Beginnings of a resolution - black terrain?

merm said:

here's what i did:

open up Firaxis Games\Sid Meier's Civilization 4\Assets\XML\Technologies\CIV4TechInfos.xml

and do a replace all changing <bMapVisible>0</bMapVisible> to <bMapVisible>1</bMapVisible>.

now everyone starts with the map revealed. terrain is fine, although the oceans look a little funny for me. you still need to explore to find goody huts and your opponents, but unfortunately the terrain types and resource locations are revealed. but you are at least on equal footing with the ai since they will see everything too.

-roger

Click to expand...

This worked for me too, and it's a start. (This is on a Dell Inspiron, new laptop, with an integrated Intel card, no T&L) With all the customizations that are available in the XML files, there may be a way to turn this off without attaching it to a technology, and/or possibly even keep the fog of war but turn off whatever the illumination problem is.

Given that it's specifically Texture & Lighting that's causing the problem, maybe there's a way to turn off the lighting completely.

Specifically - and the CIV4DetailManager.xml looks like it might be promising here - I'm trying to find a setting to determine where it changes from animated, pretty stuff along the ground to the zoomed-out map view (which is visible in the black-screen).

Specifically - and the CIV4DetailManager.xml looks like it might be promising here - I'm trying to find a setting to determine where it changes from animated, pretty stuff along the ground to the zoomed-out map view (which is visible in the black-screen).

Keep up the good work guys! The more we are on that problem, the faster we'll all play!!!

How about this one:

\assets\XML\Terrain\Civ4TerrainSettings.xml
<bTerrainShader>0</bTerrainShader>

That looks promising. Someone with the patience to load up the game and a map on our old crappy computers wanna try it out?

Opened up \assets\XML\Terrain\Civ4TerrainSettings.xml
changed <bTerrainShader>1</bTerrainShader>
to <bTerrainShader>0</bTerrainShader>

started a new game and no change. I still have the black landscape and the cheshire cat.

I had this problem on Rome Total War too...The map was too dark. Strange enough when you used the cheat to view the whole map it looked normal. Sounds very similar....pfff...how can it be fixed

Has anyone tried to fix this with the omega drivers?

I've tried the omega drivers, and it wasn't a solution. The terrain wasn't black anymore, but it switched to some bright colors, and the sea, lakes were a little bit strange..it was better then the darkness, but...

Originally Posted by merm
here's what i did:

open up Firaxis Games\Sid Meier's Civilization 4\Assets\XML\Technologies\CIV4TechInfos.xml

and do a replace all changing <bMapVisible>0</bMapVisible> to <bMapVisible>1</bMapVisible>.

now everyone starts with the map revealed. terrain is fine, although the oceans look a little funny for me. you still need to explore to find goody huts and your opponents, but unfortunately the terrain types and resource locations are revealed. but you are at least on equal footing with the ai since they will see everything too.

-roger


This sounds good enough for me. It really does! One prob though, everytime I set that section to >1< it just gets reset on the next load back to >0< I've tried it numerous times with the same result, it just resets itself back to >0< so I'm SOL still. anyone have an idea why mine resets while the rest of yours seems to work fine? I'm happy enough with seeing everything, but seeing nothing is killing me.

PC Specs:

2.4GHz Celeron
512mb DDR 400MHz
40gb Maxtor HDD 7200RPB 8mb Buffer
ATI All-In-Wonder Radeon 7500 64mb DDR
3078 C-Media 6-CH Sound Card (Pinegroup)

Any help would be GREATLY appreciated!! TIA!!

I tried flipping the bit on bMapVisible, with poor results. There's discussion of this in this thread in Bug Reports:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=133056

I am on a Dell Inspiron 1150, less than a year old, with integrated 64-meg memory (no T&L)

THANKS!!! Flipping the bit on bMapVisible seems to have solved the black terrain problem for me. I also had to put the graphics settings on low -- otherwise, the whole thing freezes during the Leonard Nimoy voiceover. The map's a bit pixelated and the leaders are very, well, *shiny*, but the game is completely playable -- and amazing!

Toshiba Satellite 2435-S255 laptop with GeForce4 420 GO (only 32 MB, but has T&L).

Thanks for this work-around!

will doing this still allow fog of war? i really don't want to see the whole map at once.

I just bought Civ 4 yesterday and I have black terrain. I can see my cities and people, but not any ground. I've been searching this forum for the last 16 hours and haven't found a solution to my problem (probably because I'm an idiot when it comes to computers and this is the first computer game that i've ever purchased). It's a gateway laptop and here are the specs

Op system: Windows XP
Processor: AMD Athlon XP 3000+, MMX, 3DNow, ~2.2GHz
Graphics Card (or video card, not really sure): RADEON IGP 320M
Chip Type: RADEON 9200 AGP

I don't really know what any of this means or if I have T&L or how to go in and change the script in the game. Again, not very smart when it comes to computers

please help

Have you patched the game? Download the patch from here or Advanced -> Check for updates. That's assuming you have Civ4 with no expansions (reffered to as "Vanilla").

Also, I probably would have created a new thread for this (this problem was in the initial release of Civ4 with some graphics cards- 3 years ago!) but you'll be fine all the same.