Graphics bugs, mods and Windows 7

[cfkane]

A while back I made the upgrade to Windows 7 and I noticed something odd.

In mods with new unit graphics, the unit would be displayed with its base art rather than the custom art, until it was clicked. For example, the FfH gorilla is based on the Berserker. In my game the gorilla showed as a Berserker until I clicked on it, after which it displayed as a gorilla.

Anyone else had this problem?

 

[tchristensen]

That sounds really odd.

I have been fearing to upgrade to Windows 7. I tried Vista a couple of years ago and hated it so much that I swore never to return.

 

[cool3a2]

Hehe... sounds familiar. Please download the latest beta of my Magyar Mod ("Ho ho ho..." in forums new civilizations section) and check whether there is the same effect. If there's not, then I can tell you what this is caused by. When I started playing and modding civ4, I had two rather weak machines (a laptop and a desktop pc). On both machines, I had the same problem, but noone else had. I figured out, that this was because I had animations deactivated in the menu for performance reasons while most other users had it actived as they had better machines. In this case, the same problem occurs that you describe. This can be fixed by copying the kfm and kf files to the modded units folder and make the reference in the xml file to there. Then, the freeze files of the original unit - which still contain the original units modell - don't get used and therefor the freeze mode (animations disabled) works again, although I guess that at least for those units, animations are still active (as there are no freeze files, right?). I pointed that out to the community several times, but nobody cared. Well, back then, animations could have been deactivated in the menu to solve this. But as this is not so obvious to less experienced users, I decided to deliver my mod with kf files dispite several modders wondered about that and even after I got a new machine some months ago (well, it's true that I haven't tested the units I have added since then, so theremight be some buggy ones there, too). Why Windows 7 forces freeze-mode (as it seems to me) - don't know...
The_Coyote once figured out how to create freeze nifs in a human way, although it still means work. Ask him, if you really need these files.

 

[Padjur]

I've yet to try windows 7, so can't speak from personal experience but the other day in another thread we were talking about windows 7 and Thomas SG had this to say about it

But I develop, test and run Civ and especially CCV under Win7................No problems for modding because of Win7.

may be you could PM him see if he thinks its windows 7 or not but my guess is its something else. I'll keep an eye on this thread to see how it develops as I want to try windows 7 and would be interested to see if this will cause a problem, please do post if you find what's wrong. good luck with it!

 

[embryodead]

From what I can tell the game turns frozen anims and other low-res settings on by default when you first launch it / install it and your specs are low, or just not recognized. That's more likely than just Win7, at least.

 

[cool3a2]

Hmmm... I could imagine that it is somehow related with win 7s raphics driver or directx. I don't think the new drivers are weaker then their xp counterparts, but maybe civ4 has troubles determining how strong they are, so it switches off some settings. On the other side, when starting civ4 on my old machines, the game told me that it thinks that the machines are weak and therefor switches off some options. So if it didn't told cfkane about weak hardware, I guess it didn't switch off anything automatically either... But playing around with the settings is definately worth trying. Or alternatively do the kf tricks. I'd be interested in what you figure out, cfkane. If this helps, it might also be worth mentioning somewhere where even unexperienced modders and users get aware of this. I'm just not sure where this could be.