Civ 3 not workin...? Display issues.

[jkilleen]

Ok, ive been playin civ 3 for a while, worked perfectly until now. After the intro movies play, the main screen is just blank, has happened on two computers now, G4 MDD and an iMac G4, Ive heard of this on the PC version but not on the mac, cant find any fixes for it, downloaded a new mac patch as well and still no look, any ideas?

 

[AlanH]

Welcome to Mac CFC

Tried re-installing it? How about trashing the prefs?

 

[jkilleen]

Well, the imac was just after having it installed, and i got most recent patch and that didnt help, tried dumping the prefs but it wasnt having any of it.

 

[AlanH]

I assume we're talking OS X?

tried dumping the prefs but it wasnt having any of it.

Do you mean it wouldn't let you?

 

[jkilleen]

Sorry, no, i dumped the prefs and it didnt make a difference, and its os x 10.3.3 and 10.3.4, one has v1.29b(?) and the other is v1.16(?)

 

[AlanH]

Sorry, no, i dumped the prefs and it didnt make a difference, and its os x 10.3.3 and 10.3.4, one has v1.29b(?) and the other is v1.16(?)

Both prefs files? There's one called CivIII Preferences and another called com.westlake.Civ3.plist.

Forget 1.16, it's old and buggy.

Did you install it as an admin user? Are you running it as the same user who installed it?

 

[Brad Oliver]

Ok, ive been playin civ 3 for a while, worked perfectly until now. After the intro movies play, the main screen is just blank

What resolution are you playing at? Have you tried changing this to a smaller resolution? I believe you hold down the option key when launching the app to change this - someone correct me if I'm wrong, it's been a while.

Do you hear the music from the main menu? This would indicate a refresh rate issue. What refresh rate are you using? Make sure you pick one that works for the resolution you're using.

 

[Brad Oliver]

Both prefs files? There's one called CivIII Preferences and another called com.westlake.Civ3.plist

The plist only contains one useful thing - the Nav Services dialog/path info. It retains the size of the file picker dialog as well as the last path you used for selecting a file in Civ3's Mac load/save dialogs. Deleting it should not affect anything, positive or negative. I saw mention of deleting this as having some benefit in another thread, but that was almost surely a placebo affect.

 

[AlanH]

I'm clutching at straws

It can have more than a placebo effect, however, as it resets the paths so that you can open and save files in a new copy of your software. The file navigation using the Firaxis dialogs sometimes restricts you to navigation within the one Civ3 folder structure, and that may be the wrong one after you've created a modded copy of Civ3.

 

[jkilleen]

Sorry, im in ireland so my time is a bit different than you guys, anyways, tried multiple combinations of resolutions and refresh rates when i was trying to get it working originally, it could be the CD as its pretty old now, so maybe some of the original installation files might have been corrupted. Damn, and i love this game...

 

[AlanH]

Sorry, im in ireland so my time is a bit different than you guys,

Not so different. That's 'England' in my profile, not ;New England'

anyways, tried multiple combinations of resolutions and refresh rates when i was trying to get it working originally, it could be the CD as its pretty old now, so maybe some of the original installation files might have been corrupted. Damn, and i love this game...

If you are doing a clean install I can't think of anything that would stop it working except the installer being faulty. So maybe you're right. Can you pick a new copy up on ebay?