Terrain is Dark

[X sheehan C]

How much do you want to spend on a video card? I haven't read too much on the benchmarks lately, along with the reports of good cards having problems aswell, but I would assume that you should not spend less then $100-150. Dont take my word for it 100%, do your research, learn about your motherboard and its requirements and go from there.

thanx man, do u no how i can check wat type of video card i have?

 

[amirsan]

thanx man, do u no how i can check wat type of video card i have?

There are a couple ways. For one, you can find out the model number of your computer and search its information on the internet. Or you can call the people that made your pc. Or you can just open up the pc yourself, look and the video card and motherboard, and take out its model number and search that on the internet.

 

[Robin911]

I have the same problem on my laptop.
RAM - 512 MB
Video card - VIA/S3G Unichrome Pro IGP
AMD Sempron 2800+ Processor
Windows XP Professional with SP2

 

[Robin911]

I have the same problem on my New laptop.
RAM - 512 MB
Video card - VIA/S3G Unichrome Pro IGP
AMD Sempron 2800+ Processor
Windows XP Professional with SP2

 

[laylowmay]

Whenever I start a PLAY NOW game, I get black terrain. But it's all good if I choose CUSTOM GAME. Hope this helps.

 

[GeneralMikeIII]

Whenever I start a PLAY NOW game, I get black terrain. But it's all good if I choose CUSTOM GAME. Hope this helps.

I tried that already. Still black terrain though.

Lucky.

 

[gardd]

Anyone knows when the patch is out?

 

[Eustake]

For those having this problem on a NVIDIA GeForce4 440 Go 64M Irecommand
a driver update. I've used the one from "http://www.station-drivers.com/page/nvidia%20geforce%20go.htm" (Detonator 71.20 beta) and worked super ok. I was having the same problems (dark terrain in every game except "american blah, blah..." mod; ok terrain in world buider and so on...), on my laptop, but now they are just history. . Hope it will work for you too.

 

[zerokarma]

Hopefully this new patch fixes these darkness problems for most of us.

 

[Carewolf]

As I wrote in another thread have I also had succes with using older NVidia drivers to solve this problem + CTD + BSOD.

I used the 43.45 drivers to my GeForce 4 Ti4200. It might also be more stable with other older GeForce cards. The new drivers doesn't provide anything extra for older cards anyway.

 

[YankBastard]

This is a real disappointment. You would figure the devs would be able to spot something like....the damn terrain being dark! Little bugs going unnoticed is understandable, but this really sucks. I'm glad I got it today instead of when it first came out. Because if I had to wait for even a few weeks, like most of you, without the patch or anything coming through yet, I'd be really upset. If they fail to put the patch through to the public before Thanksgiving holiday starts, then that's really going to suck.
I have a question, do you guys still play the game even though you can't see the terrain? Or do you just lurk here every day, hoping they finally have the patch ready?

 

[GeneralMikeIII]

I have a question, do you guys still play the game even though you can't see the terrain? Or do you just lurk here every day, hoping they finally have the patch ready?

I do check this two or three times a day looking for the patch, but there are ways of getting around the black terrain problem. They are mentioned earlier in the thread. I do the one with the reveal map in the world builder, but being able to see all the terrain definately takes a little away from the fun.

Also, remember that the majority of people don't have this problem. (Insert here the speech about not being able to test on every system configuration...etc. etc.) I'm not saying I think it was ready for release, but for now I'll play my cheating way and twiddle my thumbs waiting for the patch and praying it fixes this problem.

Also to be concidered: I got it a couple days it was released, and I was able to find this way of playing it a few hours after I tried it the first time. That being said, I have been able to at least play it a little, where as if they pushed the release date back a month I still wouldn't have it.

 

[Gillm]

Hi I have the dark map and cheshire cat problems and I have yet to try the solutions you have all mentioned but I also get a lot of flickering when I press the menu icon in the top right corner, so much that I have to guess where the retire tab is to get out of the gane, anyone else with this?

Geforce4 mx 128 mb and AMD Athlon XP2700+

 

[gardd]

I just got a reply from Take2, and they wrote in answer to why I only see black tiles on my ATI mobilitiy M6 card:

Thank you for contacting Take 2 Technical Support.


In order to fully troubleshoot the problem that you are having please try the steps below:

1. Delete all temporary files from your system.
Navigate to C:\Windows\Temp and delete all files in this folder.
Navigate to C:\Documents and Settings\*Your User Name*\Local Settings\Temp and delete all the files in this folder.
You may need to turn on the ability to view hidden files and folders to do this. To do so, double click My Computer, then click Tools and Options.
Then click View and select the option to view all hidden files.
Then reboot and try the game again.

2. Close down all background tasks.
To do this click Start, then Run, then type MSCONFIG and click OK. From there click on the tab marked startup.
For Windows XP users click the button marked as Disable All, then click Apply and Close.
For Non Windows XP users, please remove the ticks from all of the boxes apart from the below four and then click Apply and close.
LoadPowerProfile
ScanRegistry
SystemTray
TaskMonitor
Once this has been done, please reboot the computer and then try the game again.

3. Reinstalling the game.
Please uninstall the game, then delete the folder that is left behind. Then reboot the computer, reinstall the game and reboot again. Then install any patches that are available for the game, reboot the computer and then try the game again.

4. Run a thorough Scandisk and Defrag on your computer.
From the Start menu please select and run a thorough Scandisk of your computer's hard disk drive. Then run the Defrag option from the same menu.
Then reboot and try the game again.

5. Update your drivers.
Please ensure that you have downloaded and installed the latest drivers for your video and sound cards available from the website of the card manufacturer. Then reboot and try the game again.
If all of the above have not resolved your situation then please reply back to this e-mail attaching the information from the DirectX Diagnostic Tool.
To do this click Start then Run and type DXDIAG then click OK. From there select the button marked as Save All Information and save the text file it creates. Then attach that file to the e-mail and send it to us.

Hope this will help anyone
I have not yet tried this...

 

[gardd]

Apparently they didn't really like the way i handed over my error report.... I guess all there is to wait for the patch. BUT
Maybe if we all do the list above and send in the results, they will release the patch faster, what do you think?

 

[amirsan]

The Patch is Here!

Has anyone with a Radeon IGP 345M tried it? Is the problem fixed... or not?

 

[X sheehan C]

ugh! the patch has bugs in it, im not complaining i just wanna play with out the black terrain...

 

[mamimo]

try loading the game with HIGH priority, I am a bit spamming this because it helped a great deal to my game experience...

 

[amirsan]

try loading the game with HIGH priority, I am a bit spamming this because it helped a great deal to my game experience...

"HIGH priority"? What do you mean?

 

[UKTechie]

Where Can we get this Patch from??