BTS can no longer generate the character portraits...

[kbmusiclover]

Everything seems to run totally fine after I've just installed BtS... everything except character portraits. They just... don't show up, period. The loading screen with Leonard Nimoy ("In the beginning, the earth was without form...") also does not show. Any idea why these things are not showing for me anymore? This worked fine with Civ4 and Warlords.

 

[kbmusiclover]

Come on, please. Don't just ignore me. Help.

 

[kbmusiclover]

*cough, cough*

 

[ori]

is much neater to bump a thread
Anyway I gather the problem is still there: so did you uninstall and reinstall BtS? What if any patch are you running? Is there any error message or just missing animations?

 

[TreeFoot]

Ah, I see someone is finally giving a little help, I am having the same problem myself. No error messages appear, the games run fun, but the leaderheads and the slide show just aren't there. I'm running on the latest patch, but I had the problem before I downloaded it too.

 

[Furiey]

There is a problem with some nVidea card that causes strange leaderheads in BTS, but I've not heard heard about the intro not showing either.

 

[ori]

Ah, I see someone is finally giving a little help, I am having the same problem myself. No error messages appear, the games run fun, but the leaderheads and the slide show just aren't there. I'm running on the latest patch, but I had the problem before I downloaded it too.

the 3.03 patch did not solve anything so I am not too surprised (it did create new bugs though - hence the question, sometimes going back a patch was a solution).
I'll have to dig through the graphics stuff in Civ again but I'll try suggesting something soon
What Graphics Card are you using?

 

[TreeFoot]

I'm probably using the minimum, i'm not to much for knowing what junk is in my computer. The leaderheads and the slide show worked fine for me in vanilla and warlords. I'm wondering if it's some faulty xml code, but i don't see how.

 

[ori]

As far as i know they did change the way graphics are handled for BtS so old graphic card drivers could be a source of this problem. I doubt that there are any xml problems since they would cause problems for everyone.
There are a couple of possible solutions:
1) update your graphics driver
2) open CivilizationIV.ini in your .../My Games/Beyond the Sword directory and change any (one at a time ) of the following values
to 1

; Dont show the game background during movies - may speed up movie playing
HideMovieBackground = 0

; Show movies using hi-color, not true-color (may be faster)
Bink16Bit = 0

; Copy ever other scanline during movie playback (faster)
BinkInterlace = 0

or to 0

; Don't skip frames if falling behind
BinkNoSkip = 1

; Copy entire image each frame, not just dirty pixels
BinkCopyAll = 1

especially the last two might help (the first three are more good if you have problems with videos) - just try this out and tell me if that helps...

 

[TreeFoot]

I turn movies off, it's the leaderheads that are the problem, the two should be unrelatd.

 

[Cabay Jet]

Just do it anyway.

 

[ori]

I turn movies off, it's the leaderheads that are the problem, the two should be unrelatd.

You are right, I was just lazy I copied it from another post of mine. As I wrote above try the bottom 2 ones - they have to do with animation (not only movies) the upper 3 indeed will probably not help

 

[TreeFoot]

I can't seem to find the .ini, where is it in the Beyond the Sword folder, and what is it's exact name?

 

[ori]

I can't seem to find the .ini, where is it in the Beyond the Sword folder, and what is it's exact name?

It should be in ...\My Games\Beyond the Sword and is called CivilizationIV.ini
Also: just to see if this is due to a particular type of graphics card it would be good if people with this problem would post their card name
Next thing: since you can start the game: did you try setting your graphics to low setting in the Advanced -> Options screen?

 

[TreeFoot]

Yes, all the graphics are on low, audio is off. I checked to see if it was the graphics settings for the leaderheads, but it wasn't.

 

[TreeFoot]

I don't see an ini file i can get into. I see all the foulders, then a bunch of dll files, 1 XML, 1 mcl, the readme, the gamestart and the pitboss. if the gamestart is the ini file, i can't get into it.

 

[ori]

I don't see an ini file i can get into. I see all the foulders, then a bunch of dll files, 1 XML, 1 mcl, the readme, the gamestart and the pitboss. if the gamestart is the ini file, i can't get into it.

You are looking in the wrong directory
BtS is in 2 different paths one is:
...\Firaxis Games\Sid Meier's Civilization 4\Beyond the Sword
this is were you are looking, the other is:
...\My Games\Beyond the Sword that is were all your saves and the .ini are stored. However since you see the ...\Firaxis Games\Sid Meier's Civilization 4\Beyond the Sword directory:
click on _Civ4Config this is a shortcut that will open the .ini

 

[kbmusiclover]

I've tried everything suggested here except for get a new video card (hah, like that'll happen) and uninstalling. Didn't want to uninstall because I have a rather slow computer, but... uninstalling now. If this doesn't work...

And yeah, I just plain did not realize until twelve days later that I had bumped this thread (didn't know about the bump smiley >_>) and it had gotten responses.

 

[kbmusiclover]

I'll bump this one more time, as nothing worked.

Ugh, this is so irritating. It doesn't even make any sense; THESE THINGS WORKED BEFORE.

 

[ori]

did you patch to 3.13?