v1.00 BUG Reports

[Traelin]

Originally posted by Traelin


Venger, I had this same problem with Pirates on my fiance's Dell laptop..the exact same problem. Weird.

EDIT: The reason I ascertained this is cuz of your screenshot. I remember sailing around, running into land, then the whole screen going green and psychedelic. But when I sailed away and waited awhile, everything was fine again. I doubt this helps you at all, but I have a feeling the GameBryo engine may be a tad glitchy with certain drivers/systems/whatevers.

[DeepO]

I'm sure Solver or Markos will have more detailed information up in a special thread in no time, but for the moment: there seems to be a possible problem in case you didn't use the DirectX install which was part of the installation. Without that install, your superdeluxe videocard might not work.

Don't be pissed, just find the DirectX directory on the discs and run DXSetup. Or uninstall/install again, not turning down the option to install DirectX 9c.

DeepO

[Solver]

http://apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=140655

That's the most help we have for now.

[RickJay]

As I posted in another thread, the install DirectX9 installer didn't appear to load anything at all onto my system. I ran it, but I have no DirectX files with today's time stamp. I have no idea how to resolve this.

[Kc7mxo]

3600 64 bit amd athlon
1024 mb pc400 ram
windows xp 64 bit
ATI Radeo x800

Failed to initialize render. First time it wouldn't even load.

did the directx install, it didn't find anything.

Have deleted all the stuff in my games twice now. No help there. Going to install it on old crappy computer and see if that works.


And somehow, I'm not in the least bit surprised by all this.

on the bright side, the soundtrack works.

edit: apparently my old computer from a couple years ago can run it, although so far the intro video is pretty jerky, and shows in widescreen with very bright blue bars on the top and bottom. .

all my other games run fine on my 64bit proc, this is kinda annoying.

[Addled Platypus]

anyone else have issues trying to exit

I click go to main menu, the screen starts to jump araound

had to ctrl-alt -delete to get out

and of course I have the black terrain issue as well

meet all the min req's

[Backpack]

Crash to desktop, Sound, And Window Zoom

Okay - 6 hours after install I have a variety of items to report.

System Specs (1.8 P4, 1GB RAM, Nvidia 6200 AGP Video w/128 MB. Dual monitor, running CIV in main monitor only)

Issue #1
Incorrect Mouse Location in a zoomed 'Window'-
What I did - Ran CIV, Closed CIV. Changed Ini file to windowed. Ran game in 1024x768 Window on a 1280x1024 Desktop. Played Tutorial. Used the 'Zoom Window' to full screen button (The windows button on the window border, not a 'game' function).
What I saw #1.1: The 1024x768 window did indeed zoom out to fill the screen like a normal application, but it also did not add pixels to the window, it merely expanded or zoomed the game inside of it. This may be what it's supposed to do, I don't know.
What I saw #1.2 What I do know is that when you do these steps, the curser 'pointer' and the curser location that the game sees for mouse overs and for Go to clicks are not in synch. The farther away from centerscreen you go, the more offset the mouse curser (The visible pointer) is from the action point that the game is recognizing... An example... I hovered the mouse 2 tiles north, and 2 tiles west of a city center to get the city center mouseover popup.
Solution: ???? (I am now playing in full screen, no windowed mode)

Issue #2
Crash to Desktop -
What I did - Played the game
What I saw #2.1: The first time I crashed, the game went away, the second monitor (With web browser in it running at 1024x768x65Kcolor) went blank, and the main monitor went to 4 bit color, and switched to 800x600 resolution (Down from 1280x1024).
What I saw #2.2: Game crashed again, both monitors went blank. Had to reboot the machine to reset. (Could still hear music from the speakers - so this wasn't really a crash to desktop)
Possible Solution - I have now turned off (in windows) the second monitor. This may be a low power problem, it may be something else. Just documenting it for the time being.

Issue #3
Get Update + Firewall + first run = Frozen game
What I did - Installed game, started game, went to advanced, ran 'Check for updates'
What I saw #3.1: Computer and game frozen for 7+ minutes. (The firewall (Zone Alarm Free Edition) was asking for permission to let CIV out, but CIV was stuck in a loop trying to get out, so I couldn't [ctrl esc] to desktop to let it out. I believe it eventually timed out or one of my many ctrl alt deletes finally got through.
Possible Solution: Please impliment a 20-30 second timeout for 'Check for updates'

Issue #4
Sound Error ?
What I did: Turned on logging after the first of the above crashes. After 2nd crash examined my logs. Found these errors in audio.log
----
[535.953] AudioManager: Successfully initialized the audio system.
[535.953] AudioManager: Successfully initialized the audio manager.
[1210.250] ERR: FSharedSoundData::Load: Could not read file Sounds/RevolutionStart.
[1210.250] WRN: Dynamic resident sound could not be loaded, GlobalId: 350
[1210.250] WRN: FSound:oLoad: Sound Sounds/RevolutionStart could acquire a loaded buffer.
[1210.250] WRN: FAudioManager:oSound(): Could not load scriptId 332./n
[1233.796] ERR: FSharedSoundData::Load: Could not read file Sounds/CrowdCheer.
[1233.796] WRN: Dynamic resident sound could not be loaded, GlobalId: 357
[1233.796] WRN: FSound:oLoad: Sound Sounds/CrowdCheer could acquire a loaded buffer.
[1233.796] WRN: FAudioManager:oSound(): Could not load scriptId 333./n
[1592.375] ERR: FSharedSoundData::Load: Could not read file Sounds/March.
And alot of duplicates of the March error

I don't know if there were supposed to be sounds at those moments or if they never got added. - Just FYI

Issue #5
Obelisk Art Problem
What I did - Started Logging
What I saw: In the LSystem.log, I saw the following message repeated 6 times
-----------
building:Art/Structures/Buildings/Obelisk/Obelisk.nif does not contain a node called SHADOW. Its shadow, if present, will be corrupt!



Those are my current bug reports after 6 hours. The game Rocks!, Just looks like some interface and graphics issues from my end so far. I'll post another report when I have more, or if I solve or duplicate the crash to desktop. All helpful suggestions welcome!
--------------------
Backpack

[Backpack]

Oh, I almost forgot -
Issue #6 The opening Video plays hurky jerky -
What I saw #6.1: (dropping frames or freezing up I dunno). But the audio with it stays synched and doesn't stop so it must be dropping frames.
What I saw #6.2: The cloud cover on the earth in the background during the menu looked PERFECT. and scorlling and zooming in game havn't been bothered. appears to be a video problem

Issue #7
Play Video Menu Option Missing
This is documented in the users manual , but absent from the game. According to the manual there is a videos button in advnaced options, but in my installed game there isn't one.

[snowstorm]

Yes, another buyer here with crash problems

I seem to have the same problem as some others here.
I have a Dell Pentium 4,2.4 GHz, 256MB Memory, Direct X 9, and a 64MB GeForce4 MX Graphics Card with TV-Out. Seems I have all the minimum requirements for this game, and the game installs without any problem.

However....
Soundtrack is choppy.
Tutorial played generally OK, except in the beginning when the landscape is all black, even the explored parts, then it all finally shows up late in the tutorial.
THEN, when loading a game I've selected, the progress bar indicates its done, but then nothing happens, the screen freezes, and I can't exit the game either without rebooting.
Is my graphics card the problem, or is it TOO MANY BUGS??? ARRRRRGH!!!

[favedave]

My game is running fine, but there are some programming flaws.

Tiny but annoying:

- the tech screen will NOT go away when you hit the escape key. You have to click on "exit" to leave that screen. This is the only screen that does that. Very annoying.

- In the Civilopedia there is no entry for the "hills" terrain feature!


BTW, those of you with choppy problems who have less than 512 megs RAM on your machines: BUY MORE RAM! It's cheap and will increase your performance for this game and everything else on your computer dramatically.

Go a MINIMUM of 512 megs. I recommend 1 gig RAM minimum to keep WindowsXP and your games happy. You'll get less hard disc access and smoother performance all around.

If you are running Civ 4 with the minimum system requirements, you will get minimum system performance. Sorry. That's just the way it is. Increase your RAM is the cheapest and most effective way to boost it if you have 512 or less of RAM (512 megs = $40.00)

Second best way is to get a new video card. You can get a good nvidia card for under $100. nVidia has better compatibility with their drivers so stick with them for less trouble.

If you're running lower than a P4 2.4 ghz, you can upgrade that, too and your wait between turns will be shorter. But that' more expensive and a hassle than RAM/video card.

[Garret OneEye]

Annoying little bug: if you minimize interface (Ctrl-I) and then switch to city screen (double-click on a city) and then escape out to main view, then interface is not minimized anymore.

[Praetereo]

Bug: No movies will play at all. This includes opening movies and movies in-game. Instead of movies only a solid, blocky pattern is shown with no movement at all. During this, the movie's soundtrack plays flawlessly. All other aspects of the game run flawlessly.
I have verified that the movies themselves are perfectly fine, and can play each and every one manually outside of the game.

[gunnergoz]

For me - choppy sound and one CTD about year 800AD in an enormous map. Game was playing OK except for the sound...oh, yeah, the wonder movies are choppy and don't play through right.
Well, with a spanky new engine behind Civ 4, I'm not too surprised at all the surprises!

[HavenDuuk]

I had to reduce the graphics to "medium" even though I'm running 2.17G with 1G of ram and a 128M NVidia FX 5500 with the most current driver.

Otherwise I got weird graphical glitching.

[chumly]

1) Copy protection annoyances. Unless I eject and reload the cd each time I want to play, it fails to recognize the disc in the drive about half the time

2) Video glitches in-game. The videos play correctly about 10% of the time. The rest of the time, they hitch and skip and stutter, or don't display at all.

3) The minimap is covered with horizontal orange streaks. Very late in the game, the entire 'world' view map was covered with this video garbage as well. The end-game history replay of the world was completely corrupted with the same.

p4 3.2ht, gf6800, latest drivers, latest directx (plus extras from install cd)