Black terrain: a possible cause

[Vorpal]

First of all let me note that "black terrain" issue seems to be different from the "cheshire cat" issue: there are number of cases when these two things do not happen simultaneously (e.g. I have normal heads, but still no terrain).

The "cat" things seems to be related to problems with textures for leaderheads: either these resources are missing, or there's some problem with loading the textures into the video memory or rendering them.

Now about the "terrain" problem, I think I know the precise cause for it. Because of some reasons, the map starts to "open" not from our starting location, but rather from the center of the map. So the "whole fog of war" and "unexplored area" zones are shifted from their actual location by as much as your initial location is shifted from the center. Try to experiment with it on tiny maps, you'll see exactly what I mean.

Now how can we deal with it? One of the suggested treatments was to fix xml file for technologies, so that they all open the map for you. This does not fix the "fog of war" however as it is still shifted from where it should be. Another partial treatment could be to find a place where the intial location for the player is prescribed and set it to the center of the map. This still does not solve the problem completely though. So let's experiment to figure out what causes this shift!

EDIT:

Actually, after some extra experimentation I figured, that it happens slightly different than what I conjectured: the "unknown" and the "fog of war" layers are simply immobile. That is it is as if you had two cameras, one for terrain and one for the "back/fog" areas. So the camera for terrain moves with your focus, whereas the other one always hangs obeve the center of the map...

 

[Toppy]

I'm having both the "cat" and "black terrain" issue! Very odd! Is it my computer or the game...anyone know??? Any solutions?

 

[PrivateerNavy]

Now about the "terrain" problem, I think I know the precise cause for it. Because of some reasons, the map starts to "open" not from our starting location, but rather from the center of the map.

Very interesting.

FYI-- I'm running on a laptop with the 7500 Mobility.

My first install, I didn't have the chesire cat problem, but did have the terrain problem. I updated my ATI drivers with the Omega drivers, uninstalled Civ, installed DX, reinstalled Civ.

Now I have the cheshire cat problem AND the black terrain.

I was able to play the game by revealing the world map through the tech tree, as other folks have done. It's not a very satisfying way to play.

But your assessment is interesting to me because I noticed when I played last night that my cursor "mouseovers" were 1 tile up and left of where they should be. So if I wanted to see what resources or units were in a particular tile, I had to hover 1 up and 1 left to see it.

Firaxis dropped the ball BIG TIME on this one. All of the improvements to the Civ gameplay are great (although I am still getting used to them). I can't believe that Sid Meier caved to the pressure to slap on the snazzy graphics, which add NOTHING to the game. I'd guess that most folks are going to have their unit animations and wonder movies turned off within 2 weeks of playing-- assuming they CAN play.

It also seems to me that all the fancy 3d graphics are going to slow down the modding community. How many folks are sitting around with Renderman to make new units?

Civ4 + 3D = CRAP.