Memory-fix by Harkonnen is out!

[thamer]

hey everyone
was playing on 1.09 with hark on my laptop and had great luck with it.

upgraded to 1.52 and disabled the hark patch... with memsaver = 0 on I crash to desktop with the out of video memory error. with memsaver = 1 on, in a large game anytime i go into an advisor window, the terrain turns black and the game becomes too slow to play.

i am using a radeon mobility card, i believe its the 9600. the laptop is pretty new. any ideas?

Have you tried low gfx settings with memsaver=0? Can you click OK past the out of VM error and keep playing?

 

[pretenderz888]

Having my own problems with the game.

First played the game with 1.52 patch, and after about 2 hours of play, it crashed to desktop. After immediately reopening the game and going back, it crashed again. After that, it rebooted my computer.

So i uninstalled and deleted all old files. Reinstalled and patched to 1.09, then tried the Harkonnen patch. After playing with that, I got about an hour into the game before it CTDd again. Same symptoms.

Current system is:
AMD 2k processer
512 MB RAM
Radeon 9800 PRO
400W power source, one HD
XP SP2

Any advice would be more than welcome.

 

[Harkonnen]

Briareos
Try this version of the fix - I'm just interested if it'll solve blackness problem. Only 'PatchByHarkonnen.dll' is important, but I am uploading the rest of the files. Settings in 'Harkonnen.ini' do not affect anything, except 'patch_on' (turns on/off effects of my DLL).

Link to the fix

Note for all: This version does not save any memory and will be verrr..rry slow since it enforces software vertex processing.

thamer
These are effects in case it helps him:

// With this fix
BehaviorFlags &= ~D3DCREATE_HARDWARE_VERTEXPROCESSING;
BehaviorFlags |= D3DCREATE_SOFTWARE_VERTEXPROCESSING;

// Was always added
BehaviorFlags |= D3DCREATE_MULTITHREADED;

 

[Harkonnen]

pretenderz888
Hmm... I am having almost same system, but I never had a single CTD (neither before my fix with 1.09, nor after). What is your 'vid_mem_usage' setting? I'd recommend setting it to '60' as the most stable for 512+128 systems.

Also do you have AGP on? dxdiag logs can show that if you are unsure.

 

[barsidius]

Briareos
Try this version of the fix - I'm just interested if it'll solve blackness problem. Only 'PatchByHarkonnen.dll' is important, but I am uploading the reset of the files. Settings in 'Harkonnen.ini' do not affect anything, except 'patch_on' (turns on/off effects of my DLL).

Link to the fix

Note for all: This version does not save any memory and will be verrr..rry slow since it enforces software vertex processing.

Harkonnen,

Thank you very, very much for making the game playable for me.

The blackness is doing some weird things, which make it not so pretty, but it's clear to me that the game is at least, on some level, getting the fog of war states right now.

I'm attaching a zip file full of screenshots so that you can see what kinds of things are going on now. It's odd that the really weird blackness is only happening on the side of the screen that doesn't contain your info panel (whether I have it visible or not). And it's really strange what happens when I change the camera angle. Anyway, I thought you'd be interested.

Thanks again for everything you've done.

 

[pretenderz888]

Right now I have your mid-release patch, with 128 as my mem-usage, as per those notes. I'll try repatching with the initial fix, but I used varied mem usage from 40-80.

As for dxdiag.exe, I can't seem to figure out where it tells you if AGP is on.

BTW, I do have latest Radeon drivers, and I am exiting the desktop utility.

EDIT: AGP texture acceleration is on.

 

[nkk1]

There is something that prevent from continuing with the game. Everytime, I've have to uninstall, create new user, install again to solve the problem. That's frustrating!

The symtoms are as following
1) After loading of saved game is complete, I can heard the background music but no game screen, just a blank screen.

2) If I create a new game, program hangs when I click any leader

3) If I create a new game with random leader, program hangs at pop-up screen showing "finishing"

 

[Harkonnen]

barsidius
If you scroll some tiles left/right - does the blackness shift as well? I mean is it binded to right half of the screen or to the right half of the map?

pretenderz888
Very strange indeed. The last thing I can suggest (in case you didn't try this yet) - set 'SyncInput = 1' in civ4 ini file.

nkk1
This might be game cache problem. Just hold down 'shift' key when civ4 is loaded (works in 1.09 and up).

 

[barsidius]

barsidius
If you scroll some tiles left/right - does the blackness shift as well? I mean is it binded to right half of the screen or to the right half of the map?

The right half of the screen. But notice what happens when I shift the view by 45 degrees. The border of the blackness rotates by 45 degrees as well, even though it still moves relative to the map (i.e., it's still bound to the right side of the screen).

 

[afail]

Have you tried low gfx settings with memsaver=0? Can you click OK past the out of VM error and keep playing?

i had everything low, even turned off animations and effects...

the message comes up and its a crash to the desktop

 

[Briareos]

Civ doesn't require shaders. If your machine has them we will take advantage of them, but if not we fallback to fixed function (non-shader) code. That's why the minspec cards are GF2 or Radeon 7500 (neither has shader support). However, we aren't planning to support non T&L graphics (it's probably too slow to use anyway). Maybe Harkonnen can hook you up with a workaround.

Thanks for the answer, but I asked more out of interest than need - my Radeon 9800 Pro supports T&L, after all...

EDIT: Ugh, maybe I should read all posts before answering - thanks for the effort, Harkonnen; I don't really need it, but surely there are others that do.

np: Ferenc - Diplodocus (Fraximal)

 

[barsidius]

EDIT: Ugh, maybe I should read all posts before answering - thanks for the effort, Harkonnen; I don't really need it, but surely there are others that do.

I do, so I appreciate you asking!

 

[druade]

Hello

its been a long time ive watched this over here.
Just wanted to know if self-install patch is already out.
And if it is, am i only supposed to install it or do i also have to change other settings?

 

[Harkonnen]

druade
No, installer isn't ready yet. It could become available ~27th December, but 1.52 was released first, and currently it is incompatible with my fix. Also, I don't know if I will be able to make it compatible or if it will improve anything once it becomes compatible... Do you use 1.52 or you are waiting for installer with 1.09?

The problem right now is that under different settings civ4.exe / ntdll.dll or d3d9.dll code causes a failure, so I don't even know where the problem is born. It's not FPS meter and other not-so-important stuff... This is something with core of hashing geometry entities.

I don't think Firaxis deliberately added some incompatibility with my fix. Though, I always thought about my fix as of general approach for nearly any game. It is also possible that civ4 hooks over my code, so this might be causing the trouble as it did with ATi Tray Tools and xFire. I'm still on this issue.

 

[druade]

I was waiting for install patch and 1.09 because ive read that 1.52 was not so good at all (is that true or not?)
Because if its not bad i would use that one then (but i have time (have to study these months ))

 

[Atenji]

I hope this is the correct forum for this. I'm DESPERATE!
Since I bought CivIV 2 months ago I've tried almost everything with my computer to get it work properly. It should have the requirements but whatever I've tried the game is way to slow and crashes the computer at random when a wonder is to be built. An errorcode with the file nv4_disp.dll now had me google and found this forum. Is there help to get?

 

[Harkonnen]

Atenji
This thread is about unofficial memory-fix which is compatible with 1.00 and 1.09, but not with 1.52 (at least yet). I'd rather think that this is issue with drivers, but I still suggest trying 1.09 version with fix from the first post of this thread.

 

[Atenji]

Thanks. I'll try that.

 

[Atenji]

Ok, I've downloaded the files and put them into the Civ4 (1.0) folder. I've played for quite a while without noticing any difference. The game is still slow and movements are non-floating (it takes for example ages to get the map grid out) and the building of wonders still is a troublesome thing to accomplish, although I didn't suffer a crash. Any else I can try? I'd also need to point out that I'm in no way a programmer.

 

[David Smith]

So When Is It Going To Be V1.52? I am still having crashes. Please finish it.