Civ3 1.29f font problem

[Alex Johnson]

I have played unpatched for years and all was good except the known bugs in the game. I tried to install the 1.29f patch yesterday and encountered a font problem. Apparently this is almost commonplace since I searched and found half a dozen threads related to it. But not a single one helped me. I've tried everything mentioned in all of them to no avail.

Problem: All game text shows up in a blocky system font instead of the large, thin font normally used. All game text is elevated above where it should print (thus outside the button, picture, or box) OR all text on the screen prints out in the same line so that the entire screen is an illegible jumble in the middle. This problem does not exist on my unpatched version but does exist on 1.29f.

Systems: I tried this on all three of my computers.
1. FAILED: Pentium 4, 512MB RAM, NVidia GeForce 440MX
2. FAILED: Pentium M, 1024MB RAM, ATI Radeon Mobility
3. WORKED: Athlon 64, 512MB, ATI Radeon Mobility

Yes, one laptop displays normally. So it isn't the game or patch that is bad. It even has the same graphics as the other laptop, so that isn't it. All have equal or greater memory, so that isn't it. Unfortunately the one computer it works on is my wife's so I can't play on it.

What I tried:
1. Stopping all other programs.
2. Replace my LSANS.TTF with the version in the game.
3. Delete all Lucida related fonts and install the game version.
4. Delete all Lucida related fonts and don't install a replacement.
5. Reduce number of fonts to under 255.
6. Uninstall and reinstall Civ3.
7. Reboot computer (repeatedly).
8. Replace my graphics driver with the latest availible version from the manufacturer.
9. All settings of Window's font smoothing: None, Standard, ClearType.
10. Checked that I have the latest DirectX installed (9.0c is installed).

This is incredibly frustrating! At first I was happy to play unpatched but I've run into a few bugs I never want to see again and now I can't patch. Doing so leaves my game completely unplayable when it works. Sometimes it crashes when I would be given a map screen, and it never did that before either. And to add insult to injury, my wife is enjoying the patched game and I can't play her saves/seeds now because my version is different!

 

[Turner]

If #2's not fixing it, I don't have much of a suggestion. That's the fix I'm aware of.

 

[Alex Johnson]

I'm amazed nobody posted a fix to this or discovered the cause. Here is what I did today when I decided to give it another try. Jumbled text was caused because the program or windows couldn't find the font. I never accept the default location when installing files (I like games to be under C:\Games\). There is a file in civ3 called LSANS.fot which if you view it in notepad (I know it is binary) includes a path to the LSANS.ttf font file. Stupid program that created it of course used the DEFAULT install path and not the path actually used. Deleting this file allowed civ3/windows to find the font on its own without trouble. I still recommend not having a duplicate installed in your fonts folder, but all I had to do was kill LSANS.fot and leave LSANS.ttf alone.

 

[ThunderPeel2001]

Sounds like you were suffering a nightmare there... but considering the number of posts here already explaining this solution (the one below this one, for example), I'm surprised you didn't find the solution sooner I've tried to make it as widely available as I possibly can.

Why you recommend "not having a duplicate" in your fonts folder is beyond me, though. To anyone considering this bizarre advice: DO NOT DELETE LSANS FROM YOUR WINDOWS FONT FOLDER JUST BECAUSE OF CIV3!

 

[GVBN]

Deleting this file allowed civ3/windows to find the font on its own without trouble. I still recommend not having a duplicate installed in your fonts folder, but all I had to do was kill LSANS.fot and leave LSANS.ttf alone.

As far as I know Civ3 recreates the .fot file if it doesn't exist. It can't find the font on its own. And yeah you should not delete Lucida Sans from the font directory

 

[Alex Johnson]

In all my searching for answers to this problem, here and on the Civ3 web pages and via Google, the only solutions I found were "delete lsans.ttf from windows/fonts" and "make sure you have less than 255 fonts installed". Both of which were crap answers that did nothing to help. Deleting the lsans.ttf or lsans.ttf+.fot in Civ3 also did not work. But magically, deleting only the lsans.fot file did work. I spent two weeks searching for answers last year and didn't find a single post with anything other than the two stupid answers above.

I'm just glad I can finally play. Before I played unpatched because trying to patch caused this font problem. And unpatched was VERY buggy!

 

[ThunderPeel2001]

Ouch, two years! I'm glad you finally got it sorted.