Civ4 Vanilla.. font corruption?

[MickyKitsu]

Does anyone know why certain pieces of text in Civ4 vanilla are displayed... oddly? (See attached image)

Its fixed in Warlords, its just... vaguely irritating in some way. Is there a fix for it somewhere?

 

[MickyKitsu]

And while we're on the subject, vanilla civ doesnt seem to have any in-game music either! o_O

 

[AlanH]

Do you just mean the font is serif, whereas Warlords uses sans serif? That's always been so, as far as I know.

Or are you complaining about the clipping at the tops of the letters? Those menus look OK on my system. If the clipping isn't just an artifact in the screenshot, it looks like some sort of problem with your resolution settings. What Graphics Options are you using?

In-game music works fine here. Try going into Options from the Advanced menu - the bottom one in your screen shot - and set the Audio tab to its defaults and relaunch Civ4. See if that fixes anything. Also, make sure your Mac's audio preferences are set to the correct output device. Sorry if this seems like obvious advice, but sometimes it's the simplest things ...

 

[MickyKitsu]

Do you just mean the font is serif, whereas Warlords uses sans serif? That's always been so, as far as I know.

Or are you complaining about the clipping at the tops of the letters? Those menus look OK on my system. If the clipping isn't just an artifact in the screenshot, it looks like some sort of problem with your resolution settings. What Graphics Options are you using?

See screenshot 1. And the clipping is there, yeah. It happens in other places too, anywhere where that same font is used... eg, in the city window, the city name is clipped and the font baseline is about 15 pixels higher than it should be.

In-game music works fine here. Try going into Options from the Advanced menu - the bottom one in your screen shot - and set the Audio tab to its defaults and relaunch Civ4. See if that fixes anything. Also, make sure your Mac's audio preferences are set to the correct output device. Sorry if this seems like obvious advice, but sometimes it's the simplest things ...

See screenshot 2. And i'm fairly certain the audio preferences are correct, since i have all the sound just no music.

 

[AlanH]

My settings are similar, except I only have 1024 width, and my height options are 960 or 1024. I'm intrigued that you run at 1920 x 1000, as I thought the 24" iMac's native vertical resolution was 1020.

Since the effect is only likely to be related to screen height, I tried 1024 and 960 vertical res on my system. Normally I run window mode, but I tried in full screen to simulate your situation as closely as possible. Under no conditions was I able to emulate your clipping. Here is my screenshot of the opening menu, and it looks like this whatever I do here.

Maybe the combination of your sound and font issues indicates a fault in your Civ4 installation. You could try moving your ~/Documents/Civilizaiton 4/CivlizationIV.ini and ~/Library/Preferences/com.aspyr.civ4.plist files to the desktop and let Civ4 recreate them?

PS. I run BlueMarble, and HOF-Mac.1.74.002 as standard. I don't think they should affect either of your issues.

 

[MickyKitsu]

Oh wow. Ok, i tried what you suggested with the pref and ini files, and when i started Civ again... it defaults to 1024x768, and i'm getting the exact same font issues at that res.
Good news is, it seems to have fixed the music.

And incidently, the 24" iMac native res is actually 1920x1200.

 

[AlanH]

Oh wow. Ok, i tried what you suggested with the pref and ini files, and when i started Civ again... it defaults to 1024x768, and i'm getting the exact same font issues at that res.

Sounds as if you have some other problem with your installation, then. Maybe the font files are corrupt.

Good news is, it seems to have fixed the music.

Sounds good

And incidently, the 24" iMac native res is actually 1920x1200.

Apologies, two errors in one sentence! I misread both your screenshot (1000 1200) and the Apple spec (1020 for 1200). What can I say! It's late, and I'm prone to 'senior moments' :age:

 

[sirlink]

sorry to resurrect an old thread, but I am having this same exact issue, but no luck finding any info about it...

 

[Cadarn23]

Sorry to revive an old thread, but this is the only reference I've found anywhere to this issue.

I am trying out the Civ IV (vanilla) demo, and I am having the exact same issue as the OP. On the menu screens and on many places in-game the tops of the letters are clipped off. Like the OP, I am running this on a 24" iMac (1920 x 1200), but the issue is the same at all resolutions, in full screen and in a window.

It's not a game-breaker by any means, but it is annoying, and I'm curious if this has been resolved in a patch since the OP posted their question (and since the demo build I'm using was released). Anyone know?

 

[Welnic]

I ran the demo on about 5 different machines, and there wasn't one of them that didn't have some kind of problem with the demo. You really can't tell anything from the demo. I have a first generation (plastic) 24" iMac that ran vanilla and warlords with no problem.

 

[Brad Oliver]

Like the OP, I am running this on a 24" iMac (1920 x 1200), but the issue is the same at all resolutions, in full screen and in a window.

Is that the 24" iMac with Nvidia graphics or ATI graphics?

 

[Cadarn23]

Thanks for the follow up. My iMac has the ATI Radeon HD 2600.

 

[AlanH]

Brad. It's my impression that the demo has never been updated with the improvements and patches for later Mac hardware that you have made in the full games. As a result, it is not at all representative of the performance or graphics quality of the latest releases. Am I blowing smoke?

 

[Brad Oliver]

Brad. It's my impression that the demo has never been updated with the improvements and patches for later Mac hardware that you have made in the full games. As a result, it is not at all representative of the performance or graphics quality of the latest releases. Am I blowing smoke?

No, I think that's correct. Part of the issue is lack of time, the other is that I believe we'd have to cobble together an updated demo data set (unless Firaxis has kept their PC demo up-to-date).

 

[Brad Oliver]

Thanks for the follow up. My iMac has the ATI Radeon HD 2600.

OK, I'll take a look. I suspect it may be an issue specific to this card (which wasn't around on the Mac when we did the original). We'll likely just have to back-port the fix from Warlords and BtS.

 

[Frederico]

I also have an 24" iMac with the Radeon 2600 card and I do not have this font issue on the main screen when playing vanilla. I haven't tried the demo.

 

[Brad Oliver]

I also have an 24" iMac with the Radeon 2600 card and I do not have this font issue on the main screen when playing vanilla. I haven't tried the demo.

OK, next question then: what version of OS X are you guys using?

 

[Frederico]

Brad

Sorry for asking a stupid question, but you did notice that Cadarn23 was seeing this issue on the demo, not the actual game? Just want to be sure.

Thanks for a great game btw!

 

[Brad Oliver]

Brad

Sorry for asking a stupid question, but you did notice that Cadarn23 was seeing this issue on the demo, not the actual game? Just want to be sure.

Thanks for a great game btw!

Hah! I tangentially noticed but I got hung up on the original poster! It seems like we've definitely found and fixed this; I tested on a 10.5.7/Radeon 2600 combo last night and did not see the issue.

Thanks for the clue-bat to the head.

 

[Frederico]

Hehe, np. It was an easy mistake to make.

Always at you service, Brad