No Interface, Civilopedia, and "Options"

[DMOC]

I just had to reinstall the entire game due to getting runtime errors for multiplayer.

When I did that, I reinstalled the entire game, then I patched to 3.17. I then started up a game. The intro videos were entirely cut out, but that's happened to me before so I wasn't worried. Then, on the intro screen, I clicked "Civilopedia," and nothing happened. I clicked "Hall of Fame," and nothing happened. Then, I clicked "Single Player" and then got to the familiar "Play Now," etc. screen. So I click "Play Now" and start up a standard game. When the game does start, there is no interface at all. Just my settler and a scout (I can move both of them with my mouse, but I can't settle the city since there's no interface for me to click "settle"). Using F4, F5, etc. for the advisors doesn't do anything. Alt + I doesn't do anything. I can click the ESC button to bring up the menu where it says "Return to Desktop," etc. but when I start another game, it's the same problem - no interface.

I am running Windows XP and udpated to the latest Direct 9x. I uninstalled BUG entirely before uninstalling and then reinstalling this game. I left Blue Marble on, though.

 

[ori]

there is likely something in your custom assets and/or the game cache that causes it to not read the python files that create the interface properly.
rename/delete your custom assets and restart the game while holding down the shift key

 

[DMOC]

Sorry if this question sounds stupid, but why would I rename AND delete the custom assets?

 

[ori]

that was an 'or'

if you have anything in there that you might want to salvage - renaming it to whatever would do - if not delete it

 

[DMOC]

That worked! Thanks!

That shift key must be special for some reason.

 

[Nials]

I had the same problem so I just wanted to drop by and say thanks as well.

 

[DMOC]

Nice. It's the magic shift key to the rescue again!

 

[ori]

That worked! Thanks!

That shift key must be special for some reason.

holding down the shift key during startup forces the game to load all xml and python files from scratch instead of using the cached versions - which makes sure that it actually uses the files you want it to and not some old version stuck somewhere in the cache...