Intel graphics display and Civ4: does it work 4 U?

[Pvblivs]

When daddy pays your gaming computer or you simply have your pc to play with it then you certainly need not see this point of all the other civ players who would never buy high end hardware just because of a game.
Now - this is a game where I am in doubt about my laptop. But I suggest some waiting and may be one or the other problem will be fixed for us. If not - our problem And with the next game the problem of Firaxis.

Firaxis will know this problems. They chose T&L for development costs and performance reasons. For sure. But I wonder if 10.000 $ reduced costs for implementing Fog of War with T&L is worth the trouble?

/edit: 10.000 is just some number, do not take it serious

 

[minger]

I just watned to say thanks to everyone who is contributing useful workarounds to this problem. Someone should compile a list of all Intel 8xx workarounds. I wanted to echo the notion that not all of us are 13 year old spoiled brats that get a new video card every 2 months from daddy.

I am a student and the laptop I am using was recommended by the university. Firaxis is going to make money no matter what and I respect their business decision to use T&L. Still, I wish they had realized that there are MANY civ gamers who are not WoW-playing click-fest 13-year olds, but older folks who like the slow-paced nature of Civ, and older folks usually have a job or school and don't have time or energy to focus on the latest 4D renderer. I also find it ironic that Civ was meant to reach civ-newbies, but the decision to force T&L is going to cut into that market. I was actually going to recommend civ4 to my friend who never plays PC games, but now I can't b/c I"m pretty sure he doesn't have T&L.

 

[minger]

Does the <bMapVisible> workaround lead to the same result as the Worldbuilder workaround?

 

[Pvblivs]

Yes it does.

As an explanaition: The bMapVisible-Flag in the technology file reveals all tiles. The purpose of this flag is to enable a technology (Satellites) to do this.

The world builder does the same, but is not changing the rules of the game. Those you will have to fix (maybe re-install the game) manually if there should be a T&L-Fix and want to explore the map yourself.
Though you have to reveal the map in the World Builder every time you start a game whereas the bMapVisible-solution need not be done more than once.

 

[Scoob]

Point is that people were not paying attention when purchasing laptops. It is their own fault. There are laptops out there that cost $50 to $100 more; that have GeForce or Radeon; and virtually all of them are capable of running CIV IV.

When assessing the right laptop, one must be aware that the graphic card you get it with it cannot be replaced.

Blame yourself and intel for your situation. Next time - get AMD and nvidia laptop.

It is funny that you say this. I am one of the people that paid attention to details. My HP laptop has a Radeon IGP 345M their most sophisticated laptop video availiable. It still however does NOT run Civ 4. Firaxis has made a mistake here, and I am confident that they will rectify it. As the volume in the forum proves there are MANY laptop users in the Civ family. I do hope that they come to some soilution to help us that use laptops.

 

[Nightfa11]

The worldbuilder works for me on an 8xxxx chipset. I am going to try it on my work laptop (they're not terribly strict here about it) as it has a 9xx chipset.

It is terribly slow on my wife's laptop, but that doesn't surprise me. She has a ton of junk on it and it's older...2ghz celeron.

I did notice that turning down graphic details did nothing for the framerate. Does anyone have any suggestions about manual tweks to turn stuff off?

 

[Marnid]

Good news for those that don't have video cards

My Dell Desktop computer has
3 GigaHertz Pentium 4 HT processor
512 RAM
82915G Express Intel video hardware

The games runs slightly sluggishly (though partly from a memory leak I am thinking). All the in game graphics and animations work great on the highest detail level.

The intro movie and wonders movies do not work at all (just black or distorted screen with sound working) but do not crash the game or anything (just hit escape to skip them).

I have played other games (with fancier 3D graphics) with no problems so I am hoping that a patch will speed things up for civ4.

 

[Leuenberg]

Ran the game on a laptop with an Intel 852/855 GM chipset to see what it would do. The leaders were doing the Chesire cat thing, and the terrain was all black. You'll need to upgrade.

Ran it on an Acer laptop with an Intel 82852/82855 GM and had exactly the same trouble. Tried to set graphic options of CIV at lowest level without success. Tried deactivating all the hardware acceleration and no success too (CIV refused to start saying "Error initiate rendering engine or something like that ...)

Oh and BTW very clever description about the leaders I was trying to figure how to describe that when I saw your post.

 

[CrONoS_QC]

Hi!

Civ4 work well with my laptop with a Intel GMA 900(based on the Intel 915).
The lastest driver from Intel is working good with the game.

See ya,

The worldbuilder works for me on an 8xxxx chipset. I am going to try it on my work laptop (they're not terribly strict here about it) as it has a 9xx chipset.

It is terribly slow on my wife's laptop, but that doesn't surprise me. She has a ton of junk on it and it's older...2ghz celeron.

I did notice that turning down graphic details did nothing for the framerate. Does anyone have any suggestions about manual tweks to turn stuff off?

 

[gunnerxtr]

Hi!

Civ4 work well with my laptop with a Intel GMA 900(based on the Intel 915).
The lastest driver from Intel is working good with the game.

See ya,

i have the intel 915.... so it will work? (assuming all other requirements are over recommended, which they are...)

 

[CrONoS_QC]

Yep!! Set the graphics to medium and it works well... Dont have try a full game for now but i'll try tonight.

I have 512 ram, Pentium M 715.( Equal a P4 2.1ghz)

See ya,

i have the intel 915.... so it will work? (assuming all other requirements are over recommended, which they are...)

 

[Dutch Canuck]

If you have a Intel card this is worth reading. I have the black terrain on normal civ games but when I access the Revolutionary War scennario the terrain and game look visually perfect. This leads to me believe that the Intel card is not the problem. Also on page 188 of the manual Soren Johnson thanks the testers and mentions " terrible crash bugs, gaps in communications, system incompatibilities, invisible terrain, and worse." Say that again. Invisible terrain. This reminds me of Pirates when the Dutch captain was invisible in the beginning of the game. Also your character was like a Terminator 2 bronze liquid substance. That was corrected in the patch. I've played 2 games of Civ4 so far by using the map mod to remove the tile blackness. While playing I have no problem except for the leaderheads and dark terrain but basically do the test with the Revolutionary War scenario and see what kind of results you get.
dougpat76@aol.com

Thanx Son of Sid (Btw what is your card? An 82852/82855 like mine?)
I think this news bring us a step closer... If this test result is consistent - unfortunately I cannot test this myself yet - then that will prove a fully-correcting software solution is possible (because one variant of the game seems fully functional with Intel cards)! But it is also possible that such a SW solution is too expensive/complicated to implement. That's an open question. I hope the folks at Firaxis see this and can offer us a patch sometime. Intel's cards may not support T&L but they do admit a SW fix by game maker may work! I'm crossing my fingers it is merely a matter of Firaxis adding some extra lines of code to the game so it runs properly on our particular machines.

There's always hope - I'm willing to wait.

 

[ulysses_kn]

hi there again, as I said I have the old intel 8xx chipset and "only" 512m ram on my acer travelmate. I used the worldbuilder and played the whole game, and it did not even crash once (on lowest details, though I do not know how higher details will work). even the videos were playing, though sound and pictures were kind of uncoordinated (but I already had that in ac a couple of years ago on my old machine - most likely due to lack of ram). its still fun, and I am going to keep the game for that reason. so, where I live, today is holiday (all saints or something), guess what I will be doing!

 

[eledur]

Hi,
I have an intel 8xxxx video card and i see the black terrain too. But when I was trying to solve the problem changing resolutions and everything I could and restarting the game thousands of times a curious thing occured: In 1 game I could see a small square of 4 or 6 tilles perfectly on the upper left corner of the screen. But if I tried to move my vision to this place the "illuminated" zone already moved, staying always on the upper left corner.

Then I started to move my settler and my worker around. I saw that if I moved them in south-east direction, my visible area grew. After trying some other things I've deduced one thing some of you already know:

Intel 8xxxx video cards can perfectly show the terrain, the real problem is the fog of war. It is not fixed on the terrain, it moves (yes, moves across the terrain) as you move. So, you always have the same portion of fog of war darking your screen. If you explore this small zone, then you can see all the map (because the fog of war moves with you, as said).

Then the question: Isn't it fixable with a patch? It doesn't seem a base error that would need a total rebuilding of the game to be solved... I hope!

Ghost leaders and introduction's sound problem: I don't know if this problems are related with the other one or not, and maybe this are more difficult to solve, but they aren't critical, so I don't worry about if this is fixable or not.

 

[Mr. Hyperbole]

I have an intel 8xxxx video card and i see the black terrain too. But when I was trying to solve the problem changing resolutions and everything I could and restarting the game thousands of times a curious thing occured: In 1 game I could see a small square of 4 or 6 tilles perfectly on the upper left corner of the screen. But if I tried to move my vision to this place the "illuminated" zone already moved, staying always on the upper left corner.

Then I started to move my settler and my worker around. I saw that if I moved them in south-east direction, my visible area grew. After trying some other things I've deduced one thing some of you already know:

Intel 8xxxx video cards can perfectly show the terrain, the real problem is the fog of war. It is not fixed on the terrain, it moves (yes, moves across the terrain) as you move. So, you always have the same portion of fog of war darking your screen. If you explore this small zone, then you can see all the map (because the fog of war moves with you, as said).

Then the question: Isn't it fixable with a patch? It doesn't seem a base error that would need a total rebuilding of the game to be solved... I hope!

Ghost leaders and introduction's sound problem: I don't know if this problems are related with the other one or not, and maybe this are more difficult to solve, but they aren't critical, so I don't worry about if this is fixable or not.

I would just like to know if a fix for the Intel 828 series is even possible.
I wish we could hear from someone with experience in the gaming industry to tell us.
I've heard every possible answer in so many different forums. Unfortunately, a typical response to this question is, "you shouldn't have been stupid enough to buy a computer with an integrated graphics chip. You're such an ignorant bastard. I hope you and your family die!" I wish I were joking, but that really isn't much of an exaggeration.
All I'd like is a simple, "yes, it is possible. Here's why..." or a "no it isn't possible. Here's why..."
By this point, everyone here has already heard why we shouldn't buy Intel products, that they're evil, they eat babies, they're the Antichrist, blah blah blah...I don't give a fu*k anymore, I just want to know if a solution if possible! PLEASE!

 

[Mr. Hyperbole]

Never mind...I found this in another thread. It's from Apolyton(I'm told) and purportedly one of the scenario developers at Firaxis...

The T&L issue is a hardware requirement, it is necessary to be able to play the game, this was announced over 6 months ago. If your graphics card is so crappy it doesn't support T&L (and this is true for many Intel cards -- if you're a gamer you shouldn't have an Intel card to begin with), you're out of luck. It's simply not possible to include T&L support for this game without rewriting large sections of it, killing a couple of features and taking a big hit on performance. If it was possible it would've been done from the start.

While not an "offical" answer from Firaxis, I'm becoming more disheartened that a fix will not happen.
I'll give them one more day, but then I have to take the game back. It may just be in-store credit, but at least I can pick up the newest Star Wars PS2 game. <sigh> Not the same, though.

 

[wtw]

Dell 2200
Celeron 1.4GHz
512MB
910/915 Intel graphic chipset

Works fine after a buggy install. Had to delete files manually and then re-install. I was stunned when the tutorial ran without major problems. The videos are a little glitchy but run okay 95% of the time. I reduced the graphic settings to medium (tutorial ran a-ok on high).

Standard map size, standard number of civs in the game... ran okay till 1972 and then there was a massive slow-down. I saved the game and loaded it up the next day... and promptly got my butt kicked by the AI.

 

[Jroc]

I know that for Sid Myers Pirates, also by Firaxis games, probably teh same engine, my GF's computer would crash suddenly, and that was due to the lack of T&L by the 8 series Intel Chipset for her video card

I think this will be no different.

 

[agoodfella]

I am also playing Civ IV with an Intel 8XXX with the "reveal map" trick.

The thing that still bugs me:

- Darkened map
- Resources not visible (but have turned on the "show resources" function - still it would be nice to see th actual figures there)

What I just don't understand is, when I enter World Builder or toggle "Bare Map", the map looks beautiful as it was meant to be - so clearly my machine / graphics card can handle / process this correctly.

WHY OH WHY can't Firaxis come up with a patch so the rest of us can enjoy this game the way it was meant to be played????

GRRRRRRR!!!!!!!

 

[maartena]

WHY OH WHY can't Firaxis come up with a patch so the rest of us can enjoy this game the way it was meant to be played????

GRRRRRRR!!!!!!!

So.... Firaxis puts a game on the market that says:

"Graphics Card with Hardware T&L required".

And you in turn say:

"I don't care. I will buy it anyways, and will now expect Firaxis to fix it for me, even though I have less then the system requirements!

To that, I will say.....

"Phat chance".