Dark map, Cheshire Cat grin, and opening movie problems

[Xmudder]

I've seen this problem brought up over at CFC. I start the turtorial, the main map is dark (I can see the settlers and the mini map), Sid is only his teeth (Cheshire Cat Grin) and the opening movies don't work right.

I have an Intel 82865G chipset with 96 megs

[Solver]

That chipset doesn't support T&L, so your problem can only be fixed by getting a new video card.

[Xmudder]

Originally posted by Solver
That chipset doesn't support T&L, so your problem can only be fixed by getting a new video card.

That means getting a new computer.

I curse the day I ever got a dell.

[Solver]

Don't blame Dell, blame Intel who release a ton of motherboards with extremely crappy integrated video chipsets that steal your system RAM and don't even have T&L.

[Elrad2]

thats silly, other games work fine. Would it be hard to compromise somehow? Turn the features that rrequire T&L off? ala a "low graphics setting" maybe?

[wouellette]

Fix???

I am running on a IBM t-40 laptop at bear mins req's. (Radeon mobile 7500) I had the leader head and black map issue and fixed it by:

Downloading the Omega Drivers from Drivershevean.net (Not sure if the ATI ones wouldn't do the same)

and then turning of the AGP setting in the SmartGart tab.

I also tunred down all the 3d settings (This I verified was not the issue but my game is really crawling) and I figure I will try to loose quality for performance and get something close to playable. I have a gig of Ram coming but I fear this will not solve the slow play only a patch will.

The support line will just leave you on hold for 20 minutes then answer to tell you to call back in 24 hours.

[baktone]

Some success/observations

I have the ATI Radeon 7500 card (32MB with T&L, came with a Gateway laptop) and was able to see some of the map by turning on fast write when I installed the omega 5.1 drivers. During installation of the drivers (sorry I don’t have the website for the omega drivers, see other threads), it prompts you to enter whether you want fast write enabled or not. The first time I put no and got the cheshire cat/black background everyone is complaining about. I reinstalled the omega drivers and chose to enable fast write this time, and when I entered the game I could see part of the map. However, this window of visibility moved with my cursor so I could actually look at the entire map by scrolling over it. Moving my units increased the size of the window (as if removing the fog) to a certain point, after which I couldn’t get it to grow any further.

It is still very annoying to play the game this way, but I thought I’d post this in hopes that the root of the problem can be discovered. It is also possible that I began at the center of the map and therefore the window was created (I saw someone post yesterday that if you started at the center of the map you could see part of the ground).

Finally, I played a full game with the ground visible (although sort of dark & w/out some of the horses/sheep/etc...) by starting in the future era. I tried this in other eras but only succeeded by choosing future.

[gamecock99]

What is this agp setting in the smartgart tab that a few people have mentioned?

I have a NVIDIA GeForce4 and have having the same problems mentioned above.

[timmy42]

I also have an Nvidia GeForce 4, and after 3 hours of trying to install this !@?!!%ing game, the game "randomly" installed, but I get the black map syndrome.

[baktone]

The AGP change just replaces one big problem for another (your game will crawl.........). The best solution put forth at this point is to reveal all the terrain using worldbuilder or by changing the 0 values to 1s in the .xml file (see other threads for details). That way you can see the entire map and play the game, although the terrain is a little dark.