In-game menu doesn't appear

[Myles White]

Everything else in Civ4 working so far. Installed 1.52 patch. 2.8 GHz P4, 512MB memory, GEForce2 Ultra with latest driver, Win2k SP4. Roughly 125 GB of free storage space.

When I click the icon for the in-game menu (upper right corner), I get a delay, followed by a flickering screen, and finally a semi-translucent blue box appears on the right side of the screen -- but there's nothing in the box. Clicking at random inside the box sometimes brings up the save command, sometimes the resign command, etc. But there's no text visible.

I've got no complaints about rendering, unit movement, movies or other game features. But I'd sure like to see that menu instead of shooting in the dark .

Thanks
mw

 

[Zydor]

Your problem is the GeForce 2 it does not support Shaders - they coded a work-a-round specifically for the GeForce 2, but its clunky and slow - not much they could do about that.

So you have a reasonalble spec processor, RAM etc, but its being crippled by lack of a reasonable graphics card. It runs on some - like yours, with limitations - but on many GeForce 2s it doesnt. With the latter it needs very very good PC housekeeping, upto date drivers, mimimum textures. low resolution etc, all to give it more room tobreath inside the GeForce 2. Its a full 3D game and needs lots of hardware power.

Apart from getting a mid range card - which I would strongly advise - the only other thing you can do is minimis the grahics & main ram use by various methods - lots of posts on the topic in first two pages.

Regards
Zy