Black Map Fix!!

[rickmc]

I have a ThinkPad T42, 1.7GHz Pentium M, 512MB Ram, ATI Mobility Radeon 7500 (Omega 2.6.75a).

ALSO, under display adapters is listed the following driver: Microsoft SMS Mirror Driver. WHAT THE HECK IS THAT? Is there a primary and a slave driver?

The reason that I ask that is when I run the civ iv system compatibility test on www.srtest.com, it gives me the following under the Video Card section:

Video Card
Minimum: 64 MB 3D Video Card with Hardware Transform & Lighting (NVIDIA GeForce2+ /ATI Radeon 7500+)
You Have: Microsoft SMS Mirror Driver ()
Could not determine the video card requirement for your computer. Please review the Video Card details below or use another method for your evaluation.
Video Card Features - Minimum attributes of your Video Card

Video RAM: Required - 32 MB , You have - 0.0 B
Video Card 3D Acceleration: Required - Yes , You have - Yes
Video HW Transform & Lighting: Required - Yes , You have - Yes

Video Card Driver Version (DirectX)
Your driver version number is: 6.14.10.6575
FYI: Your video card driver version is provided for your information, but it is not part of this analysis. But proper video card driver versions are important to the proper operation of your product.

 

[ThePunisher]

I have a ThinkPad T42, 1.7GHz Pentium M, 512MB Ram, ATI Mobility Radeon 7500 (Omega 2.6.75a).
Video Card
Minimum: 64 MB 3D Video Card with Hardware Transform & Lighting (NVIDIA GeForce2+ /ATI Radeon 7500+)
You Have: Microsoft SMS Mirror Driver ()
Could not determine the video card requirement for your computer. Please review the Video Card details below or use another method for your evaluation.
Video RAM: Required - 32 MB , You have - 0.0 B
Video Card 3D Acceleration: Required - Yes , You have - Yes
Video HW Transform & Lighting: Required - Yes , You have - Yes

When I ran it on my ATI Mobility Radeon 7500 it said that I didn't have T&L! i don't know how it can claim that you do have when it doesn't know what card you have!

The SMS Mirror Driver is installed by the SMS remote tools agent when it is enabled and replaces the original controller driver. It is used to control the laptop remotely by IT via SMS when it's on the SMS network. You can disable it by changing the Start value from 3 to 4 in the following registry key: (If you have rights & know what you're doing!)
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Idisw2km

 

[uragon]

Hi,
I've been reading the thread for the Black Terrain to solve my problem with my SIS315 video card. I also have the same Black terrain problem. I tried all your suggestions, downloading the latest driver for my vidcard, editing the xml file in Assets. But still my problem persists. Any of you who have the same video card and had solved the problem? I would appreciate it very much. I've been wanting to play the game for 1 week now and I can't still play it.
Thanks

 

[panthera]

if you're still experiencing problem with black terrain use 'worldbuilder' (hit ESC during game) and reveal all tiles (fog of war). this takes away the excitement of exploring, but makes the game playable.

 

[Michelangelo]

@uragon,

Did you update to version 1.09. That patch solved it for me and my old vid-card. Before I also had to use the worldbuilder-work-around.

 

[Zydor]

Patch V1.52 came out last night, looking good so far. Access via your game menu, mirrors out soon, see Civ IV Forum home page

Regards
Zy

 

[DilithiumDad]

I have a standard Dell laptop with ATI mobility card and I updated the drivers. I have the latest patch, and I still have the black terrain problem but ledaers are now visible.

 

[jetsfan1982]

I have the exact same problem with the black terrain. I've just downloaded 1.61 (I just clicked on "updates" in the game menu). This has fixed the leader's faces but the terrain is just as black as ever. I'm using a SiS M66 1MX. Help anyone?

I've tried going into world builder and revealing all the tiles. This has no effect. Before anyone even THINKS about suggesting it!! lol.

 

[crunch]

I guess for you it's HW upgrade or Civ3. Sorry.

 

[jermar]

I've got laptop and Radeon IGP 345M. I downloaded the v.1.52 patch and tried it with original Windows drivers -> black terrain etc. Then I installed latest drivers from OmegaDrivers -> black terrain again. I was sure that this is not going to work, but then the last thing i tried was OmegaDrivers version: rad_w2kxp_omega_38252 and it WORKED. Hopefully this will help.

 

[Michelangelo]

As this thread is bumped again, might as well try to answer.

Patch 1.52 isn't the last one, please try 1.61 first. Good luck

 

[Kaimanu]

Thank you Brento1138,

Your tip about Omega drivers led me to the site where I first downloaded and used RegCure to discover over 1000 problems of various kinds. Then I got the Omega driver for my Ati Mobility Radeon 9700 (running in a Dell Inspiron 9100 with P4, 100g hard drive and 512mb and Windows XP pro). Fixing the registry issues got rid of my computers sluggishness but not the many video problems I had.

Black map was often more than black. It would sometimes be bright red, yellow, green, and very intense like neon. Sometimes it would be all checkered in rainbow colors. I also had sudden geometric shapes like triangles coming down to the center of the map and then changing shapes rapidly. Then of course there was the stuttering with text just flashing on and off and not completely rendering. Sometimes my text was indecipherable like chinese characters or just globs. Really annoyinng when one of your rival leaders appears and makes an offer that you can't even read. Then he goes away pissed off and you don't know what you did.

The frustrating thing is that the game played perfectly when I first got it back in July 2006. After I got service pack 2, though, I had a major crash and failure of the video driver. New driver did not help and I ended up getting my local computer guru to help fix it. He got it to work again but the game was never right afterwards. Did I mention that all these problems only showed up in mid to late game?

All of these problems were making the game unplayable without spending enormous amounts of time saving and then restarting the game; a sometimes successful fix. Even so, the game would inexplicably play acceptably well enough at times to keep me going. I guess it is clear I am hopelessly addicted to perservere through all that.

But the problems are now history! All is well. Omega drivers rock!! Regcure is pretty good too.

 

[NInja101]

Hey, I'm on an Acer, running SIS760GX. The game DID work properly, honest! (well, as long as I turned all the options to low) Until recently, that is. I downloaded the latest drivers for the SIS and for Civ (1.6something) and now all I see are rivers and other resources, leaders faces seem to be unaffected, as are units but not the green, green grass of the continent. Incidentally, the first time I turned Civ on after updating the drivers (but not Civ) I could see the land, but the sea was dark, which is what prompted me to update Civ....so the update made things worse! Should I just uninstall both of the updates and go back to where I was? If so, how would such a thing be accomplished? I'm pretty sure the new SIS driver deleted the old ones.......

Thanks for any help you can provide!

Edit: I tried the XML edit and it didn't seem to do...anything....thus I assume I did some thing wrong, but it still didnt help me any!

Edit2: When I use the world-builder work around this:



happened, why has this happened? Why have the new drivers for my 3d card STOPPED civ working? can I go back to the old ones?

 

[Artosoft]

I've tried it and it doesn't work. The game simply does not show the terrain; just resources, cities and units

BTW, when I zoom out, I can see the terrain perfectly, but that doesn't change anything.

I hope that the patch they're going to release will fix the problem...

I doubt it as it was stated on requirement, you need hardware TnL video card. Your graphic card is not TnL video card I believe. So if you can run civ4 with non TnL video card, it is a bonus, but I doubt they will make civ4 can run on non TnL video card.

Regards,
Arto.