Final verdict? Black terrain = new graphics card?

[joesf35]

You need a paper and pen for class, but if you want to think everyone needs a computer while you sit in a seat to write stuff down, that's cool.

Are you for real?
I won't even dignify this with a real response.

Start a job, where you need to buy your computer? Where on earth do you work?

If you are working for a small business or with other entrepreneurs in your own company. If you are working for a large company then they will supply you with one.....hence I put *both* circumstances.

Please just deal with your situation. It sucks. Blame the manufacturers for even giving you a pretense of game functionalty, not being aware of this situation is not the problem of Firaxis or anyone posting here. Consider it a lesson learned.

http://www.hardcoreware.net/reviews/review-106-1.htm
Why do they advertise "Hardware T&L"?

The game has requirements, if work is being done to fix problems, they are going to start with those system it's suppose to work on, not thoses that couldn't do it in the first place.

And most of our computers meet their "requirements" which is why we are pissed.

 

[Citizen Philip]

Are you for real?
I won't even dignify this with a real response.

If you are working for a small business or with other entrepreneurs in your own company. If you are working for a large company then they will supply you with one.....hence I put *both* circumstances.

http://www.hardcoreware.net/reviews/review-106-1.htm
Why do they advertise "Hardware T&L"?

And most of our computers meet their "requirements" which is why we are pissed.

You quoted an article from 4 years ago to support your statement, and not only is it 4 years ago: it's not about laptops, It's about video cards.

 

[lightnng]

You're wrong. The game was designed right from the beginning with Hardware T&L support in mind. And no, the black terrain/cheshire cat leader issues are not happening to cards that do have it.

That is total BS.

You know what's amazing about you, Willem? You continue make this claim, as if it's holy write, conveniently ignoring messages from many people, like me, who have cards that do support hardware T&L, that have updated their drivers, and are able to play the game normally in some scenarios but not in the random map one.

At this point there is enough evidence to point to this problem having nothing to do with hardware T&L and everything to do with extremely buggy code and a defective product. Your preaching otherwise, in that righteous tone that is typical of religious fanatics, makes you both very annoying as well as appearing to be a... what was the term? fanboy?

If they are, it's because people haven't bothered to upgrade their drivers.

Again total BS. I have a card that supports hardware T&L and I have updated my drivers. I can point you to numerous posts from people saying the exact same thing. Are you a troll?

And it most definately is happening because your video card doesn't support T&L.

Oh really? And what makes you qualified to make this statement? In other words, how do you know? Prove it, or start temporizing your statements a little bit. And you can't prove it, because it isn't true (again, as my situation proves as well as others). You can say the above in a way that isn't so offensive simply by altering the words "most definitely" to "most likely". That's all it needs.

 

[Willem]

Citizen Philip is correct in noting that this an intensive operation on the CPU, especially when polygon counts are high, where most GPUs can perform it very rapidly.

And as one person has pointed out on one of the forums, the polygon counts in Civ 4 are quite high. It would require alot more CPU power to make the game work without Hardware T&L.

 

[Willem]

That is total BS.

You know what's amazing about you, Willem? You continue make this claim, as if it's holy write, conveniently ignoring messages from many people, like me, who have cards that do support hardware T&L, that have updated their drivers, and are able to play the game normally in some scenarios but not in the random map one.

Screw you people, I'm getting sick of all of you who whine like spoiled little children when they don't get their way. I've been trying very hard to be sympathetic, diplomatic and helpful but I just keep getting slammed for it. If you want to play the game, get a real computer. End of story.

 

[joesf35]

You quoted an article from 4 years ago to support your statement, and not only is it 4 years ago: it's not about laptops, It's about video cards.

OK I'm going to make an attempt to get you to understand here.
That article is about the Radeon 7500, which is what most of us have who are having the black terrain cheshire cat problem. Willem says that it does not support harware T&L and it seems like the ATI people think it does.

And Willem, put yourself in our shoes and then you will understand why we are so p'd about this situation.

 

[Munchkinguy]

Try to manually enable "texture compression". My graphics went black too, when I disabled texture compression in my graphic card control panel. Hope it helps.

How do I do this?

 

[lightnng]

Screw you people, I'm getting sick of all of you who whine like spoiled little children when they don't get their way. I've been trying very hard to be sympathetic, diplomatic and helpful but I just keep getting slammed for it. If you want to play the game, get a real computer. End of story.

Ah, good, I'm glad we reached a conculsion. May I safely assume that we will no longer have to hear preachings about our supposed whining, stupidity, or lack of spending power or desire?

Very well then.

So, now that we got rid of that particular troll, anyone had any success in figuring out the map centering angle?

 

[Willem]

OK I'm going to make an attempt to get you to understand here.
That article is about the Radeon 7500, which is what most of us have who are having the black terrain cheshire cat problem. Willem says that it does not support harware T&L and it seems like the ATI people think it does.

And Willem, put yourself in our shoes and then you will understand why we are so p'd about this situation.

Yes the 7500 does support T&L. Go into Control Panel>Display>Settings>Advanced, look for the SmartGart tab. Turn off your ARP acceleration. Your game is going to crawl however. You have to expect some compromises with a minimum recommended card.

For god's sake people, make some effort to solve your own problems. There have been several posts now detailing this method to get these cards to work. Look around instead of complaining. If you're going to post, start a thread asking for help instead of simply whining that the game doesn't work. It's your computer, your game, take some responsibilty and don't keep expecting people to spoon feed you the answers. You have a bottom of the rung video card, it's a problem that you have to deal with, no one else. Most of the people who are playing the game right now have made the investment and upgraded their systems. The onus is on you alone to deal with a card that is years behind almost everyone else's. If I were to go out and buy a 1917 Ford Model T, I wouldn't expect a local mechanic to be able to get it running over night. I would have to put some effort into tracking down the parts needed to make it run.

And yes I was in your shoes just this summer. I bought Pirates! and the game was continually crashing on me. It turns out that the video card of my brand new motherboard didn't support Hardware T&L. I didn't whine & snivel or hurl insults at Firaxis, I simply went out and bought a new card. Incompatibilites occur with computers. That's life, deal with it!

 

[joesf35]

Yes the 7500 does support T&L. Go into Control Panel>Display>Settings>Advanced, look for the SmartGart tab. Turn off your ARP acceleration. Your game is going to crawl however. You have to expect some compromises with a minimum recommended card.

Thank you for your civil reply Willem.

I actually posted about this when the game came out and I did partly "solve my own problem", but when you turn your AGP off the terrain turns to bleach white. The speed was not a problem for me when I turned mipmap down to the lowest quality setting....it ran just fine but in bleach white terrain and blacked out water squares.
I figure if we can troubleshoot this problem a lot of angry people will go away and eventually report to "civ anonymous".

And yes I was in your shoes just this summer. I bought Pirates! and the game was continually crashing on me. It turns out that the video card of my brand new motherboard didn't support Hardware T&L. I didn't whine & snivel or hurl insults at Firaxis, I simply went out and bought a new card. Incompatibilites occur with computers. That's life, deal with it!

Well you weren't fully in the shoes then, because there is no way this guy can afford a new computer until he gets out of school.

 

[Willem]

Thank you for your civil reply Willem.

I actually posted about this when the game came out and I did partly "solve my own problem", but when you turn your AGP off the terrain turns to bleach white. The speed was not a problem for me when I turned mipmap down to the lowest quality setting....it ran just fine but in bleach white terrain and blacked out water squares.
I figure if we can troubleshoot this problem a lot of angry people will go away and eventually report to "civ anonymous".

I apologize for my rant then, you are one of the few people I've come across who have actually made the attempt. Most people seem content to just complain and expect Firaxis to fix things for them. Hence my obvious frustration. And yes I admit I'm sounding like an ogre at times, but after several days of dealing with posters like lightnng, who absolutely refuse to accept the truth of the situation, my patience is wearing thin. I honestly am trying to be helpful here.

And for the record, I think Firaxis should have raised the minimum requirement to at least one model above that one. Although it does work to a point, I don't think it does it well enough to be considered compatible.

As for not being in your shoes, I had a job for the summer and spent as much money as I could on computer gear. The job has since ended and I'm back to being being broke, possibly until the spring. So I'm not as far off of your situation as you may think. I can't even afford to buy the game right now, I'm getting my fix vicariously.

 

[lightnng]

OK, Willem, I'll bite: please provide me with the name of a model of thin&light laptop - any manufacturer, any model, any price, no optical drive necessary but it has to be under 3.5 pounds, with long battery life, highly reliable and carry a 3 year warranty - that in your opinion has a good enough video card (since you are so quick to discount the whole radeon mobility line as well as the whole intel integrated line). Just curious.

As for your various claims about me - as I mentioned multiple times, I have spent over 10 hours already on this, run through all the suggested fixes, and even come up with a couple suggestions myself (look in other threads). My problem with you is your righteous indignation towards anybody who doesn't fall into the groove that you set for them. From all your posts, as far as you are concerned, I don't exist; a user who does have a modern machine, with hardware supporting this T&L feature, that is not a cheapskate or whatever, and yet cannot run the game.

 

[Willem]

From all your posts, as far as you are concerned, I don't exist; a user who does have a modern machine, with hardware supporting this T&L feature, that is not a cheapskate or whatever, and yet cannot run the game.

Then accept the fact that laptops simply aren't designed to play games on, they're productivity machines. You don't buy a toaster and expect it to make a pot of coffee do you? If it means so much to you to play the game, buy a cheap desktop and use that. I sympathize that Civ 4's technology puts it out of range of most laptop users, but that's the way it is. No one said life was fair. In a year or two, Civ will still be around and laptop makers, hopefully, will be putting half decent video cards into their machines.

And though I can't give any model names, there are laptops that can run it without any problems. In fact anything that has an Intel 9xxx type video card will work. It uses software emulation to do the T&L calculations and at least a couple of posters have said it runs fine if they turn down the detail levels. I saw another post of someone who had a Radeon 9000 in his rig, which is also good enough for the game. I'm sorry you made the wrong choice when you bought your machine, but that's not my fault, nor is it Firaxis'. I guess next time you'll have a bit more information to work with won't you? Think of it as a learning experience.

 

[lightnng]

Then accept the fact that laptops simply aren't designed to play games on, they're productivity machines.

Erm. Sure, you're right, I don't expect my laptop to run Doom III, or Half Life 2 or what have you (although it easily does, but that's besides the point). However, as I and countless others have said, we fully expect our business machines to be able to run Civ games, and rightly so, considering what the games are.

But here is thing you keep ignoring: my laptop DOES run Civ4 perfectly well, just not always. It runs it nice and smooth in some scenarios, without any problem at all (black terrain, cheshire cat, or whatever). That sort of pulls the rug from under the whole "not a good enough machine" argument, now doesn't it? It renders, it plays, it doesn't crash... so the laptop apparently is perfectly capable of playing this game. Only it doesn't in the one setting I care about, which is the random map setting.

If you can't understand that this has nothing to do with hardware and everything to do with software, you're simply either boneheaded to an amazing degree, or have an agenda.

I'm sorry you made the wrong choice when you bought your machine

It's comments like this that are the most egregious. I made a perfect choice in choosing my laptop, since gaming is nowhere near the top priority for my needs. I picked the top-of-the-line machine, literally the most expensive and most advanced in its class, and I will continue to use it for the 3 years of the normal business cycle until I get a new one. And yes, I think it is perfectly reasonable to assume that a top of the line machine that is in the middle of its life cycle (18 months old) should be able to run any turn-based strategy game that comes out, period.

I don't know why I keep trying to converse with you though. You have thus far completely and utterly failed to acknowledge any of what I've been saying, and just repeat your "you're an idiot who bought the wrong laptop" mantra over and over again. So from this point on, I will cease to reply to your posts unless they actually make an attempt to acknowledge my arguments. Because right now this is not a discussion, it's you standing on a soapbox and preaching to us simple folk.

 

[lightnng]

there are laptops that can run it without any problems

Not a single one that I know of that answers the thin&light requirement. Oh, wait, except mine, on those scenarios... hmm.

 

[Willem]

Erm. Sure, you're right, I don't expect my laptop to run Doom III, or Half Life 2 or what have you (although it easily does, but that's besides the point). However, as I and countless others have said, we fully expect our business machines to be able to run Civ games, and rightly so, considering what the games are.

I fully expect world peace in my lifetime, it's not going to happen. The Civ franchise has moved up a notch, you're just going to have to catch up. It is what it is and no amount of stamping your feet and holding your breath is going to change that at this point.

If you can't understand that this has nothing to do with hardware and everything to do with software, you're simply either boneheaded to an amazing degree, or have an agenda.

Sorry you refuse to accept it and obviously it's futile convincing you otherwise. So good luck with the first patch, I hope you're not to disappointed.

So from this point on, I will cease to reply to your posts unless they actually make an attempt to acknowledge my arguments.

Is that a promise? Besides you have nothing fruitful to add anyway, you're to busy having your little temper tantrums.

Because right now this is not a discussion, it's you standing on a soapbox and preaching to us simple folk.

No, it's you not wanting to accept anything anyone tells you and only believing what you want to believe. In fact, I've come to think so little of you during this discussion, I believe I'll just stick you in my ignore list so I'll no longer have to waste my time.