marius4143
Chieftain
- Joined
- Oct 31, 2005
- Messages
- 6
I've been reading through these forums for several days and trying the various fixes to see if I can get the game to run reliably. I've been able to play it for up to an hour or so at a time, but I inevitably end up with either:
1. Graphics corruption - messed up fonts/pictures/texture, odd triangles protruding from the landscape, red outlines around the leaders in the movies -eventually resulting in dropping to the desktop or a reboot, or a hard lockup requiring reset.
2. No oddness or symptoms whatsoever, followed by dropping to desktop, reboot, or hard lockup requiring reset. I've not kept complete track of these, but my impression is that this often happens after ending a turn. However that isn't always the case.
Before I go into details, I also have had odd issues with sound that I've not heard anyone else mention. Sometimes the sound will just turn off and will remain off for a few turns, then it will turn back on for a few turns. I've quit the game while the sound is off, and the speaker icon in the lower right icon tray shows that the sound is muted. If I bring up the mixer, sure enough, "mute all" is checked. Unchecking this brings the sound back.
Otherwise, when the game works, it runs great. The map scrolls smoothly, the animations are good, the user interface is beautiful (this is one of the cleanest, well thought out interfaces I've seen) and it's just a pleasant experience.
So, let's start with my system specs:
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-7VT600 1394
Bios: F6 AWARD BIOS (this is the latest version)
CPU: AMD Athlon XP 1600+ running at 1.4 GHz (exceeds minimum spec)
Memory: 1GB PC3200 (meets recommended spec)
Graphics Card: ATI Radeon 9700 Pro w/ 128MB (meets recommended spec)
Sound: Realtek AC’97 Audio: on motherboard (not sure if this meets “directx 9.0c compatible” spec, but all other games run fine)
Now I’ll address some of the concerns I’ve seen in other threads:
1. Update your drivers and firmware.
I can assert that everything is updated to the latest drivers, and that I’ve done this correctly. I in no way want to come across as arrogant, but I’ve seen the other threads where people are dismissed for complaining that there are bugs in this game and that those people “must have something set up incorrectly”. I’ve been a programmer for 20 years, and building computers for awhile as well. I can assure you that my computer is completely up to date with the latest of everything, including the “special” version of DirectX 9.0c from the Civ IV install.
2. Your graphics card is overheating.
No it’s not. I’ve checked the temperature after a crash and it’s well within the normal range. Also, just this morning I booted up the computer, started a game, and it crashed immediately. The card had no way of heating up to any dangerous level in that amount of time.
3. You need to change various settings in your configuration file.
Here are some of the various things I’ve tried:
- I didn’t have the “failed to initialize” error, but I tried unpacking the art files anyway.
- Disabled movies.
- Disabled sound.
- Ran in windowed mode (this makes things much worse for me)
- Already using a static sized swap file, but I increased it from 1GB to 1.5 GB
- Disabled Fast Write on the graphics card
- Changed AGP speed from 8x to 4x.
- Tried older versions of the ATI drivers – back to 5.7.
- edit: Cleared cache.
- edit: Disabled autosave.
- Other things I probably just don’t remember
I'll also mention that I purchased Call of Duty 2 on Saturday morning. I spent 3 hours Saturday, and 6 hours Sunday playing through the entire game and never had a single problem. This convinces me that I don’t have any driver problems, or overheating problems, or sound problems, or any other problems with my computer setup.
Am I missing anything? Is there anything else I can try? Am I just one of those dumb, non-technical people who doesn't know how to set things up right?
The point I’m trying to make here, by being as complete as I can in a reasonable amount of time, is that this game does indeed have one or more major issues. There are far too many people having problems for this to be written off with the “PCs aren’t consoles” argument. To those who dismiss me or others who are having problems with statements like: “you have to be technical to run PC games”, or “the game is fine, but you don’t have something set up right” - I can only respond with “STFU”. I’ve gone well beyond my responsibility as a customer.
This game has serious problems. I strongly suspect that the blame lies squarely on the shoulders of Take 2 Interactive. This would not be the first time Take 2 has screwed over developers by forcing a game out that wasn’t ready, and I’m sure it won’t be the last. I also suspect that they may be behind the silence from Firaxis as that is not without precedent as well.
Finally, Firaxis could go a long way in appeasing people if they’d just say something if they can. Anything – even if it’s as simple as “Yeah, it looks like there’s a problem. It didn’t happen on our machines during testing, but we’re looking into it.” All I want to know is that the problems are being looked at and a patch is forthcoming.
1. Graphics corruption - messed up fonts/pictures/texture, odd triangles protruding from the landscape, red outlines around the leaders in the movies -eventually resulting in dropping to the desktop or a reboot, or a hard lockup requiring reset.
2. No oddness or symptoms whatsoever, followed by dropping to desktop, reboot, or hard lockup requiring reset. I've not kept complete track of these, but my impression is that this often happens after ending a turn. However that isn't always the case.
Before I go into details, I also have had odd issues with sound that I've not heard anyone else mention. Sometimes the sound will just turn off and will remain off for a few turns, then it will turn back on for a few turns. I've quit the game while the sound is off, and the speaker icon in the lower right icon tray shows that the sound is muted. If I bring up the mixer, sure enough, "mute all" is checked. Unchecking this brings the sound back.
Otherwise, when the game works, it runs great. The map scrolls smoothly, the animations are good, the user interface is beautiful (this is one of the cleanest, well thought out interfaces I've seen) and it's just a pleasant experience.
So, let's start with my system specs:
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-7VT600 1394
Bios: F6 AWARD BIOS (this is the latest version)
CPU: AMD Athlon XP 1600+ running at 1.4 GHz (exceeds minimum spec)
Memory: 1GB PC3200 (meets recommended spec)
Graphics Card: ATI Radeon 9700 Pro w/ 128MB (meets recommended spec)
Sound: Realtek AC’97 Audio: on motherboard (not sure if this meets “directx 9.0c compatible” spec, but all other games run fine)
Now I’ll address some of the concerns I’ve seen in other threads:
1. Update your drivers and firmware.
I can assert that everything is updated to the latest drivers, and that I’ve done this correctly. I in no way want to come across as arrogant, but I’ve seen the other threads where people are dismissed for complaining that there are bugs in this game and that those people “must have something set up incorrectly”. I’ve been a programmer for 20 years, and building computers for awhile as well. I can assure you that my computer is completely up to date with the latest of everything, including the “special” version of DirectX 9.0c from the Civ IV install.
2. Your graphics card is overheating.
No it’s not. I’ve checked the temperature after a crash and it’s well within the normal range. Also, just this morning I booted up the computer, started a game, and it crashed immediately. The card had no way of heating up to any dangerous level in that amount of time.
3. You need to change various settings in your configuration file.
Here are some of the various things I’ve tried:
- I didn’t have the “failed to initialize” error, but I tried unpacking the art files anyway.
- Disabled movies.
- Disabled sound.
- Ran in windowed mode (this makes things much worse for me)
- Already using a static sized swap file, but I increased it from 1GB to 1.5 GB
- Disabled Fast Write on the graphics card
- Changed AGP speed from 8x to 4x.
- Tried older versions of the ATI drivers – back to 5.7.
- edit: Cleared cache.
- edit: Disabled autosave.
- Other things I probably just don’t remember
I'll also mention that I purchased Call of Duty 2 on Saturday morning. I spent 3 hours Saturday, and 6 hours Sunday playing through the entire game and never had a single problem. This convinces me that I don’t have any driver problems, or overheating problems, or sound problems, or any other problems with my computer setup.
Am I missing anything? Is there anything else I can try? Am I just one of those dumb, non-technical people who doesn't know how to set things up right?
The point I’m trying to make here, by being as complete as I can in a reasonable amount of time, is that this game does indeed have one or more major issues. There are far too many people having problems for this to be written off with the “PCs aren’t consoles” argument. To those who dismiss me or others who are having problems with statements like: “you have to be technical to run PC games”, or “the game is fine, but you don’t have something set up right” - I can only respond with “STFU”. I’ve gone well beyond my responsibility as a customer.
This game has serious problems. I strongly suspect that the blame lies squarely on the shoulders of Take 2 Interactive. This would not be the first time Take 2 has screwed over developers by forcing a game out that wasn’t ready, and I’m sure it won’t be the last. I also suspect that they may be behind the silence from Firaxis as that is not without precedent as well.
Finally, Firaxis could go a long way in appeasing people if they’d just say something if they can. Anything – even if it’s as simple as “Yeah, it looks like there’s a problem. It didn’t happen on our machines during testing, but we’re looking into it.” All I want to know is that the problems are being looked at and a patch is forthcoming.
