Terrain is Dark

I can confirm that turning off AGP with the Omega drivers resolves the darkness issue on my Evo N610c laptop with a Mobility Radeon 7500. The heads are now visible as well, but the terrain is rather bleached out. All other settings were left alone. 1X, 2X and 4X AGP all produce the darkness issues. The gameplay, however, is so slow that the game is unplayable. I also can't leave the settings like this as general operations in Windows are severely affected (too slow)

This card is specified as having hardware T&L, so I really don't see what the issue is with Firaxis calling this a hardware problem.

 

what does it mean to "turn off AGP"?

 

Turn the mipmap and texture options on the 3D tab to the lowest quality setting.
Also, a member named 'laptopsolution' found out that if you turn your AGP to 0 then restart your computer, then turn your AGP up to 1x and restart your computer, and finally turn it to 2x and restart your computer. Now everything shows up and the speed is fine....4x brings back the 'failed to initialize renderer error'.
So if you want to sit through like 4 computer restarts you can play the game just fine....or just wait for them to fix this bug.

 

Can he show us like before and after screenshots of this?

 

Has anyone tried playing a full game with the black terrain, maybe it goes to normal over time?

 

I'm not sure if I posted this here, but the black terrain issue is actually fairly simple: for purposes of fog of war, the game thinks you're always looking at the center of the map. Thus, if you explore the center of the map (or reveal it through other means, like worldbuilder) the black areas will go away. If you keep units there, you'll see normal terrain; if not, you'll see gray, shaded, fog-of-war terrain.

If I had to guess, I'd say that someone got lazy programming the fog of war, and made in a map-size layer that changes to reflect your intel. Then the bug is just that this layer isn't being moved to the right location; it's staying centered no matter what area you're looking at. This also fits with the behaviour when you zoom out: globe view works fine, since it's using a different graphical approach.

 

I have. What happens is after a few centuries, a corner of my screen (different corners in different games) will suddenly begin to display the terrain normally. This area will slowly enlarge until by about 1400AD, almost the entire screen is displaying terrain normally. I also noticed that if a terrain square has animals (horses, pigs, fur, etc) it doesn't display the animal, just little shadows that move around. I have one of those "Intel integrated" graphics "cards".

I am bored with this game. I am hoping most of it is due to frustration with display problems, but I am not about to shell out $80 for a card after already paying $50 for the game, when playing the game feels like a chore. For now at least, I'm going back to playing Civ III with the RAR mod.

 

I finally had a chance to sit down for a couple of hours this morning to work on this. I uninstalled Civ IV then uninstalled all my video drivers (Nvidia GeForce 4 MX). After installing the latest drivers and reinstalling the game the black terrain problem was gone. Hopefully some of you will be able to do this as well.

Unfortunatly, I have found now that if I play a normal sized or larger map scrolling and zooming are very slow. Any thought on whether I should inverst in a better video card OR more RAM (currently 512 MB)? Which will give me the biggest benifit?

 

I tried this, as you suggested. I now get "Failed to Initialize Renderer - Check DirectX Version and Graphics Settings". I have already applied the renderer fix from Firaxis. I can only get the game to play with AGP off or on 4X

 

Additionally, I have a desktop PC with an Athlon XP mobile processor and a Nvidia Geforce 2 MX vid card with 32MB Ram. I installed the latest video drivers, then installed the game. Aside from a message about having a virtual CD drive enabled, I have had no problems running the game. The fog does have some holes in it, but the movement is fluid. The game even told me it was reducing my graphics levels because I had a minimum requirement card. So having a lesser amount of memory in the card is not an immediate limitation. Many of you may already know this. Just sharing my experience in case it helps.

 

Go to http://laptopvideo2go.com/index.php?s=75 and save the version number that you want( for me 78.82 worked with geforce420go) and the inf file. Then follow the directions here: http://www.laptopvideo2go.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=33
If it doesn't work keep trying until you get one to work. I also tried the more recent ones, but they aren't working with my computer.

PS this only got rid of the fog of war, there are still problems, just showing bread, etc...

 

Got lazy with that and a lot of other things. Since actually playing this game on a computer that does the graphics properly I'm even more disenchanted. They have some really embarrassing mistakes in here, and I'd be ashamed if I were on the QA team. The civilopedia itself is pathetic...broken links, links to the wrong information, missing text, etc., and the information on the tech tree doesn't jive with what happens in the game or what is written in the civilopedia. Then there are the bugs that give you tech early. Changing screen resolutions is hazardous, let alone "alt-tabbing" to another program (say to play some music). The "main menu" and "Civilopedia" buttons have disappeared... There is a "rounding error" where a unit is healed to, say, "2.0/2" (just pin it at 1.9, geesh!). And some graphics "layering" that make it difficult to tell where your units are at times. Has anyone else seen the "phantom unit" flying in from the side and/or moving to another spot, even though the "right" unit moved to the "right" spot (hint: look for your unit's mirror image, but without a health bar). Sound is difficult to control and the fact that units show in front of the city info makes it hard to tell basic information about your cities without entering the city menu. And on and on....

My biggest problem with this game is that the developers sacrificed the game strategy elements that made CIV so cool, for graphics that make me ill and won't even run on my 6 month old box. This is probably a great game if you are an X-box type gamer, but for me I'll stick with C3C for now.

Just thought I'd share my opinion for those of you who think you are desperately trying to make a wonderful new game work. C3C is honestly more fun.

 

Just took some screenshots that I wish I could post to this thread. The starting area is clearly visible, but shaded out, while about ten spaces to the south, an identically-shaped zone is active and fully visible. Clearly the visible space that's supposed to be around my city and its units was displaced somehow.

 

Actually, I think the strategy elements are there. The AI is incredibly good, the tech tree is more interesting, expansion takes effort rather than spamming settlers, etc. The problem is that they focused on graphics to the extent that you have to have a top of the line computer to get the game to run properly. Which is, needless to say, a really dumb idea. This is Civilization, not Half-Life.

 

Just a reiteration of the same issue others have pointed out.... seems like there's a lot of issues around the video layering on the 82852/82855 GM/GME Graphics Controllers....

Its a problem since its an integrated controller on a laptop system board. I really hope that they plan on issuing a fix.

 

So is there any solution to this Darkness issue yet, can anyone confirm if they are actually working to resolve this issue?

I have an ATI All-In-Wonder 7500 and I have the darkness and screwed up 3D head thing. I have tried the cache and Unpacking fixes but it doesn't fix the problem.

 

The trick with the world builder "worked" for me, though there are still the leaderhead problem.

 

I posted it in another thread...

but has it occured to anyone that maybe there is an option somewhere to enable the T&L and for most of our cards maybe its not enabled? Is there a place where we can see these settings? Maybe this is possible?

 

yea that worked for me too but I don't want to play with having the whole map revealed, that sucks, and yea it still doesn't resolve the leaderhead problem anyways

 

That's why I put the word "worked" in quotes