1.52 Patch Available

[SWG]

EDIT: sorry guys i believe the problem was i used the civfantics mirror, and just read a few other posts where people where reporting problems, will download this patch again

Hi

Sorry if this has been posted somewhere.

Im having an issue installing this new patch, it gets about half way though and then gives me a message saying CivIV.exe doesn't match the setups .cab file.

If i choose ignore the patch keeps installing, but I lose the ingame interface.

I downloaded the patch using the take 2 Mirror, I tried the ingame update after i installed the patch and it says the game is already version 1.52

The only thing I have not tried is the ingame update because where I live we cant get adsl yet.

I have tried everything else that I know like uninstalling reinstalling and so on, pressing alt I (i think that was meant to turn the interface on and off) and checked the .ini file but nothing I have done works. The only thing I have not done yet is download the patch again

Any ideas?

Sam

 

[jdurg]

jdurg
The problem with movies is wrong estimation of timescale. Normally they should look at 'movie time' vs. 'real time' and get the frame from it (or interplate to get all late frames within a second). The way they do it is rather strange - they check FPS when the 1st frame is out, and then output the rest according to this FPS.

The first frame is usually surrounded by massive swapping to zoom the city, so it usually differs from actual FPS when the movie is played.

Even with my fix I had no movie stuttering in one situation and now I have. It was same 1.09, same fix settings, same config, same savegame, same turn, same everything... probably HDD got more fragmented, I dunno... Just a few more milliseconds to start a movie resulted in it to stutter.

This is quite ovious that this is not slowness of movie displaying. Background workers dig the earth at usual 20-30 FPS, but the movie performs at 1-2 FPS which were active by the time movie has started.

Thamer, that's for your next fix...

Thanks Hark for explaining that to me. At least now I know what is causing the movies to stutter. Hopefully the Firaxians are reading this can fix it quickly.

 

[thamer]

Some notes from me:

1) When I installed 1.52, my patch wasn't loaded. I guess the update overwrites 'zlib1.dll'. Note for Thamer: does it overwrite 'python24.dll'?

Yes, Python and zlib dlls are updated.

5) Globe view has become faster on its own (even with buildings enabled).

Yes - we've done some important optimizations there, including faster rendering of city billboards.

6) 'Disable buildings in globe view' works a little wrong - it hides city billboards instead of buildings Anyway, it speeds things up.

It works correctly for me in 152. When the 'disable buildings in globeview' option is selected, buildings disappear and city billboards still show. At that point we are essentially rendering a low-resolution textured mesh approximation of the world. For more detail on globeview and city layout (from the author, Nat Duca), see my article in Game Dev Magazine 9/05 on Civ Modding.

The problem with movies is wrong estimation of timescale. Normally they should look at 'movie time' vs. 'real time' and get the frame from it (or interplate to get all late frames within a second). The way they do it is rather strange - they check FPS when the 1st frame is out, and then output the rest according to this FPS.
...
This is quite ovious that this is not slowness of movie displaying. Background workers dig the earth at usual 20-30 FPS, but the movie performs at 1-2 FPS which were active by the time movie has started.
Thamer, that's for your next fix..

Regarding the movie playing, one thing to note is that background rendering is halted while the movies play. This is done to give the movie playing as many cycles as possible (for maximum framerate). So background workers (along with everything else) are frozen while wonder movies play.
The movies are played using Bink. The Bink library handles timing and allows for realtime playback or frametime playback. In fact, you can toggle between the two by changing the config option 'BinkNoSkip=1'. However, I don't think they are precomputing the framerate as you suggested.

Well, I think Santa's coming so I need to run. Keep up the analysis and if you get stuck send me a PM.

 

[Harkonnen]

SWG
I think you are running some non-90%-used version and that might be the problem (e.g. German/French/D2D).

Try this:
1. Install 1.00
2. Perfrom ART0.FPK extraction for ATi problem
3. Install 1.09
4. Perfom ART0.FPK ... ART5.FPK extraction like in step (2)
5. Install 1.52
5. Extract all newer assets.

At least that'd be the first thing I would try.

 

[Harkonnen]

thamer
Well, happy holidays

It depends on what we name a city billboard... Let's define building rooftops and "streets" square. With 'buildinds disabled' I still see city rooftops, but don't see the "streets" square.

I tried "binknoskip" at some point but it changed nothing. I don't know why, but workers continue to work when the movie is played. Yes, that's true... I would send you an AVI sequence of that if you offer some tool... Also, my FPS meter shows ~25 FPS, and workers dig at that speed. I still can see some of them through transparent movie panel. Water in rivers continues to flow, infantry built in the city with wonder sways its gun.

This might be not FPS estimation problem, but some threading problem in case this parallelism is achieved via threads. Probably 'SyncInput' will solve the problem. Also note, that D3D device isn't created with D3DCREATE_MULTITHREADED (without my fix).

We can discuss the rest via PMs. Thank you

 

[player1 fanatic]

Actually, SynhInput=1 does solve problem for me.

But I had only problem with intro-movie being choppy.

 

[Amenhotep IV]

Hey, I have just installed the new patch and it turns out it spoils the game completely ! In the early game I now always have 6gpt upkeep of civics, while in the old game I had 0gpt. So basically with 2-3 early cities I have to run at 20% research rate, which is totally unacceptable.

 

[player1 fanatic]

Go to slavery.
Is has no upkeep...

Or play Organized civ?

 

[DaviddesJ]

Hey, I have just installed the new patch and it turns out it spoils the game completely ! In the early game I now always have 6gpt upkeep of civics, while in the old game I had 0gpt. So basically with 2-3 early cities I have to run at 20% research rate, which is totally unacceptable.

Waah! Waah! It's too hard!

Except that all your opponents have exactly the same problem....

 

[Duuk]

On my laptop Pentium 4 3.06 GHZ 512 MB RAM, ATI Mobility Radeon 9200 64 MB

Whoever sold that to you should be shot for not telling you how ridiculously bad that video card is.

Civ4 is going to have issues on it. Sims2 would have issues on it. Most FPS games would be unplayable on it. 64M of video memory was considered "good" for gaming in 2000.

 

[player1 fanatic]

64MB is more then enough for Civ4, at least for me (using Radeon 9000Pro).

 

[Glinka]

Whoever sold that to you should be shot for not telling you how ridiculously bad that video card is.

That's a bit of an overstatement, but he's right: a 9200 card is 4-5 years back in time. Hell, it would probably cause problems with Morrowind. For under $100, you could pick up many better cards. The other parts of the system sound okay, however.

 

[Natronomonas]

Natronomonas could you elaborate on how to do that?

Most laptops or other onboard/mobility VGA solutions use system memory rather than separate VRAM. This cuts costs for the manufacturer, and also takes up marginally less space at the expense of graphics performance (using normal RAM is slower than VRAM/GDDR, and you're using up system memory rather than a separate VGA pool).
There is a limit to the amount of system memory they are permitted to use; this is usually 64mb if system is 512, and 128 if above this.

It's either automatic or a BIOS option. I don't know the specifics for your laptop, but it should be in the manual or maybe on the manufacter's website.

 

[Flak]

Whoever sold that to you should be shot for not telling you how ridiculously bad that video card is.

Civ4 is going to have issues on it. Sims2 would have issues on it. Most FPS games would be unplayable on it. 64M of video memory was considered "good" for gaming in 2000.

I'm running Civ IV beautifully on my ATI Radeon 9000 (64 Mb), an older version of that card. I just finished another Huge 18 civ game in just over 4 hours, Culture victory. And I also only have 512 Mb RAM, Pentium 3.1 Ghz. My computer also can run Quake 4 and Black&White 2 with no problems. I'm about to load up Fear (Santa brought it) because so many hear reccomended it as game of the year. I suspect that game will also run just fine on this laptop.

If Civ IV will run on my machine, it's not unreasonable for people to expect the game to run on machines that exceed my specs, which his in particular does.

 

[thamer]

thamer
Well, happy holidays
...
I tried "binknoskip" at some point but it changed nothing. I don't know why, but workers continue to work when the movie is played. Yes, that's true... I would send you an AVI sequence of that if you offer some tool...

Thanks and here is some info for your Christmas stocking if you don't know it already.

* Use fraps (http://www.fraps.com/) for framerate and movie recording
* Start SP game and type chipotle. Then type shift-f or shift-ctrl click or ctrl-d or ...

Enjoy and Happy Civ Holidays to all

 

[Harkonnen]

thamer
Ok, thanks. I didn't know fraps is more than FPS meter (never used it).

 

[perky_goth]

64M of video memory was considered "good" for gaming in 2000.

wow, amazing, my games have been running on magic!
seriously... bottom edge graphics cards have always worked reasonably well for me. not that i ever had the budget to spend more than that. not everyone cares to have all the shiny options enabled if they imply a lot more money.
(average wage is way lower in my country, FYI)

 

[player1 fanatic]

True, this year my friend both new comp.
And guess which graphics it has.
Yes, Radeon 9200, 128RAM

Of course on the other hand I bought my Radeon 9000 Wonder 3 years ago (or was is 4?)

 

[Shravak]

Civ4 is going to have issues on it. Sims2 would have issues on it. Most FPS games would be unplayable on it. 64M of video memory was considered "good" for gaming in 2000.

I know a guy who plays Civ4 for with integrated video. The game says his computer doesn't meet minimum system requirements, but still it runs okay. I mean having a video card (even Radeon 9200 or less) is much better than integrated video. And you also can see lots of people playing Civ4 on laptops.

 

[jdurg]

Hey Thamer,
Happy Holidays and I'm happy to see Firaxis here gathering as much information as possible. I just want to confirm what Harkonnen has been saying in that all background movement still continues when the wonder movies are being played. Workers still work, wheels still turn, water still flows, smoke rises, mines move, etc. etc. I've noticed that the first wonder movie typically plays fine, but each subsequent movie gets worse and worse in quality until eventually they don't play at all. I'm not sure why that is, but it is reproduceable every single game I play. I can send you along my Civ4.ini file if that would help you out. In version 1.00 I had no problems with my wonder movies. In 1.09, none of them would play. In 1.52, the first one plays fine then they all slow down and stutter until eventually they don't load at all.