[BELOW MIN SPECS] Font Issues / weird text (mostly Intel GMA 965)

[dresdor]

When I launch civ 5 through steam (direct x9; 10/11 crashes before the game loads) I get past the intro video, and the main screen looks great, except that the text is garbled and unreadable. All of the menus are like this, and I've tried to mess with some video displays in-game to see if that is the problem, with no success (I have since reset these to default).

I have checked and double checked my direct x, drivers, and the like. I have had no other problems, and the rest of the graphics of the game look good except the text. I'm stymied, and 2k game's support website will not load.

Anyone have any advice?

Running Vista with all updates installed.

 

[The_J]

Moderator Action: Threads merged.

Your graphic card is under the minimum specs, so the only advice we can give you is to buy a new computer (or at least a new card, if it's not a laptop).

 

[McThomas]

i hate my laptop..... i really do....

 

[Helvetica Jones]

When I launch civ 5 through steam (direct x9; 10/11 crashes before the game loads) I get past the intro video, and the main screen looks great, except that the text is garbled and unreadable. All of the menus are like this, and I've tried to mess with some video displays in-game to see if that is the problem, with no success (I have since reset these to default).

I have checked and double checked my direct x, drivers, and the like. I have had no other problems, and the rest of the graphics of the game look good except the text. I'm stymied, and 2k game's support website will not load.

Anyone have any advice?

Running Vista with all updates installed.

You and I have very similar systems, and I was having this same issue; there is a way to fix it.

Dell has it's own version of Intel 965 chipset updates that it puts out, and they block you from being able to install the ones put out by Intel. Unfortunately, the Dell updates are older, and intentionally leave out certain features (that are required to make Civ run properly) to preserve compatibility with certain Dell programs (or something like that).

To get around this, you'll have to remove the old Dell driver manually before installing Intel's latest update. Open the start menu, right click on Computer and go to properties. From there open the Device Manager (top of the left-most bar). From the menu there open "Display Drivers" and then double-click on the Intel Chipset 965 etc. Open the Driver tab and click "Uninstall" at the bottom of that menu to get rid of the Dell-updated driver you have. Once that's done, you should be able to run the installation for the most recent Intel driver (obtained from the Intel site, not through Dell) without Dell blocking it like it normally does. With that, you should be able to run Civ V with DirectX 10/11 without it crashing, and without the text issue.

Keep in mind, this only works with Windows Vista. The most recent Intel driver update for Windows XP still doesn't support DirectX 11, and without that you can't get around the text issue, because there doesn't seem to be a way to get rid of it in the DirectX 9 mode, as far as I can tell.

 

[dresdor]

It was the dell drivers, I updated to the inspiron drivers and it worked wonderfully.

 

[Velikovsky]

Same fix worked for Toshiba drivers

 

[The_J]

What graphics card do you both have? Are they also below the min. specs?

 

[Helvetica Jones]

What graphics card do you both have? Are they also below the min. specs?

I have the Intel Integrated G965 Chipset (the one that most people with this issue seem to have). With the updated drivers the game runs without any problems, albeit somewhat slowly (I'm playing exclusively in strategic view as a result).

 

[Ronb65]

Funny thing was mine worked fine for the first 50 or so turns, then the text started going flaky. I'll just have to content myself with 'old' civ IV' until my new laptop arrives.

Not that I was surprised considering the graphic card on this PC, but it was nice seeing some of the new game.

 

[divirg]

Hi everybody. Unfortunately I am experiencing the same "bad fonts" issue.

I managed to install Intel latest drivers, this made the game finally start. Nevertheless it is always starting in DX9 (this is what is shown on the title bar during start-up).

Any suggestion? I think I am a step away from running it (even if I expect bad performance and poor graphics).

thanks
Carmine

 

[divirg]

Just reinstalled the Game and put steam in C:\steam.

 

[mafujosh]

Based on direct experience with 2 of my laptops (Windows XP and Windows 7, both with Intel 965), and with others' posts on the forums:

- XP, installing the latest Dell driver kept the game from crashing when starting up, but left the text garbled. Installing the latest from Intel that was newer than Dell's didn't help.

- Windows 7. installing the latest Dell driver stopped the garbled text for DirectX 11. DirectX 9 was still garbled. It seems that it runs faster for DirectX 9 though.

Someone posted a workaround of editing the font files to reduce the garbled text. I further tweaked the workaround to force them all to uppercase, which wasn't getting garbled. So, it works, no garbled text for Intel 965 for DirectX 9.
http://mafujosh.blogspot.com/2010/09/civ-5-garbled-text.html

Note that this doesn't fix the problem. It works around the problem.
Otherwise, the game works. It is still pretty slow for me in normal view, but if I pretty much still to strategic mode, it performs really well.

- Josh

 

[divirg]

Ciao Josh, in my case it is not working, is it valid for every language? Just replace the files?

thanks
Carmine

 

[mafujosh]

Carmine,

I only focused on fixing English. Basically, there is a mapping of all the letters, uppercase and lowercase, defined in the ggxml files. I configured the 26 lowercase letters to be just like the capital letters, so that everything was capital. This was because capital letter didn't show up garbled.

So, there are other "letters" in the ggxml files. If you can verify that the letters that are garbled for you are lowercase but not uppercase, maybe I can go ahead and make the same change against the special characters. (Letters with accents over the letters, etc.) Or if you can follow what I'm saying in my blog, you can try it yourself: http://mafujosh.blogspot.com/2010/09/civ-5-garbled-text.html

- Josh

 

[divirg]

I will indeed, I didn't read your blog till the end.

I will let you know whether I succeed or not.

10x

Carmine

 

[bepe]

Hi guys, got problem with Civ5, maybe you know what to do...........

I've got Windows Vista, 1 gb ram and a Intel Chipset 945. When I click on "run civ 5 with DX9" in Steam the game is not responding (the civ5's window shows for a second, but it disapear - and that's all).

Is it any possibility to run civ5 with these card and RAM or is it to low? Is it problem with RAM or graphic card? There's no chance to me to buy a new laptop at the moment so if you have any idea how to run it, tell me !
Thx thx thx!
bepe

 

[The_J]

Did you install SP2?
Did you update your graphics card drivers to the latest from intel (like mentioned in the thread here)?

 

[nannav]

this worked for me after having installed the intel drivers and still got garbled text, this is brilliant!

 

[e-burger]

Mine doesn't even let me select DX 10/11, saying that an update is required. Even though I have Vista SP2 with DirectX 10. Running DXSetup from the game folder doesn't do anything. (Running it on DX9 produces the same font problem.)

 

[zyx]

@helvetica jones

tjmks for the good advice

zyxx