About the whole "stuttering globe map" view thing

[meglamaniac]

First of all, I'll say I have posted my dxdiag log in the relevant thread.
I'm just interested as to whether anyone has any theories about this thing, or agrees with mine.

As I have a dual screen setup (don't worry, I've tried with just one of them enabled in case that was causing it), I loaded up task manager and watched the Civ4 process while playing the game.
When viewing the map "normally", in the flat view, with nothing going on Civ was using about 70% of the processor. Incidentally, this seems an inordinate amount just to do nothing, but there you go.
When zooming out to the globe view of the map (as soon as the map starts to curve), the process rockets all the way up to 100%

Now not being a game programmer, I'm not really in a position to analyse what's going on here, but I do program standard windows applications.
My immediate guess would be that something that should be being offloaded to the graphics card isn't being. There is no reason for my system (see below) to have any trouble at all displaying such a simple graphic if everything graphics related is being given to the graphics card as it should be.
Some sort of calculation that the graphics card should be doing is being done by the processor instead.
Think of it as being like the processor speed tests on 3DMark, where the entire rendering process is retained by the processor instead of the graphics card. Of course, this results in stupid framerates (often below 1fps) but it is a fairly good way to guage how powerful a processor is. I think that could be what is happening here.

The other thing making me think this is that it seems to be caused by something fairly fundamental to that map view. I get the same results whether I have the graphics on max (1280x1024, all things high, 4x AA) or on their lowest.
On the other hand, my flatmate with an older graphics card (ATI Radeon 9800 Pro) has no problems whatsoever, and neither do many other people. The sooner this is patched the better.


System:
Athlon 64 3000+
1GB RAM
Graphics: Geforce 6600GT 128MB, PCI-e
Sound: Creative Soundblaster Audigy2 ZS

 

[phybre]

Someone in another thread either here or at Apolyton suggested that the DirectX release bundled with the game is somehow modified to not be the same as the version on the MS website. It sort of makes me wonder just how many of these problems are related to D3D, if that is the case. I like games that let me decide for myself which API to use, because in general I've always had more luck with OpenGL.

 

[Sevenhertz]

I had Direct X 9.0C installed BEFORE I installed the game, so I chose not to install the DX that came with Civ4.
After failing to launch the game, I was advised by a pop-up that a file was not found. I installed the DX from the Civ4 game disk and the problem was solved.

However, I am now both suspicious and concerned that this DX version is allegedly 'modified'. Direct X is a universal part of the Windows system and should NOT be modified for a single game. I am stunned...

Furthermore, your problems with the stuttering map is commonplace. Look at the rest of the threads on here. It is nothing to do with your set-up.

I have worked in the software industry and for this game to be released in this condition with so many catastrophic, repeatable common bugs is simply unacceptable.

 

[Goosse]

When viewing the map "normally", in the flat view, with nothing going on Civ was using about 70% of the processor. Incidentally, this seems an inordinate amount just to do nothing, but there you go.
When zooming out to the globe view of the map (as soon as the map starts to curve), the process rockets all the way up to 100%

Now not being a game programmer, I'm not really in a position to analyse what's going on here, but I do program standard windows applications.
My immediate guess would be that something that should be being offloaded to the graphics card isn't being. There is no reason for my system (see below) to have any trouble at all displaying such a simple graphic if everything graphics related is being given to the graphics card as it should be.
Some sort of calculation that the graphics card should be doing is being done by the processor instead.
Think of it as being like the processor speed tests on 3DMark, where the entire rendering process is retained by the processor instead of the graphics card. Of course, this results in stupid framerates (often below 1fps) but it is a fairly good way to guage how powerful a processor is. I think that could be what is happening here.

The other thing making me think this is that it seems to be caused by something fairly fundamental to that map view. I get the same results whether I have the graphics on max (1280x1024, all things high, 4x AA) or on their lowest.

This sounds reasonable. Graphics and sound are processed constantly, even when actions are not being processed. The main system must collect data from its data tables to find what needs to be sent to the graphics card. The more of the map that you display, the more data the CPU must collect to determine what to send to the graphics processor. This last I have seen with other applications that had large amounts of data but no graphics. Accessing the data tables for minor calculations has sent the CPU to 100%. Without the graphics processing your PC would probably be much slower.

 

[meglamaniac]

phybre and Sevenhertz:
Now that you mention it, I also checked my DX version before installing the game (9.0c) and so declined to install DX during the game installation.
It also failed to launch - same popup, couldn't start the renderer. So I installed the version on the game disk and hey presto it works.


Coupled with what you have said, this makes me highly suspicious.
It's a little late now, but tomorrow I will check the official MS version of DX against the version of DX on the Civ DVD. If there are differences, I'll be more than worried - I'll be pissed off.
There is absolutely no way Civ should need to modify the graphics subsystem in order to run - if Valve can produce Halflife 2 and ID can produce Doom 3 all running on the standard DX code (and operating on a wide range of graphics cards with far fewer issues than Civ seems to have), then why on earth should Civ 4 not be possible on standard DX?
Of course, I stress this is conjecture at this point, but if it is a modification then to me that smacks of sloppy programming and/or programmers lacking the required experience down at Fireaxis.


All I know is that Civ4 is by far the most unstable game I've played in years, and I am running on perfectly standard hardware with all patches and up to date drivers - except for the graphics because Civ makes such a hash of working with the current nVidia driver I had to roll back to the previous one (again, could explained by a non-standard DX hack?).

Playing Civ in the last week I have had 6 BSODs (5 quoting the nvidia driver as the originator, one quoting the windows audio subsystem) and about 10 CTDs where Civ just exited without even an error. This is ignoring the plethora of ingame issues.
The totals for my other games, since I installed them, are as follows:
HL2: 0 BSOD, 0 CTD
Doom3: 0 BSOD, 0 CTD
FarCry: 0 BSOD, 0 CTD
ZeroHour: 0 BSOD, 0 CTD
SanAndreas: 0 BSOD, 0 CTD
TM-Sunsire: 0 BSOD, 0 CTD
UT2K4: 0 BSOD, 0 CTD

I think you get the picture.

 

[meglamaniac]

Oh by the way - can anyone remember what the DLL file is that is added to make Civ work in this situation?

 

[panzooka]

the lag is caused by the world texture being dynamically created for the globe, so if your map is really big, this process becomes laggy. u could also reduce the quality of the globe view in graphics option, this should speed up abit

 

[meglamaniac]

Panzooka, I already mentioned in my first post that the graphics settings made no difference - and that my flatmate with older hardware (he has a slower processor, and older graphics card and less RAM than me) has no such issues.
It's not related to something as simple as the graphics settings.

 

[warpstorm]

However, I am now both suspicious and concerned that this DX version is allegedly 'modified'. Direct X is a universal part of the Windows system and should NOT be modified for a single game. I am stunned...

No, it's the same one that MS gives to the rest of us game developers. Most games in the very near future will ship with that one.

Oh yeah:

Civ4: BSOD 0, CTD 0

 

[Sevenhertz]

No, it's the same one that MS gives to the rest of us game developers. Most games in the very near future will ship with that one.

Oh yeah:

Civ4: BSOD 0, CTD 0

Yes - I found out that they included a new file in the CIV4 version - not yet available for general release. No problems - thanks anyway.

 

[Junuxx]

I have set Globe View Quality to Low in the graphics options. While everything else is still on high and the resolution is 1296x960, this has greatly improved overall performance! You should try it!

 

[panzooka]

ye i did that too, and i was talking about that.
altho it looks so crap, very low texture resolution

 

[meglamaniac]

Ok I checked out the file that Civ4 installs and it is in fact legit.
It's one of the DirectX SDK files that Microsoft doesn't distribute with the End User install of DX9 (why? who knows!) so no issues there.
Back to the drawing board then.

However, I had yet another BSOD playing it again this morning
I just hope this patch comes out soon.