Fix-It List

[asmodai]

Is there a setting specific to the wonder movies. Everything WAS working OK with version 1.09, but when I upgraded to 1.52, I started getting stuttering on the wonder movies. After much fiddling with the NVidia GeForce drivers, all on which only made matters worse, I reinstalled the drivers everything works again EXCEPT that wonder movies now cause the game to crash. I used Riva Tools to play with texture settings, and have tried lowering/removing audio acceleration; all made matters worse. What sorts of things might affect ONLY the wonder movies. Unless I can at least get back to mere "stuttering" I'm shut down, since you can't get very far in the game without building wonders....

I find that the stuttering happens later on in the game.

I am suspecting a few memory leaks, but I am unable to verify with Purify since it seems to be unable to launch Civilization IV through Putify's interface.

 

[asmodai]

Yet, they won't care. You know why ? Because Civ4 got raving reviews from magazines and games sites, which probably means it will be a commercial success. If it is a commercial success, they couldn't care less about the problems. I have deja vu here: the same complaints were heard when Civ3 was released, yet this hasn't stopped Civ4 from becoming a hit. So, whatever you or me or anyone else says about Firaxis, the truth is that they have every reason to continue releasing some of the most buggy games in the market. Apparently these buggy games get them money.

The only language software companies understand and respond to, is the language of money. If Civ4 was a failure then perhaps Civ5 would be great. As things are, they already have the proverbial cow of a large gamer base which they will keep milking for as long as they can.

Responding to this old post.

This reminds me of the flack LucasArts (rightfully) got over the Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic games.

I think one of the best companies around at the moment are VALVe and their Steam system. They believe in a release often system which might not fix everybody's bugs per fix released, but it shows the people with the games that they are being treated fairly and that the problem has the attention.

Being a programmer myself I know all about QA cycles, but once you fix something you can catch a lot of recurring issues with regression and unit tests. And memory leak detection is a pretty old subject nowadays with plenty of good tools around to detect them.

 

[asmodai]

Could people with video issues before installing their new drivers give this tool a chance first:

http://www.drivercleaner.net/

It will clean out left over stuff and might improve the chances of a new install working.

 

[asmodai]

For those that didn't agree with me when I posted this fix weeks ago, from the Civ IV lead programmer:
"- Increase AGP memory size in your BIOS settings to 128 or 256 if necessary"

I actually disagree with this.

The AGP aperture size is very dependent on:

1) your motherboard (and BIOS)
2) your videocard
3) your videocard's available memory
4) your system memory

To quote from http://www.adriansrojakpot.com/Speed_Demonz/New_BIOS_Guide/AGP_Aperture_Size.htm :

AGP Aperture Size

Common Options : 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256

Details

This BIOS feature allows you to select the size of the AGP aperture. The aperture is a portion of the PCI memory address range dedicated as graphics memory address space. Host cycles that hit the aperture range are forwarded to the AGP without need for translation. The aperture size also determines the maximum amount of system RAM that can be allocated to the graphics card for texture storage.

The AGP Aperture size can be set using the formula : maximum usable AGP memory size x 2 plus 12MB. That means that the actual usable AGP memory size is less than half of the AGP aperture size. That's because the system needs a write combined memory area equal to the amount of actual AGP memory (uncached) plus an additional 12MB for virtual addressing.

Note that all this is merely address space, not physical memory used. The physical memory is allocated and released as needed only when Direct3D makes a create non-local surface call. Win95 (with VGARTD.VXD) and later versions use a waterfall effect. Surfaces are created first in local memory. When that memory is full, surface creation spills over into AGP memory and then system memory. So, memory usage is automatically optimized for each application. AGP and system memory are not used unless absolutely necessary.

Now, many people recommend the AGP aperture size should be half of the amount of RAM your system has. However, that's wrong for the same reason why swapfile size shouldn't be 1/4 of the amount of RAM you have in your system. Like the swapfile's size, the required AGP aperture size will become smaller as the graphics card's memory increases in size. This is because most of the textures will be stored on the graphics card itself. So, graphics cards with 32MB of RAM or more will require a smaller AGP aperture than graphics cards with less RAM.

If your graphics card has very little graphics memory, then you should set the AGP aperture size as large as you can, up to half the system RAM. For cards with more graphics memory, you needn't set the aperture size to half the system RAM. Note that the size of the aperture does not correspond to performance so increasing it to gargantuan proportions will not improve performance.

Still, it's recommended that you keep the AGP aperture around 64MB to 128MB in size. Now, why is such a large aperture size recommended despite the fact that most graphics cards now come with large amounts of RAM? Shouldn't we just set it to the absolute minimum to save system RAM?

Well, in the first place, many graphics cards require an AGP aperture of at least 16MB in size to work properly. This is probably because the virtual addressing space is already 12MB in size! In addition, many software have AGP aperture size requirements which are mostly unspecified. Some games even use so much textures that AGP memory is needed even with graphics cards with lots of graphics memory.

And if you remember the formula above, the actual amount of AGP memory needed is more than double that of the required texture storage space. So, if 15MB of extra texture storage space is needed, then 42MB of system RAM is actually used. Therefore, it makes sense to set a large AGP aperture size in order to cater for every software requirement.

Note that reducing the AGP aperture size won't save you any RAM. Again, what setting the AGP aperture size does is limit the amount of RAM the AGP bus can appropriate when it needs to. It is not used unless absolutely necessary. So, setting a 64MB AGP aperture doesn't mean 64MB of your RAM will be used up as AGP memory. It will only limit the maximum amount that can be used by the AGP bus to 64MB (with a usable AGP memory size of only 26MB).

Now, while increasing the AGP aperture size beyond 128MB wouldn't really hurt performance, it would still be best to keep the aperture size to about 64MB-128MB so that the GART table won't become too large. As the amount of onboard RAM increases and texture compression becomes commonplace, there's less of a need for the AGP aperture size to increase beyond 64MB. So, it's recommended that you set the AGP Aperture Size to 64MB or at most, 128MB.

 

[asmodai]

Note to developers: Program in a garbage collected environment next time.

And just how would that help?

Garbage collection does not automatically solve memory leakage if they did not:

1) release objects allocated,
2) periodically look for non-referred objects in X amount of time,
3) release the allocated memory pool back to the system periodically.

 

[asmodai]

Hi.
I am a new member with some difficulties.
When trying to run civ IV I receive the following message.


Anybody have this problem and offer some help?

Basically it finds something like Demon Toolz, Alcohol 120%, etc and it refuses to run. Stopping that software should allow SafeDisc to resume.

Note: Thelab already commented on this earlier. 's What you get for reading back old posts.

 

[flubio]

Reinstalling the driver worked for the engine trouble.

Here are screen shots of my problem:

 

[NESSYLOVE]

Hello, I wonder could anyone help me. I have just purchased Civ IV DVD. The game installed ok, however, I do not get the main menu, so therefore cannot actually play the game. Is the intro very long as with early Civ games and I'm just being impatient, or is there a problem with my game. My system settings are as required.
Ta, Nessy Love

 

[Zydor]

Nessy

EDIT: By pass the intro by clicking on the screen, but ....

Have you loaded Patch V1.52?

If you have, and stillproblems, please post your Dxdiag file as a separate thread in the Tech Forum with as many symptoms as you can remember.

(Dxdiag - Start Button - click - select run - type dxdiag - hit enter - wait a min - select 'save all information' - and post using the 'go advanced' button at the bottom of the new thread)

Regards
Zy

 

[Papa_smuff]

Ijust got civ 4 for christmas and since I have gotten home, I've been trying to play it. But after i install it and actually try and play it it says "application has failed to start because D3DX9_26.DLL" I think this might have to do with the fact that when I try to install the game, it fails to install the active X. When it does try to install the active X it says the the folder that it is trying to put it in can't be trusted or something.
If anyone can help me with this problem I would greatly appreciate it.

 

[Zydor]

Please post your Dxdiag file as a separate thread in the Tech forum together with symptoms - someone can pick you up from there

Highly likely you need to load Patch V1.52 - sort that once you posted Dxdiag

Dxdiag
Start Button - click - select run - type dxdiag - hit enter - wait a min - select save all information - post on the new thread using the 'go advanced' button at the bottom of the new thread

Regards
Zy

 

[spartanchief]

at the end of installation an error that says - feature transfer error c++ runtime libraries 7.1 Data error (cyclic redundancy check). when i click the OK box it closes down the installation and i have to start over. Have any of you had this problem? If any of you know how to correct this error Please post it on here or E-mail me at Spartanchief2117@yahoo.com. Thanks

 

[Mysticaria]

sorry, wrong forum.

edited

-Mysticaria

 

[Skrapshak]

Hey DavXXX,

Have you found a solution to your problem yet? I just bought the game, and I get the same problem.

 

[Arcanjo_br]

There is only one troble here: STUTTERING in the intro movie and in the wonder movies.
I had the problem with the 1.09 version.
Now i aply the 1.52 patch but the STUTTERING still continue .
Do you know how to solve this ?????

________________________________
Pentium4 1.7 MHz
Windows XP SP2
640 MB RAM
nvidia GeForce4 MX 440SE 64 MB

 

[Papa_smuff]

I was able to get my dxdiag stuff as an attachment. I am still getting the same problem so maybe the dxdiag will help some one figure out what is wrong.
Thanks.

 

[asmodai]

at the end of installation an error that says - feature transfer error c++ runtime libraries 7.1 Data error (cyclic redundancy check). when i click the OK box it closes down the installation and i have to start over. Have any of you had this problem? If any of you know how to correct this error Please post it on here or E-mail me at Spartanchief2117@yahoo.com. Thanks

I assume you mean at the end of the installation of the files from your CD/DVD media?
If so, try to reinstall, if this keeps giving a CRC error ensure that your media is not dirty and if it is not, try to get your disc(s) swapped since it seems to be a fault of the media. A CRC is a simple calculation to verify the integrity of the data on the media.

 

[asmodai]

Ijust got civ 4 for christmas and since I have gotten home, I've been trying to play it. But after i install it and actually try and play it it says "application has failed to start because D3DX9_26.DLL" I think this might have to do with the fact that when I try to install the game, it fails to install the active X. When it does try to install the active X it says the the folder that it is trying to put it in can't be trusted or something.
If anyone can help me with this problem I would greatly appreciate it.

I think you mean DirectX 9.0c.

What is the EXACT error message when you try to install DirectX?

Screenshot is also useful if you don't feel like typing.

 

[Papa_smuff]

oh yeah you are right sorry, it is direct x. But when it it trys to install the components, something pops up and says that the cabinet file necessary for installation cannot be trusted.

 

[stinger4life]

Hi guys,

Whenever i start up the game goes perfectly everything loads and is fine. The only problem is that i cannot see the character heads or the terrain...ino a big problem lol. I can see the tiny characters and shrubs and stuff just it is on a black screen. And the character heads i just see there eyeballs and teeth and there clothing but not there face. I have installed that ART0.pak file and that did not help the problem. Any suggestions?

Thanks,

-stinger4life