Blank main menu

[Trokkin]

Well, the problem I have don't seems to be unique, but still I didn't managed to fix it. Maybe I'm just too lazy, but, nevertheless...

I installed Dawn of Civilization on clear Complete edition, ran it and there was no interface at all, only the background. The interface just didn't displayed since I could managed to do some familiar actions. Then I changed language to English (from Russian) and main menu has appeared - still it had no texts at all. Proceeded to nation choose I caught an empty popup that seemed to be error message, and "OK" button led to closing the game.

I have already tried:
- Deleting GlobalDefines.xml, translating changes to GlobalDefinesAlt.xml
- Turning on GUIManagedTextures
- Changing language
- Updating drivers
- Updating Civ4 (well, both drivers and Civ4 was the last version everbefore)

It's other computer than I had with previous trouble (which actually was better) - now it is notebook with GPU nvidia GeForce GT 630M and same build of WinXP.

Any thoughts what can fix the trouble?

 

[Leoreth]

DoC is English only. For some I reason (that I have still to get to the bottom of) if your game language is set to something other than English (which it might be considering the fresh install, depending on your system default) you will get a blank main menu.

 

[Trokkin]

Well, I've mentioned that I've changed language before...

Then I changed language to English (from Russian) and main menu has appeared - still it had no texts at all.

Or did I missed something in your reply?

Now my problem is on this stage (which didn't changed since the creation of the thread):
There is menu, but each field is empty, with language set English. Buttons are functional. But also empty error message appears on game setup, when proceeded to nation choose.

Also, the %username% and My documents folders are named in russian. Could this affect how menu is displayed?

 

[Leoreth]

I know that the Russian version is weird in that Russian replaces English as first game language in the XML. Is it the same version you have successfully used before?

I don't think any of the Windows settings impact this though.

 

[Nightinggale]

Also, the %username% and My documents folders are named in russian. Could this affect how menu is displayed?

Using anything other than standard ASCII (that is most languages other than English) is a known cause of weird problems, particularly missing graphic. Move it to the Mods folder in the install dir (usually in program files).

If you keep having problems running games to make them accept English, then try running with English locale. Microsoft made an excellent tool called AppLocale to change the locale for just one application and not the entire system. It works well, but since it doesn't work in Windows 10, Microsoft removed it from their download page. Luckily Hongfire keeps a copy online. Their guide is intended for running Japanese games on English computers, but it works equally well running English games on Russian computers. I did notice you wrote you use XP, which is the version of windows, where AppLocale works best.

Alternatively you can change the locale setting in control panels, but that requires a restart and it is system wide. However it does work without installing new software.

 

[Trokkin]

Move it to the Mods folder in the install dir (usually in program files).

I didn't catch what to move. Could you specify "it"?
Both mod and Civ4 are installed in default directory ("F:/Program Files/Civilizati..."). What I said was about path to Civilization4.ini, saves and others.

AppLocale makes Civ4 not load mod from shortcut, and a lot of such (attachment) errors appears on load of the mod. And when mod is finally loaded, there is no menu at all, like it was with Russian language in Civ settings.

I've changed my local language, so I'll return here when I will test everything again.

 

[Nightinggale]

I didn't catch what to move. Could you specify "it"?
Both mod and Civ4 are installed in default directory ("F:/Program Files/Civilizati..."). What I said was about path to Civilization4.ini, saves and others.

Dawn of Civilization. It should be in Mods. There are two of those. One is in My Documents/My Games/... and the other is in program files. For some reason the my documents one can cause problems in cases when the other one works as intended.

AppLocale makes Civ4 not load mod from shortcut, and a lot of such (attachment) errors appears on load of the mod. And when mod is finally loaded, there is no menu at all, like it was with Russian language in Civ settings.

That doesn't sound right. I tried all sorts of languages when exploring possibilities for translating the game and didn't have problems like that. AppLocale should be able to start from shortcuts just fine and you can even make shortcuts, which triggers AppLocale to load BTS with some mod argument. I can't remember how to set that up though as I haven't used it in a while.

EDIT
Actually the problem could be due to using a 32 bit system. The game is a 32 bit game, which mean it should be fine, but for some reason reading FPK files can cause problems unless it's a 64 bit system. Unpacking the FPK files might help, though as I remember it, when I had problems with that, it crashed at startup.

 

[Trokkin]

Umm, there is no DoC folder in My Documents folder.

Well, I made AppLocale to work correctly... There was no difference, exluding changed screen resolution.
And changing local language didn't help at all.
Maybe it's because my 'special' edition of WinXP, which has been cleaned out of any 'useless' things, in meanings of its author. Non-license, torrent windows, yep.

So, it seems that problem isn't with my local language.
Maybe with fonts, since all the text just don't displays, leaving empty space in place of itself (attachment)? And I wonder what could lead to this:

Proceeded to nation choose I caught an empty popup that seemed to be error message, and "OK" button led to closing the game.

But also empty error message appears on game setup, when proceeded to nation choose.

 

[Nightinggale]

Maybe it's because my 'special' edition of WinXP, which has been cleaned out of any 'useless' things, in meanings of its author. Non-license, torrent windows, yep.

You already told us you are Russian. There is no need to repeat yourself

Maybe with fonts, since all the text just don't displays, leaving empty space in place of itself (attachment)? And I wonder what could lead to this:

It's a fairly good question what the game would do without detecting a font. The default font is sylfaen.ttf, yet it has a fallback font. I never manage to identify which one it use as fallback, but if both are missing, it might do precisely what you see.

I would recommend checking if you have a font called sylfaen.

 

[Trokkin]

You already told us you are Russian. There is no need to repeat yourself

I meant my windows isn't license, is downloaded from torrents and the author wiped out many things he recognized as unnecessary (and now I'm actually repeating). Not a word about Russian... Nevermind.

I installed that font, but nothing changed, still that many empty space.
Should I restart system after that?
Second font should be missing also.

And not even a thought about that error?

 

[Leoreth]

That you can make it to civilopedia and every entry shows up blank suggests that it's not just an issue with the languages in the text keys, because for unchanged aspects the mod is simply using the text keys of the base game.

Are you on the Steam version by the way? And how did you update? A manual patch is required.

Have you checked if other mods show the same problem?

 

[Nightinggale]

Not a word about Russian... Nevermind.

You completely missed the point. The online stereotype Russian pirates everything and those I encountered in real life has done nothing to give me a different impression. I know somebody who went to Moscow on a business trip in 1998 and was approached on the street by people selling burned copies of windows 98 CDs (it was brand new, remember). It happened openly like they were selling newspapers or similar and everybody acted like it was normal

As for the problem, Leoreth seems to be asking the right questions. The only question I can add is: do you have a Russian release of civ4? Some unofficial Russian patch might be causing conflicts, or at least the possibility should not be forgotten.

 

[Trokkin]

That you can make it to civilopedia and every entry shows up blank suggests that it's not just an issue with the languages in the text keys, because for unchanged aspects the mod is simply using the text keys of the base game.

Seems like issue with fonts, as I said... Just not an idea what other could it be.

Are you on the Steam version by the way? And how did you update? A manual patch is required.

It is repack of Civ4 Complete, where BtS was patched to 3.19 already. So there was no updates I made.

Have you checked if other mods show the same problem?

Checked just now - no, other mods don't have this problem. Even the original RFC.
...maybe it's because of BUG mod? I remember other times I had such big mods installed like OGI or C2C they had similar problem, or just very laggy interface.

Also one important note: my other PC have same Windows, driverpacks, Civ4 and mods for it installed, but there was no such problems.

You completely missed the point. ...

Ok, thanks for explanation. Didn't know our everyday life is so famous
It's fun to live here, though is sad also. Tiring amusement.

do you have a Russian release of civ4? Some unofficial Russian patch might be causing conflicts, or at least the possibility should not be forgotten.

Repack is made in Russian language, and other translations excluding English is removed. I don't know if there was any patches, but English language works just the same perfect as Russian.

 

[Nightinggale]

Most likely your modified version use codepage 1251 instead of 1252. It shouldn't be a problem if you try to display English, but it would screw up any other western European language.

Thinking a bit about the windows locale and the which codepage it selects, it doesn't really sound like the problem after all. If it is the wrong codepage, it would display wrong characters, not no characters.

Try to go into your control panels, copy a font and call the copy sylfaen.ttf. With a bit of luck it will use that font and the problem will go away.

 

[Leoreth]

I'm still not sure why DoC is the only mod causing this problem (though you might be on to something with BUG), but it seems Nightinggale is on the right track.

 

[Trokkin]

I installed that font, but nothing changed, still that many empty space.

Nightinggale, should I replace it with other font? I assumed it shouldn't make sense if it will be just another font...

Leo, as I said earlier,

...such big mods installed like OGI or C2C they had similar problem, or just very laggy interface.

I meant other smaller mods from Firaxis that don't have BUG mod don't lag. Or it could be just coincidence.

Also, talking about my other computer that runs DoC calmly, it could be different drivers to different videocards. I remember many seen posts about "Bioshock update" 10 years old with similar problem...
My drivers has v307.83 from 2013.2.26 for GeForce GT630M, and other PC with stable running of DoC has drivers of v340.52 from 2014.7.29 for GeForce 8800GT. There should be much difference in 1.5 years.

 

[Nightinggale]

If the same installer works on another computer, then it is related to the computer itself. My guess would be driver or memory related. Memory could be too little on the GPU or failure to load the mod into memory. XP has a limit of 3.25 GB for everything (unknown why it can't use all 4 GB in the address space). Using FPK files use more memory and unpacking those files have helped in the past when seeing memory related issues on 32 bit systems.

There is also the possibility to alter the DirectX settings. If I remember correctly, the second setting from right is "use this if you have font issues", which would at least be worth trying.

Link to video.​

 

[Trokkin]

If the same installer works on another computer, then it is related to the computer itself. My guess would be driver or memory related. Memory could be too little on the GPU or failure to load the mod into memory. XP has a limit of 3.25 GB for everything (unknown why it can't use all 4 GB in the address space). Using FPK files use more memory and unpacking those files have helped in the past when seeing memory related issues on 32 bit systems.

As it was said, another PC has exactly the same windows, other drivers and game build. Also both have more than 4GB RAM, so they use maximum that XP can eat, so it is definetly driver related thing.
...Huh. So, I need to extract each FPK I'll find in DoC directory?

There is also the possibility to alter the DirectX settings. If I remember correctly, the second setting from right is "use this if you have font issues"

Could you specify what to change and where is that settings?

 

[Nightinggale]

...Huh. So, I need to extract each FPK I'll find in DoC directory?

It has solved problems for me in the past on XP, but strangely it affects some installs of XP, but not all. Also it usually results in crashes rather than missing fonts, but I wouldn't rule out this issue.

Could you specify what to change and where is that settings?

Check the video. It shows where the setting for hardware acceleration is.

 

[Trokkin]

Extracted all the FPK's, didn''t help.
Hardware acceleration was set to maximum before.

Sad...

Also, this attach pops out on short loading after proceeding from scenario to leader choose.

EDIT: And another one thing: DoC works on that another computer in Russian language, mixing it with English fields that the mod has changed.