Hi All,
I just bought several hours ago Civilization III: Complete Edition, and after I ran it for the first time I was confronted with the font problem. I am on Windows 98 Second Edition, latest DirectX, all of Windows Update. My nVidia drivers are not the latest, but I don't think the font problem is a driver problem anyway. In fact, I didn't touch drivers at all.
It is correct to say that the Lucida font is the cause of trouble. Too-many-fonts is a myth, in my opinion. Those who delete fonts because they have too many, for some of them it works and some of them it doesn't. The reason could be related to Lucida being deleted amongst the arbitrary choice.
In Windows 98, if an application uses a font then the file can't be moved or deleted even after you close the application so you must reboot. (In that situation, instead of moving the file, it would be copied instead if you choose [F]ail on the command prompt. This is handy because rebooting in MS-DOS mode would mean to lose long file name capabilities.)
In the Control Panel, if you go to Fonts, and double-click on them, Windows shows the chosen font at various sizes. Going through all of them, I spotted the following versions of Lucida to render badly at small sizes:
Lucida Bright Regular
Lucida Bright Demibold
Lucida Sans Demibold
Lucida Sans Regular
Lucida Sans Typewriter Bold
Lucida Sans Typewriter Regular
This can be verified in Wordpad. I moved those fonts to a different directory, in case I needed them back again. The fonts with Italic versions (also known as Oblique) are OK, so I left them. The special font Lucida Console is also an OK font, so I left it too. I don't think Civ3 uses the Typewriter versions of the fonts, but I think it uses the others (I didn't double check this). Anyway, I moved all of the ones listed above out of the way anway (including Typewriter).
OK, so far so good: Reboot the computer first then move the fonts out of the way. At this point running Civ3 shows that it uses Courier as a substitute. Not pretty.
If you go to the installation directory of Civ3, you will see two Lucida Sans font files (they're abbreviated). Don't copy them directly to the Windows' Fonts directory. In my system it shows a shortcut icon. To avoid introducing a strange factor in this debugging process, it is best to go to Control Panel > Fonts and then choose Install Font option from the menu. From there, locate the Civ3 font I talked about, and install it.
But, if you boot Civ3 it will still not use the font. The reason? Go to Control Panel > Fonts and double-click in "Lucida Sans" (the one just installed from the Civ3 directory). After displaying the font in various sizes, Civ3 works fine even before or after rebooting, regardless of whether you go to Control Panel > Fonts a second time or not. Crazy. I suspect that Windows has some sort of font cache system that it keeps track from disk.
Now, in my case the debugging process didn't quite exactly go as described because at some point I found on the Internet a free Lucida Sans font wih full Unicode support that renders nicely at small sizes. (It's here: http://www.scintilla.utwente.nl/users/andre/fonts/) It is called "Lucida Sans Unicode" BTW. So I installed it at some point; but at which one, I forgot. So I don't know which Lucida Sans font is Civ3 using now from the one Civ3 has in its directory versus the Unicode one.
Anyway, I thought it would be useful for other new players to have this information. This is still not an accurate step-by-step process but hopefully someone will take it from there and produce the distilled version.
And for now, I log off.
Cheers,
TechStorm
P.S. And now, I'm off to my FIRST game...
I just bought several hours ago Civilization III: Complete Edition, and after I ran it for the first time I was confronted with the font problem. I am on Windows 98 Second Edition, latest DirectX, all of Windows Update. My nVidia drivers are not the latest, but I don't think the font problem is a driver problem anyway. In fact, I didn't touch drivers at all.
It is correct to say that the Lucida font is the cause of trouble. Too-many-fonts is a myth, in my opinion. Those who delete fonts because they have too many, for some of them it works and some of them it doesn't. The reason could be related to Lucida being deleted amongst the arbitrary choice.
In Windows 98, if an application uses a font then the file can't be moved or deleted even after you close the application so you must reboot. (In that situation, instead of moving the file, it would be copied instead if you choose [F]ail on the command prompt. This is handy because rebooting in MS-DOS mode would mean to lose long file name capabilities.)
In the Control Panel, if you go to Fonts, and double-click on them, Windows shows the chosen font at various sizes. Going through all of them, I spotted the following versions of Lucida to render badly at small sizes:
Lucida Bright Regular
Lucida Bright Demibold
Lucida Sans Demibold
Lucida Sans Regular
Lucida Sans Typewriter Bold
Lucida Sans Typewriter Regular
This can be verified in Wordpad. I moved those fonts to a different directory, in case I needed them back again. The fonts with Italic versions (also known as Oblique) are OK, so I left them. The special font Lucida Console is also an OK font, so I left it too. I don't think Civ3 uses the Typewriter versions of the fonts, but I think it uses the others (I didn't double check this). Anyway, I moved all of the ones listed above out of the way anway (including Typewriter).
OK, so far so good: Reboot the computer first then move the fonts out of the way. At this point running Civ3 shows that it uses Courier as a substitute. Not pretty.
If you go to the installation directory of Civ3, you will see two Lucida Sans font files (they're abbreviated). Don't copy them directly to the Windows' Fonts directory. In my system it shows a shortcut icon. To avoid introducing a strange factor in this debugging process, it is best to go to Control Panel > Fonts and then choose Install Font option from the menu. From there, locate the Civ3 font I talked about, and install it.
But, if you boot Civ3 it will still not use the font. The reason? Go to Control Panel > Fonts and double-click in "Lucida Sans" (the one just installed from the Civ3 directory). After displaying the font in various sizes, Civ3 works fine even before or after rebooting, regardless of whether you go to Control Panel > Fonts a second time or not. Crazy. I suspect that Windows has some sort of font cache system that it keeps track from disk.
Now, in my case the debugging process didn't quite exactly go as described because at some point I found on the Internet a free Lucida Sans font wih full Unicode support that renders nicely at small sizes. (It's here: http://www.scintilla.utwente.nl/users/andre/fonts/) It is called "Lucida Sans Unicode" BTW. So I installed it at some point; but at which one, I forgot. So I don't know which Lucida Sans font is Civ3 using now from the one Civ3 has in its directory versus the Unicode one.
Anyway, I thought it would be useful for other new players to have this information. This is still not an accurate step-by-step process but hopefully someone will take it from there and produce the distilled version.
And for now, I log off.
Cheers,
TechStorm
P.S. And now, I'm off to my FIRST game...
