The Black Terrain

[ikajaste]

Well, Civilization 4 is out. And boy am I excited, it's Civ4 for crying out loud!

But there's this problem... well, everything terrainy is black and all. Plus animals don't show up, only their shadows. And leaders look like they've read Alice in Wonderland a bit too many times. And that's not all...

... read the rest of my rant at http://iki.fi/ilari.kajaste/blackterrain

And if you're having the same problem as me, check out the site as well. I've collected there some hacks from these forums that I've found useful.

 

[oriel94]

Nice "Black Terrain" website. I agree with nearly all of it.

I have tried just about every suggested fix over many hours, including the world builder work around, and still have not succeeded in exiling black terrain. I was almost convinced that I just needed to get a super-charged graphics card when - lo and behold - I have no trouble viewing all the terrain in the included scenarios (e.g. American War of Independence). If my graphics card is really the problem, why is this so? What on earth is going on?

Anyone got an answer?

 

[joesf35]

good website

Did you also try the 'hack' where you set the AGP on the smartgart tab to off, or the vertex shader to version 1.0 on Radlinker?

 

[oriel94]

good website

Did you also try the 'hack' where you set the AGP on the smartgart tab to off, or the vertex shader to version 1.0 on Radlinker?

Err ... no. How can I do either of those things?

 

[MollieDollie]

Nicely done. You should make a link on the page to "e-mail this page to Firaxis and 2K."

A couple thousand links emailed to them may elicit a response..

Edit:

Strangely enough, I was playing last night, just to see if I could actually finish a game with black terrain, and about about 1700AD~1750AD *BLINK* the problem was simply gone! The terrain was still a little dark, but I could see the animals, the textures, even discern which were water tiles and which were land! *shrug*

 

[bio_hazard]

@MollieDollie- I've heard that happens either when you've traded for all world maps or when you research satellites.

 

[joesf35]

Err ... no. How can I do either of those things?

Others have compiled these fixes, fog of war works with both of them and the leaderheads are displayed correctly, but they lead to white/yellow terrain.

Download radlinker (instructions this thread http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=139255)
or the latest omega drivers (instructions this thread http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=134945)

 

[ikajaste]

Did you also try the 'hack' where you set the AGP on the smartgart tab to off, or the vertex shader to version 1.0 on Radlinker?

Yes, I had tried turning the AGP off, but that only caused the game not to start. (In specific, it exits after the 2k-games animation and the static Civ4 screen, before the Civ4 intro animation with no message.)

With AGP set to 1x or 2x (instead of the default 4x) I get some new graphical distorts and glitches with some 3d-items.

I hadn't tried the Radlinker, but now that I've tried it, it doesn't seem to have any effect. I tried values 1.0, 1.2, 1.4, 2.0 - none make any difference. When adjusting the shader values with different AGP settings I did manage to get the "Failed to Initialize Renderer" error a few times.

For me, nothing was ever fixed, nor did terrain colors get distorted.