won't work.

Change the visible bit in the XML file, then start a brand new game. You should be fine.

I mean, it's not an entirely satisfactory play experience (having the whole map revealed) but it should tide you over till they patch.

Because I am sure this is a programming issue.

Someone in another thread suggested it has something to do with the center of the map somehow being "off." If I were a programmer trying to track this down, that is where I would start.

The evidence suggests this:

The "fog of war" black layer is laid over the map.

Many folks who have struggled through despite black terrain eventually start to notice terrain becoming visible in other portions of the map than where their units are located.

Folks have tried a fix where they go into World Builder, and place a unit at the center of the map, and that unit starts to reveal terrain.

you can pretty much see what is happening with this bug. if you play the smallest pangea map possible and have black terrain, you can see the lit up area near your location. if you start zooming out .. out .. out .. suddenly you get to a point where the lit up area pops back over on to your location and your location isn't dark anymore. as you zoom back in, it pops back over to where it started and your folks are left in the dark again. on a bigger map you can't see it working like this because the distances are too great and it isn't obvious where the lit up area moved to. maybe there are also graphics hardware problems with some people, but if you see that .. that looks like a quirk in the game's code to me, i hope they can fix it soon.

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I have personally noticed that when I built Stonehenge, which centers the map, my mouseovers were suddenly off-center. In order to get the resource info for a tile with a mouseover, I had to actually put the cursor up and to the left of the tile I wanted to see!

This is a programming issue-- and, I suspect, and easy one to fix.

FIX IT, FIRAXIS!

piranhaZ said:

Amen bro. Have you tried to reveal all map like some other threads propose? Wonder if it's playable that way.

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I tried it and it IS playable that way. Even with this fix, though, it's still a little annoying because without fog of war, there's no way to tell exactly which parts of the world you've already explored, since it all looks the same. You have to go to the highest level of zoom-out to even distinguish which areas are within line of sight of your units/cities.

sulu1515 said:

I tried it and it IS playable that way. Even with this fix, though, it's still a little annoying because without fog of war, there's no way to tell exactly which parts of the world you've already explored, since it all looks the same. You have to go to the highest level of zoom-out to even distinguish which areas are within line of sight of your units/cities.

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I think that depends on how you define playable. I don't consider the existing bug to render it playable as a Civ-type game, any more than I'd consider a car with first gear stripped as drivable - it might get me where I need to go in a pinch, but it would be a hell of an unpleasant experience.

allism said:

I think that depends on how you define playable. I don't consider the existing bug to render it playable as a Civ-type game, any more than I'd consider a car with first gear stripped as drivable - it might get me where I need to go in a pinch, but it would be a hell of an unpleasant experience.

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It's actually not nearly as unpleasant as you might think. Obviously, some fun is taken out of it by being able to see everything, but if you can make yourself not look in detail until you take a unit there, you can hold some surprises back. Also, it's better than not playing at all, and this game is very, very much fun I think.

Please Come Up With A Real Solution!

TravisS said:

Please Come Up With A Real Solution!

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Oh I am hoping for one! And soon. But I just wanted to let anyone out there that is skeptical of this workaround (rather than fix) to know that it is playable and still eminently enjoyable, just not as much as it would be functioning properly.

piranhaZ said:

Amen bro. Have you tried to reveal all map like some other threads propose? Wonder if it's playable that way.

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It is def playable with the reveal all map change to the sequence. kinda takes a bit away from the game but not enough to keep me away from it. I have a HP Pavilion laptop with an integrated Radeon IGP345M Video. It worked for me. It's still kind of dark and not everything shows clear. But I can play on the road and save the game to a storage device and play it on my desktop at home.

merm said:

(this is a double post - i should have posted here in the first place probably)

see everything but the terrain and the leaders? here's what i did to fix it:

1) start a game.
2) found a city.
3) save the game
3) retire and look at the map. see your city? figure out where the center of the map is relative to your city.
4) load your game.
5) send a scout to explore the center of the map as seen on the retire screen.
6) as your scout uncovers tiles at the center of the map, tiles in your fog will be uncovered.

i managed to play an entire game to completion like this. i've tested it on tiny and standard maps for "great plains" and "continents".

since i can see everything fine once i've explored the appropriate area (although leaders are still messed up),this makes me think this is not a "T&L" issue, but rather a bug.

one simple fix would be to have an option to start the user in the center of the map. if you start there you don't have to deal with exploring the "fog".

can't believe they didn't test this on older systems.

-roger

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If what you say is true, and im about to test it, it sheds light on the problem. The fog, and whats revealed, are just not aligned somehow. I noticed this too. I used the xml trick where you set it from false to true (0-1) and that worked but I noticed as time goes on certain areas of the map are bright as if an area has been revealed. The ones in the corner are probably cities but theyre in the corner because theyre not centered on the town. I was even more convinced when one of the revealed locations areas was 3 tiles above my worker and moving along with him. If my worker when up the revealed location (which was like 6-7 tiles worth) would go up with him. Also the farms were really bright too.

Another thing, maybe the fog and the revealed part arent misaligned, maybe your first settler and scout are.

I am possitive, though, it has nothing to do with t&l for alot of people.

Just to set the record straight, this is *NOT* a "lack of T&L" issue. I monkied with my laptop all day yesterday (Thinkpad T42) and the cheshire cat and black landscape never went away.

However, when I load it on my work desktop (Intel Motherboard with whatever on-board video chipset does not support T&L), a system that srtest says does not meet the minimum specs, it runs like a dream.

I may need to stay late tonight. I'm sure my wife will understand.

Here's what I think happened.

The feature for starting the minimap off-centered was probably added late, and it wasn't regression tested on systems which were under the recommended level.

I wonder if there is an XML or Python setting to disable the off-center start feature?

/me goes off and browses some code

Has Firaxis said anything to anybody about fixing this black terrain problem? All I see in these fourms are temp. fixes and workarounds. Is Firaxis still sticking to there story about "its your video card, not are programming"? If there isn't going to be a fix soon, the least I would like to hear is that there working on it.

chriseay said:

It's actually not nearly as unpleasant as you might think. Obviously, some fun is taken out of it by being able to see everything, but if you can make yourself not look in detail until you take a unit there, you can hold some surprises back. Also, it's better than not playing at all, and this game is very, very much fun I think.

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Having attempted to play with it for a couple of hours yesterday, I can say that yes, it is as unpleasant as I have EXPERIENCED.