Black Map Fix!!

I am running on a laptop with an NVideo Gforce4 card, and have seemed to have fixed my problem. I will now share with all what I did.

Firstly, I went and updated all my graphics drivers with the help of my Compaq Presairo's Help page... which didn't do a thing.

So, I followed some advice taken by another user on here (original link: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=135250).

I went to the following webpage (http://www.omegadrivers.net/) and got one of these "omega drivers" for my NVidea card. Simply clicked on XP, downloaded the file, and installed it, rebooted, and now...

NO MORE BLACK MAP. Damn, it's about time. I hope you all get this problem fixed too. I saw ATI Radeon options there too, so hopefully you can all fix the black map problem too.

Once fixed, my game plays smoothly (so far, so good). The leaders seem to be animating correctly, I can zoom in and out no problem, game seems to go at a good speed. I am happy.

edit: I also used the Quality settings. I am running on a Presario R3000 with all the required specs.

It might not be switching to omegadrivers that fixed it, but instead it may be the driver version. Notice that there are no omegadrivers for recent NVidia driver versions, the newest one there is 66.93 whereas the newest official one is 81.85. Or you could be right, who knows. (But installing old NVidia drivers was suggested for fixing crashes too.)

HELP!!

It's my birthday today and I just got Civ IV but I have the black terrain problem! I've downloaded the latest "Radeon Omega Driver 2.6.75a" for my ATI RADEON IGP 345M card, but I haven't installed it yet 'cause I'm not sure...

Am I doing the right thing? Shall I install this? Won't it damage anything?

Well, OK, I've tried the Omega driver thing, and no, it didn't change a thing

What can I do? I have a laptop, so I can't change my video card (RADEON IGP 345M)...

I love you dude, it worked for me!

I have a Geforce4 MX440 BTW.

I applied the drivers from ATI and from the site listed here but neither resolves my issue with the black terrain with my All-in-Wonder 7500 Radeon card. Looking for any other clues anyone might have .

If you don't have ATI/nVidia cards, you could also edit the XML file and turn off fog of war. Granted, this takes the fun out of exploring, and indeed is quite annoying, but use it as a last resort.

Lets Assume you used the default folder destination, (C:\Program Files\Firaxis Games\Sid Meier's Civilization 4). If so, go there, then open the folder "Assets." You should see a folder called XML.

Open the folder Technologies, then open the XML, WITH NOTEPAD!!!, CIV4techinfos.

Scroll down untill you find "<bMapVisible>0</bMapVisible>". Change that to "<bMapVisible>1</bMapVisible>", save, and there.

Sorry if this has been posted, but it worked for me.

If it dosen't, use Worldbuilder and find some button named reveal all tiles, and exit worldbuilder.

TheMadMick said:

If you don't have ATI/nVidia cards, you could also edit the XML file and turn off fog of war. Granted, this takes the fun out of exploring, and indeed is quite annoying, but use it as a last resort.

Lets Assume you used the default folder destination, (C:\Program Files\Firaxis Games\Sid Meier's Civilization 4). If so, go there, then open the folder "Assets." You should see a folder called XML.

Open the folder Technologies, then open the XML, WITH NOTEPAD!!!, CIV4techinfos.

Scroll down untill you find "<bMapVisible>0</bMapVisible>". Change that to "<bMapVisible>1</bMapVisible>", save, and there.

Sorry if this has been posted, but it worked for me.

If it dosen't, use Worldbuilder and find some button named reveal all tiles, and exit worldbuilder.

Click to expand...

I wouldn't do that even if it would work because, as you said, what fun is that . Also, why WOULD it work. If the squares I should be able to see are black, what difference will it make if I make all squares visible? They'll still be black I'd imagine .

ExtremeArt said:

I wouldn't do that even if it would work because, as you said, what fun is that . Also, why WOULD it work. If the squares I should be able to see are black, what difference will it make if I make all squares visible? They'll still be black I'd imagine .

Click to expand...

I've tried it and it doesn't work. The game simply does not show the terrain; just resources, cities and units

BTW, when I zoom out, I can see the terrain perfectly, but that doesn't change anything.

I hope that the patch they're going to release will fix the problem...

Here are some pics (I've got the Spanish version btw):


-This is how the leaderheads look like:



-Black terrain:



-Zoomed out:

Pyerun said:

Here are some pics (I've got the Spanish version btw):


-This is how the leaderheads look like:



-Black terrain:



-Zoomed out:

Click to expand...

You're seeing the same thing I am. I'm surprised no one here has a good, solid line on a fix for this with ATI 7500 Radeon cards being fully patches, it has to be something else. I have a flat panel monitor I will swap in for an old ViewSonic and see if that helps, but I can't imagine it will.

Art.

brento1138 said:

I am running on a laptop with an NVideo Gforce4 card, and have seemed to have fixed my problem. I will now share with all what I did.

Firstly, I went and updated all my graphics drivers with the help of my Compaq Presairo's Help page... which didn't do a thing.

So, I followed some advice taken by another user on here (original link: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=135250).

I went to the following webpage (http://www.omegadrivers.net/) and got one of these "omega drivers" for my NVidea card. Simply clicked on XP, downloaded the file, and installed it, rebooted, and now...

NO MORE BLACK MAP. Damn, it's about time. I hope you all get this problem fixed too. I saw ATI Radeon options there too, so hopefully you can all fix the black map problem too.

Once fixed, my game plays smoothly (so far, so good). The leaders seem to be animating correctly, I can zoom in and out no problem, game seems to go at a good speed. I am happy.

edit: I also used the Quality settings. I am running on a Presario R3000 with all the required specs.

Click to expand...

Is this fix for those who got a graphics card but it still didn't work, or can it work without a graphics card?

This is why I don't buy the no TnL argument over black terrain. I had the black terrain issue, edited the XML file, and now I see terrain. I don't see how I would see anything at all if I had an incompatibility issue. Hopefully the upcoming patch clears it up.

BTW I have a Compaq Presario P2195US notebook, 512K megs of ram, and a 64 meg(shared) Radeon IGP 320M video card.

Titus Pullo said:

This is why I don't buy the no TnL argument over black terrain. I had the black terrain issue, edited the XML file, and now I see terrain. I don't see how I would see anything at all if I had an incompatibility issue. Hopefully the upcoming patch clears it up.

BTW I have a Compaq Presario P2195US notebook, 512K megs of ram, and a 64 meg(shared) Radeon IGP 320M video card.

Click to expand...

Really?? I've tried the XML-file edit, but it didn't work... It's kinda strange 'cause I got a Compaq Presario 2500, 448 ram, and a 64 mb Radeon IGP 345M video card

I wouldn't do that even if it would work because, as you said, what fun is that . Also, why WOULD it work. If the squares I should be able to see are black, what difference will it make if I make all squares visible? They'll still be black I'd imagine .

Click to expand...

I haven't tried it - but i do believe it works..

I was playing on black terrain for about 1.5 hours..until i reached satellite...

then voila - all wasn't black anymore!

I run a dell 700m laptop with an intel 855 graphics card (no TnL)...

will try the black fix later on.

Also, any of the mods that have terrain revealed, ie: Africa WWII or American Revolution, the terrain shows fine.

I have exactly the same issues : rulers have no faces, and the map is black..

I'm running a Compaq Evo N1000v with 2Ghz P4, 1GB RAM, and an ATI Mobility Radeon 7500. Thanks to the help of other posts on here, i managed to hack update the driver to the latest version despite that stupid INF not found message : this fixed the fact that the intro video did not show.

But still, the intro video stutters, the leaders have no faces (nor does Sid Meier lol), and the map is entirely black.

Any quick fixes anyone knows of? Or wait for a patch?

Hey, I found out something very interesting...

OK, the first thing is that if you want to reveal the hole map by changing the XML-file (Civ4TechInfos in the \CIV4\Assets\XML\Technologies folder), you have to change the <bMapVisible>0</bMapVisible> part to
<bMapVisible>1</bMapVisible>... BUT in the starting technology of your civ.

Like this:
If you civ is Rome, their starting technologies are Fishing and Mining. So, you have to open in Notepad the XML-file mentioned above, scroll down or use the search function to find either FISHING or MINING, and then, in that section, find <bMapVisible>0</bMapVisible> and change that to
<bMapVisible>1</bMapVisible>
And, of course, save it (not save as... just save)


Done that, I've discovered something interesting. You know when you have some units in one place, that place is highlighted or visible from the fog of war? Well, when I did the XML-thing, I saw that the map was revealed, yes, but I also saw that when I moved the view away from my units, the visible thing appeared in one of my screen's corners.

So, the conclusion is... AMAZING. It looks like the part that the units can see (I'm talking about the highlighted part of the fog of war), has moved out of where it should be and isn't static. SO, what the next patch should fix is this.


In case you didn't understand me, here are some screenshots of everything I explained:

XML-file opened in Notepad:


Find the starting technology of your civ (in this case it's Rome with Fishing) and make the changes mentioned above:


Here's a screenshot after the changes (playing as Rome):


And here's the interesting part:

Well, that's my argument against the TnL issue. If it was TnL related, why can I see it fine after editing the file, or revealing the tiles via word builder. Nothing would be fixed if it was!

I had a problem similar to the leaderheads with another game, and it was fixed in a patch. This was quite awhile ago, a game called Postal 2. After the patch, everything was corrected.

I'm not saying the same rules apply to CIV4, but if it's possible then they should patch it, fix it, and my complaints end.

Omega drivers didn't work for me, unfortunately. Still black maps and no faces.
I've got a Thinkpad T40 with ATI mobile radeon 7500 (only 32MB graphics memory, but I was hoping....)