cheshire cat/dark terrain bug NOT just video card problem!

[move_quietly]

i confirmed it on my sony vaio t-250 which has cheshire cat heads and a dark terrain map showing only resources and forests. it IS a game bug of some kind. how do you know ? because there are people here using world builder to show all tiles and they can see the terrain, you couldn't do that if it was your video card.

on my laptop i did something different, i chose "pangea" land size, played the smallest map possible, with high water, all in an effort to put me on the smallest piece of real estate possible. when you do that you can see that the map is visible on part of the screen, just not where you're standing. it's a game bug!

not that any of this solves all the problems ... but the "get a new graphics card" retort might be costing some people some unnecessary money, and a lot of laptops including mine can render these graphics afterall. i thought it was weird that i could play age of empires iii and yet not be able to render these graphics. this looks like a FIXABLE bug!

 

[joesf35]

but the "get a new graphics card" retort might be costing some people some unnecessary money, and a lot of laptops including mine can render these graphics afterall. i thought it was weird that i could play age of empires iii and yet not be able to render these graphics. this looks like a FIXABLE bug!

Amen to that buddy!

"everyone go spend $130-$400 on a new card that may or may not work"

It is even worse on the other civ fan site forums, where this 'solver' guy keeps duping everyone into buying a new card, telling them theirs doesn't support t&l when it clearly does.

I am sure this is fixable and we will all be playing civ4 in less than a week, and will have forgotten this ever happened.

....maybe they are trying to tell us to study ahead for our finals since we won't be doing any of that once the game gets fixed...

 

[merlin9784]

Amen to that buddy!

"everyone go spend $130-$400 on a new card that may or may not work"

It is even worse on the other civ fan site forums, where this 'solver' guy keeps duping everyone into buying a new card, telling them theirs doesn't support t&l when it clearly does.

I am sure this is fixable and we will all be playing civ4 in less than a week, and will have forgotten this ever happened.

....maybe they are trying to tell us to study ahead for our finals since we won't be doing any of that once the game gets fixed...

I sure hope so. I was able to load the American Revolution Mod and was able to see all of the tiles. I didn't play because I thought the game was finally working but when playing the tutorial or a regular game, I still get the blackness.

 

[piranhaZ]

Amen to that buddy!

"everyone go spend $130-$400 on a new card that may or may not work"

It is even worse on the other civ fan site forums, where this 'solver' guy keeps duping everyone into buying a new card, telling them theirs doesn't support t&l when it clearly does.

I am sure this is fixable and we will all be playing civ4 in less than a week, and will have forgotten this ever happened.

....maybe they are trying to tell us to study ahead for our finals since we won't be doing any of that once the game gets fixed...

Looks like you'll have more study time than you planned for. There are no plans to fix this.

 

[TheBarnacle]

well i know most people have better cards, but i bought my machine in the spring and didn't upgrade the vid card (who'd think nowdays you'd HAVE to?!?!). anyway, i had the integrated intel. this comes direct from their site:

"Intel® graphics products do not have hardware support for T&L. In most games, transform and lighting calculations can be performed on the processor with acceptable performance. A small number of games that specifically check for hardware T&L support may fail to run."

"This applies to: Intel® 82810 Graphics Controller
Intel® 82815 Graphics Controller
Intel® 82830M Graphics Controller
Intel® 82845G Graphics Controller
Intel® 82852/82855 Graphics Controller Family
Intel® 82865G Graphics Controller
Intel® 82915G/82910GL Express Chipset Family
Mobile Intel® 915GM/GMS, 910GML Express Chipset Family "

http://www.intel.com/support/graphics/sb/CS-011910.htm

you may be able to find similar comments from nvid or ati. but for those suckers (like me!) with lesser cards, we may have to drop $ on a new one anyway.

btw, i did in fact get a geforce 5200 and that alone seemed to solve the chesire cat t&l problem as i now see the terrain, etc. BUT...the game still runs choppy and slow. there are way too many problems with this game that had i known this...well...we all would've waited now wouldn't we?

 

[mobes83]

I played through the tutorial and once that I discovered the technology to see the entire planet normally, the game worked fine. There is no way that this could possibly be just a graphics bug, this goes a whole lot deeper into the code of the game.

 

[Peppla]

I played through the tutorial and once that I discovered the technology to see the entire planet normally, the game worked fine. There is no way that this could possibly be just a graphics bug, this goes a whole lot deeper into the code of the game.

Interesting....Has anybody else tried this....Is it possible that this 'bug' perhaps just works itself out after reaching a specific point. I really hope this gets patched!

 

[mobes83]

Its happened a couple of times.

 

[Khaim]

The dark terrain bug is pretty simple, actually. The game is treating fog of war as though you are always looking at the center of the map. Thus it starts out black, becomes shaded if you explore the right area, and is bright if you actually have units there. I had a game just now where I was lucky enough to start near the center of the map, so I got to play somewhat normally.

If you ignore the fact that the leaders look like something out of a horror movie and that the production overlay doesn't work, that is.

 

[amirsan]

Alright, well then, let me know when there is a fix...

 

[mikojava]

this explanation makes a lot of sense. Lots of reports of the "corner of your screen clearing up" after long playtime, which is consistent with the idea that the fog doesnt center properly...

 

[neriana]

It is not a bug. It is the fact that you do not have a card to run the game properly. World builder does not equal the game, with its 3d requirements.

There isn't any such thing as "just a graphics bug" any more. Your computer cannot support the graphics engine, it's not like it's just some pretty frilly stuff draped over the game.

Nowadays, more than ever, you have to upgrade your video card. If you don't even have one, don't expect to run ANY games that aren't old. And I mean at least a few years old. Nor does when you bought your computer have a thing to do with its quality and the hardware inside it.

 

[Carver]

Interesting....Has anybody else tried this....Is it possible that this 'bug' perhaps just works itself out after reaching a specific point. I really hope this gets patched!

In my game the gfx got much better after I researched satelites and the world map was revealed. Now, all the terrain in my line of sight (which had been black) became visible with some sort of texture. It was far from good but somewhat playable.

 

[Greek Plunder]

It is not a bug. It is the fact that you do not have a card to run the game properly. World builder does not equal the game, with its 3d requirements.

There isn't any such thing as "just a graphics bug" any more. Your computer cannot support the graphics engine, it's not like it's just some pretty frilly stuff draped over the game.

Nowadays, more than ever, you have to upgrade your video card. If you don't even have one, don't expect to run ANY games that aren't old. And I mean at least a few years old. Nor does when you bought your computer have a thing to do with its quality and the hardware inside it.

It is a bug. there are plenty of people with excellent systems confirming this same thing. I have a Radeon 9800 PRO, and I get the same issue, except mine doesn't just stay solid black, it flashes on and off depending on zoom level.

 

[amirsan]

It is not a bug. It is the fact that you do not have a card to run the game properly. World builder does not equal the game, with its 3d requirements.

There isn't any such thing as "just a graphics bug" any more. Your computer cannot support the graphics engine, it's not like it's just some pretty frilly stuff draped over the game.

Nowadays, more than ever, you have to upgrade your video card. If you don't even have one, don't expect to run ANY games that aren't old. And I mean at least a few years old. Nor does when you bought your computer have a thing to do with its quality and the hardware inside it.

Plus, you can see the terrain most perfectly if you use a cheat and turn off fog of war completely. But then you can see everything...

 

[mobes83]

It is not a bug. It is the fact that you do not have a card to run the game properly. World builder does not equal the game, with its 3d requirements.

There isn't any such thing as "just a graphics bug" any more. Your computer cannot support the graphics engine, it's not like it's just some pretty frilly stuff draped over the game.

Nowadays, more than ever, you have to upgrade your video card. If you don't even have one, don't expect to run ANY games that aren't old. And I mean at least a few years old. Nor does when you bought your computer have a thing to do with its quality and the hardware inside it.

Its still a bug if the fog of war never disappears. I cant even see the land around my cities. The fact that it looks and works fine after you have the tech to see the entire world shows that its not my graphics card either, so if you want to take another stab at what else it would be go ahead. One more thing, I worked as a QA tester for a video game company and there are and will always be "just a graphics bug", its called human mistake on the programmers.

 

[Wise Ass]

It is not a bug. It is the fact that you do not have a card to run the game properly. World builder does not equal the game, with its 3d requirements.

There isn't any such thing as "just a graphics bug" any more. Your computer cannot support the graphics engine, it's not like it's just some pretty frilly stuff draped over the game.

Nowadays, more than ever, you have to upgrade your video card. If you don't even have one, don't expect to run ANY games that aren't old. And I mean at least a few years old. Nor does when you bought your computer have a thing to do with its quality and the hardware inside it.

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