Memory-fix by Harkonnen is out!

[Harkonnen]

I have investigated globe view and leader heads problems a little.

0) Cheshire cat or leader invisibility might be solved by decreasing 'vid_mem_usage' by 10 or 20.

1) My assumption about too many triangles was true for main screen. When camera is at globe transition heights, wireframe mode covers ~50% of the screen, so it's actually triangle per 3-4 pixels. That explains antialiasing slowness. Though, once it transits, geometry becomes less intensive.

2) Globe view "buildings disabled" option simply DOES NOT WORK. Period. Cities are always drawn in globe view, and that causes enormous geometry overhead. I am going to track globe view somehow and cities being drawn somehow, and just don't draw them. There are city billboards (that flat texture with roads and stone beneath them). That should be enough for globe view, and that's what should remain with 'disable buildings in globe view' by design I guess...

3) Leaders' eyes problem is alive without the patch as well. Some leaders have two white eyes. Mongol leader has one eye white, another gray. I think that might be the problem with 'low' graphics settings like caravels turning green/red (also 'low' graphics settings problem not connected woth my fix).

4) I could not detect any case with leader screen completely empty. I think reducing 'vid_mem_usage' might help to avoid this problem. As for eyes, I wrote above... BTW, what do you mean by funky leaders animation?

 

[Harkonnen]

Chopperhead
Did you move _files_ or _folder_? Did Windows ask you if you want to overwrite zlib1.dll?

lord_graywolfe
If it happens after alt-tabbing (i.e. switching to another program during play), set 'insane_mode = 0' in Harkonnen.ini. If you don't alt-tab, set 'vid_mem_usage' to 50.

mass T
It should do... 100Mb are saved regardless of video card being used, even should it be software rendering... Additional savings depend on video card, but only 64Mb video cards might have no extra benefits.

 

[filterban]

Harkonnen -

I seriously can't thank you enough for trying to fix this game that I hold so dearly. The results (obviously) have been extremely helpful for many people.

However, I am getting a similar error to the one that Briareos was getting during the "Init Engine" stage of application loading. The game crashes to desktop right after switching screen resolutions.

The signature on the error report is:
AppName: civilization4.exe AppVer: 1.0.9.1722 ModName: patchbyharkonnen.dll
ModVer: 0.0.0.0 Offset: 000017f6

I have followed the instructions to the letter - including the changes to CivilizationIV.ini and the .dll installation.

I have a GeForce FX 5500 128mb card, 512mb RAM, and an AMD Athlon 64 2.8ghz machine, and I've tried it with 6.6.x drivers and the latest 8.1.x drivers, and the error is the same. I tried exiting nVidia's display settings application from the task bar (thinking similarly to Briareos' solution) with no results. Pressing the shift key during startup also does not help.

If I set "patch_on = 0" then I am able to get the game to load just fine, but then obviously your patch isn't working.

Do you have any suggestions? I can provide more info if you'd like - just let me know how to do so.

Thanks again for all your extremely hard work!

 

[Steve2000]

My specs:
Intel P4 2.8 GHz (Intel Chipset)
1 GB System RAM
Nvidia GeForce 4 MX440 (64MB)
Latest drivers

I followed all recommended steps.

I have had major slowdowns with the game. Fiddled around with vid_mem_usage from 30-50 and would get periodic slowdowns. Should I change the settings to something else? Should I set the vid_mem_usage even lower? I tried insane mode on and off with no apparent difference. Maybe my hardware setup isn't really the type that can benefit from this since I have 1 Gig RAM and only 64MB Vid RAM?

 

[ahigh]

I agree with the above poster's comments about the huge earth maps. I loaded up the Earth 1000 AD scenario. Game speed was just as fast as I was getting from Small size maps pre-harkonnen patch! Easy to follow instructions were great.
Firaxis owes you big time. You should contact them about using your patch and see if you can get some money off this.

FYI, I'm not running the game in windowed mode.

I have a 1.3 ghz machine with 512 ram and GeForce 5500 graphics card. I'm running the patch on the defaul settings, but I don't know if this is optimal for my system with the specs I have, but I've been getting a lot better performance anyway.

Now, a few possible bug's I've been getting since I updated to your patch.

-Wonder Movies: Wonder Movies ran for me prior to your patch. Now they sputter. Not a big deal, but I'd like to see the movies every now and then.

-After I select to retire, instead of the screen that brings up the map of the globe with the option to have the computer play through the history of the world, I got a blank screen. with only the option to exit the power graph screen.

-Because I've been playing the game so much now, my girlfriend is screaming at me about having to "email the video game wizard!" I guess that's you, but then again, that's not a bug, and she's drunk. Sorry.

-When I zoom out to globe view, the game slows down for about forty seconds when the zoom is going through the cloud stage.

That's it. Great work. Very impressed that you were able to do this. I thought I was doomed to playing larger map Civ IV games at an unbearably slow pace until I got a new machine two years down the road.

Thanks Again!

 

[jupiterkris]

At the moment in CIV, the mighty House of Harkonen rules in game fixes .

 

[lord_graywolfe]

ok i set the mem to 50 and that seems to have fixed the leaderhead problem for now. i dont alt tab during the game so i have insane set to 1 right now. right now the only problem i ran across was all the trees disappearing off the map lol

 

[EDaddy]

It works a little bit better for me. I was able to at least play my Huge Spanish map! Unfortunately, it was not a fix all, the gameplay is stilljerky at times, but MUCh better before the patch was applied!

 

[Kilim]

Kilim
Try running dxdiag.exe to graphics tab and see 'available texture memory' on home PC... That's vid_mem + agp_apperture. I hope you really have ~384Mb there, not 160-180... Otherwise that would mean that half of video memory is unaccessible for some reason.

Also, as I have posted for All, did you try to turn off SMARTGART with ATi earlier? Just that helped some people, and you might have done this step too some time ago at home PC...

I just ran the Dxdiag.
Below is the Display Info:

---------------
Display Devices
---------------
Card name: RADEON X850 Series
Manufacturer: ATI Technologies Inc.
Chip type: ATI RADEON X850 XT AGP (0x4B49)
DAC type: Internal DAC(400MHz)
Device Key: Enum\PCI\VEN_1002&DEV_4B49&SUBSYS_03121002&REV_00
Display Memory: 256.0 MB
Current Mode: 1024 x 768 (32 bit) (75Hz)
Monitor: NEC MultiSync M500
Monitor Max Res: 1280,1024
Driver Name: ati2dvag.dll
Driver Version: 6.14.0010.6583 (English)
DDI Version: 9 (or higher)
Driver Attributes: Final Retail
Driver Date/Size: 10/28/2005 22:12:48, 247296 bytes
WHQL Logo'd: Yes
WHQL Date Stamp: n/a
VDD: n/a
Mini VDD: ati2mtag.sys
Mini VDD Date: 10/28/2005 22:12:31, 1391104 bytes
Device Identifier: {D7B71EE2-0809-11CF-056A-1823A1C2CB35}
Vendor ID: 0x1002
Device ID: 0x4B49
SubSys ID: 0x03121002
Revision ID: 0x0000
Revision ID: 0x0000
Video Accel:
Deinterlace Caps: n/a
Registry: OK
DDraw Status: Enabled
D3D Status: Enabled
AGP Status: Not Available
DDraw Test Result: Not run
D3D7 Test Result: Not run
D3D8 Test Result: Not run
D3D9 Test Result: Not run

I don't see any info on 'available texture memory' for my Home PC.
I did notice that somehow my AGP Texture Accelration is "not available" according to DXDIAG.
It is greyed out with that message for my Home PC.
Weird as my Work PC has it enabled!

Also I checked the Catalyst Control Center for my ATI card and it was set on Off on Default as I have NOT messed with any settings for it since I got it.

So now I am confused.
Shouldn't my Home PC Vid Card have the AGP Texture Accelration "Enabled"? and How can I make that happen?
Think that may be the cause of the CTD on Higher Settings due to the Fact that my Work PC has the AGP Texture Accelartion "Enabled" unlike my Home PC.

Also, I even setup on the BIOS and tried on BOTH 64 and 256 AGP

 

[Kushan]

Does this work with mods?

Kushan

 

[druade]

I dont understand a single thing for downloading this patch. Do i just have to change settings in my game or do i also have to change some files and where do i have to change those then?

 

[Ratt]

Ok.. Harkonnen patch did work to some extent, I don't have any more CTD's and the games seems faster (loading, etc..) but in a huge map, later in game it still slows to a crawl and makes it almost impossible or too long to finish. I have a P4C 2.6ghz 2x256mbDDR400 ram and a GF4Ti4400, not a very good rig but looking at the game gfx and requirements should be able to play it fine

BTW thx for the effort Harkonnen

 

[Xerxes_Pi]

More so than the devs?

 

[AndrewDJ]

Wow!

I have a Celeron 1.1 GHz, 320 MB RAM, and a 64 MB GeForce3 Ti 300. Before installing Harkonnen's patch, I could only play Tiny or Duel maps. Small maps became unplayable in the mid-1800s, and Standard maps went kaput in the late-1500s.

With the patch, I was able to play a standard game to 1810. Then I checked the Civilopedia, and when I exited, the land & sea were bright orange! I decided that maybe I should take a break.

The leaderheads had turned into floating eyebrows or blank screens sometime in the 1400s or 1500s, and the wonder movies still skip, but that's not such a big deal.

 

[Kolyana]

Hark ... I'm using RIVATUNER with no ill effect.

 

[Bast]

Bast
Thanks. So where the .exe file is. But didn't Harkonnen say those steps are optional? Can I just put those 3 files in that folder and try and run the game?
Yes you can. Those steps will be necessary if you will want to take maximum out of my fix or if you will experience some visual problems with the fix.

If you want just to try it out, copy those 3 files and start the game via desktop shortcut or from start menu the way you did this before. Unless you have some special or very old configuration, there will be noticable improvement even with default settings. Your system is very nice, so you shouldn't get any trouble with default settings.

So, up to this point you may start it right now.

If you want further improvement, double-click Harkonnen.ini file in civilization folder (where you have put it) - normally notepad will open it. Replace 'vid_mem_usage = 80' with 'vid_mem_usage = 150'. Close notepad and answer 'Yes' in order to save 'Harkonnen.ini' changes.

Now it should work even better.

All
Installer with configurator is close. Subscribe this thread for getting news.

Thank you for your suggestions. Unfortunately this did not work for me. Here's what I did.

I copied your 3 files and pasted them into the same folder as my Civilization4.exe file. I renamed the old zlib file to zlib2 and left it in the folder.

The game ran fine for a few turns, and in fact I noticed that the lags in scrolling across the map and some units were completely gone. However after a few turns, I got a CTD. My first EVER! It happened when I pressed F7. Normally, pressing F7 took me only like half a second but this time it hung and then it CTD. No error message. Nothing.

So I deleted the files and restored the default and loaded that same game. I was able to finish the game (diplomatic victory) without any problems. Little minor lags here and there but overall ok.

Do you know what happened?

 

[Harkonnen]

filterban
Please check if 'c:\hook.dat' file exists. If it does, please send it over to me (headden@karelia.ru). In this release I removed internal tests in my patch to increase its speed. By mistake one importation assertion also was disabled - the assertion which checks that all hooks were properly installed.

Steve2000
I think you should stay with 'vid_mem_usage = 30', 'insane_mode = 0'. Also please note that the game loads new things in huge map only when you scroll to them for the first time, after that it gets to the same place much quicker. That is, try scrolling over your contry (it is easier to do my holding left mouse button over minimap and rolling rectangle over it).

Once you visit every part of your empire, it should work fast enough in any its place. Same stands for other countries.

Before the fix, with late huge savegame, civ4 could keep only about 1/8th map, so swapping was frequent. After the fix, it keeps around 1/3-1/4th of huge map with 512Mb configuration.

ahigh
When 'vid_mem_usage' is just a little higher than it should be, you might get slowdowns, especially in relatively rare parts of the game like movies. I suggest to set 'vid_mem_usage = 60' (if it's 80 right now) - this might solve movies problem. Sometimes I see movies stuttering, sometimes they perform like a lightning...

Globe view is currently my pain too... I'm working on it.

lord_graywolfe
Hmm... probably decreasing it even more might solve the problem, but at this point this should start affecting scrolling speed. You may also try setting 'insane_mode = 0' if you have above 512Mb main physical memory.

Kilim
This might be set to 'no' if it is 'PCI express' card... Anyway, please start dxdiag.exe and go to 'display tab', then post a screenshot. In the top-left part (named 'Device') there will be a thing called 'Approx. video memory' (I have 128Mb there). In the middle part (named 'DierctX Features') there will be three items with 'Enable/Disable' buttons: DirectDraw acceleration, Direct3D acceleration, AGP Texture Acceleration. I have all 3 enabled as most people should have...

Kushan
Yes. Actually it is pretty universal solution. I am going to try it with some entirely different games. Though, my expectation about 'vid_mem_usage' are for original textures. Those who are running BlueMarble mod probably need to reduce 'vid_mem_usage' by another 20 Mb because that seems to have more textures.

druade
I think you should better wait for installer version which comes later today (morning here) or tomorrow. Just subscribe this thread to get notified.

Ratt
With 512Mb running 'low textures' along with 'low graphics' and 'insane_mode = 1' is almost a must... (vid_mem_usage = 80) if you have 128Mb of vide memory. Alas, I have also noticed that GeForce Ti cards are not very fast with my fix.

Try scrolling a little over the place, it should cache everything up and then stop swapping or at least swap less. Just in case your decision was made based on original scrolling speed, not after some turns

AndrewDJ
Ok, try reducing 'vid_mem_usage' down to 20-30. This should eliminate these artifacts.

Kolyana
Thank you! I will update post #1 and in-game warning message I've put for the next release.

 

[Harkonnen]

Bast
Try 'vid_mem_usage = 120', 'insane_mode = 0'. This might get a little slower, but more stable. Hope that helps...

 

[CyberChrist]

More so than the devs?

Actually - then yes.

 

[Chopperhead]

Quote(Harkonnen)- Did you move _files_ or _folder_? Did Windows ask you if you want to overwrite zlib1.dll?




I moved the whole folder and no windows did not ask me to overwrite.