interesting thread on civfanatics

[archermoo]

Originally posted by Stromprophet
View hidden terrain? Where is that option? But does it show the whole map?

The black terrain is definitely not just a graphics card issue. It's a bug that needs to be fixed.

Actually, my guess is that it is a graphics card issue. My understanding is that for the most part, the only terrain the people with the "black map" syndrone are seeing is the terrain that is at the brightest level (i.e. not obscured at all). So it sounds like if there is any shading applied to the terrain in question, it is entirely blacked out. Whether it is a bug in the application or a problem with how it is communicating to the card, I don't know. I wonder if those that are having this type of problem who are running a min spec card have tried turning the graphics options down to absolute minimum, assuming that they can either get to the graphics options, or can manipulate them at the .ini level. 'Cause what it sounds like is that the card is getting instructions to do things that it either isn't capable of, or doesn't understand.

[vee4473]

Originally posted by Solver
That is no surprise. People who have black terrain have video cards that don't support T&L.

GeForce 4 MX 440 runs the game. We've had many beta testers with GeForce 4 MX cards.

Well, so far you are correct sir!

My mx440 64mb is runing it well.
At the first start up, a message popped up saying that I was below minimum (i think below) and that settings would be set to lowest level. Odd, since everything meets minimum. Even the card does. AMD 2200+ 512 ram etc..

But, all seems well anyway. No blackouts of terrain or mini map.

knock knock (on wood that is)

[runfunsun]

Originally posted by Solver
That is no surprise. People who have black terrain have video cards that don't support T&L.

GeForce 4 MX 440 runs the game. We've had many beta testers with GeForce 4 MX cards.

this is not necessarilly true.

some of us who have the black terrain problem CAN see the terrain under certain conditions. for instance, if you go to the world editor and set all tiles so you can see them, then exit the world builder, then you can see the terrain and play the game just fine (except for the fact you've just cheated and can see the whole map). also, if you are having this problem and you play the smallest pangea world possible you'll find that the tiles DO show up, it's just that they are not focused on where you are standing, the area you should be able to see around you is moved to another part of the map. as you zoom out up into the sky when you get to the cloud level the focus goes to where it should be, on your folks. but as soon as you zoom back in one step it jumps away and highlights an entirely different part of the map. many people with this problem (all ?) can also play the american revolution map in the scenarios fine, because the whole map is set to be viewable from the beginning and there's no fog to clear away. now, does that sound like a video card problem ?

if you can see your characters on the screen and your resources, see foods and things in the tutorial mode, but not see the map ... try just moving the characters around the map a while. what this does is expand the area you are able to see (or that you should be able to see, if it weren't located far across the map somewhere) and eventually it'll expand enough that you walk into it from the side. then you can see terrain just fine.

this is NOT a video card problem, and i wish people would quit saying it is. if it was a video problem you wouldn't be able to see ANY terrain under ANY circumstances. but for a lot of people (all ?) who are having this dark terrain problem the terrain renders just fine under the right conditions, without a problem. and i doubt you'd even see your troopers if this was a card problem, they're rendered in 3d too, right ?

this is a BUG.

and the BUG has something to do with the viewable part of the map not being centered on your characters but instead being centered somewhere else on the map. and until people STOP saying it's a card problem nobody is going to take it seriously and fix it. now cheshire cat, that might be a video card problem, but who cares, you can play the game with cheshire cat heads as long as you can see the terrain.

[archermoo]

Originally posted by runfunsun


this is not necessarilly true.

some of us who have the black terrain problem CAN see the terrain under certain conditions. for instance, if you go to the world editor and set all tiles so you can see them, then exit the world builder, then you can see the terrain and play the game just fine (except for the fact you've just cheated and can see the whole map). also, if you are having this problem and you play the smallest pangea world possible you'll find that the tiles DO show up, it's just that they are not focused on where you are standing, the area you should be able to see around you is moved to another part of the map. as you zoom out up into the sky when you get to the cloud level the focus goes to where it should be, on your folks. but as soon as you zoom back in one step it jumps away and highlights an entirely different part of the map. many people with this problem (all ?) can also play the american revolution map in the scenarios fine, because the whole map is set to be viewable from the beginning and there's no fog to clear away. now, does that sound like a video card problem ?

Yes, it sounds exactly like a vid card or vid card driver problem. Something about the commands to fog part of the map are not generating the correct results when sent to the vid card. Either because the vid card can't do the functions in question (vid card problem) or because the commands aren't getting to it correctly (vid card driver problem). It sounds like the card is able to disply the terrain just fine, it is just that modifying it with T&L effects (i.e. hiding it under fog of war) is causing a problem.

If it was a generalized bug in the program itself, everyone would be experiencing it. I'm not, and neither are most others. There could be a problem with the T&L code that only shows up under certain circumstances, but I think a more likely culprit is either the vid card or the vid card drivers.

[Stromprophet]

Originally posted by vee4473


Well, so far you are correct sir!

My mx440 64mb is runing it well.
At the first start up, a message popped up saying that I was below minimum (i think below) and that settings would be set to lowest level. Odd, since everything meets minimum. Even the card does. AMD 2200+ 512 ram etc..

But, all seems well anyway. No blackouts of terrain or mini map.

knock knock (on wood that is)

I have the same type of card and specs and got the same message after I had re-installed with the 81.85 nvidia driver.

Mine is working ok now, but what about the flood plains?

I still see the green areas from these through the fog of war. It is a little annoying not a killer though.

When I first started that's all I saw, was the flood plains green. Nothing else came through the black, it is still there now, but I can see the terrain as normal when my units move. I would like to get it totally fixed.

I have a Geforce 4 MX 440 with AGP8X, if lots of beta testers had this card what did they do to fix the issue? (That question is for solver?)

[vee4473]

I haven't played enough to find any flood plains yet, but i will see if i have the same problem.

[runfunsun]

this is my first time trying to upload pictures to this forum, so we'll see how it goes. in this example what i just did was started a civ game with the smallest possible pangea map. i think consensus is that what's going on is that the focused "highlighted" area, for some reason, is positioned at the center of the map, no matter where you are on the map, or at least isn't centered around your characters like it should be. so we got lucky on this game because i was positioned right near the center, so you can clearly see that the terrain IS highlighted, just not where it should be. instead of being centered on the characters, it just stays static in the lower left hand part of the screen. in order to illustrate this i'm uploading 3 images, and they show me moving the mouse to the upper part of the screen and right, showly moving the characters into the highlighted area. as you can see, the terrain renders just fine.

note that if i had started on a much bigger map chances are i would not see ANY terrain, i'd just see a big black map with dark terrain and resources.

this is a bug.

or .. put it another way .. the reviewers, critics, magazine people, and people who give out game of the year awards ... they're sure as hell going to say it's a bug.

[runfunsun]

and a quick followup, here you can see i moved my folks to the north and east a step, and the viewable area down at the bottom has expanded to be bigger. which is what should happen. only thing is, it's just not following the people on the map, it's just sitting there ... the map scrolls beneath it instead of it moving with the map. it should be linked to the map and move with it.

[Locutus]

Originally posted by archermoo
Yes, it sounds exactly like a vid card or vid card driver problem. Something about the commands to fog part of the map are not generating the correct results when sent to the vid card. Either because the vid card can't do the functions in question (vid card problem) or because the commands aren't getting to it correctly (vid card driver problem). It sounds like the card is able to disply the terrain just fine, it is just that modifying it with T&L effects (i.e. hiding it under fog of war) is causing a problem.

If it was a generalized bug in the program itself, everyone would be experiencing it. I'm not, and neither are most others. There could be a problem with the T&L code that only shows up under certain circumstances, but I think a more likely culprit is either the vid card or the vid card drivers.

Archermoo nailed it. When you see the entire map in cheat mode, no T&L functions are used. That's no 'harder' to do for the graphics card than showing the main menu of the game or your windows desktop. But to use fog of war or leaderheads or some other parts of the game, you need T&L functions and that's when weird stuff starts happening (including black terrain) because your card doesn't support them and performs the wrong actions.

runfunsun,

Your first post is a bit ambiguous, do you have an mx440 as video card? If so, then you're not experiencing a problem with lack of T&L support because the mx440 does support T&L, it's some other bug then. You probably just have to find the right driver (see the various posts around this forum for other nvidia troubleshoot -- start a new thread for this if needed, your problem might not get the attention it deserves in this thread). If you do have a card without T&L support, then that's probably causing those problems, although based on your screens/report that seems not very likely to be the case. That's not your normal black terrain problem though, I've experienced it myself in the past and it doesn't look like that. Either way, it'd still recommend reinstalling drivers, DirectX, etc, see what it does and start a new thread if needed.

[Khaim]

Solver, there's a problem with your explanation. Namely, I have a Radeon Mobility 7500, which has T&L, and I have black terrain.

I would also like to point out that black terrain is actually the second worst problem of the graphics glitch bug. The worst part is that you can't see production values on the map, either in city mode or with settlers highlighted. This makes in incredibly hard to optimize your cities and figure out what they're capable of.

Oh, and chesire leaders aren't very amusing either. Kind of creepy, really.

[Willem]

Originally posted by Khaim
Solver, there's a problem with your explanation. Namely, I have a Radeon Mobility 7500, which has T&L, and I have black terrain.

It sounds like the 7500 isn't using the T&L properly, a number of people with this card have been reporting the problem. It may very well be that it's version is to old to work properly with Civ 4.

[Khaim]

So it should be something fixable by drivers, I would think.

It seems like someone had it working for a bit, then lost it. Not sure what that was all about.

[lobosan]

The black terrain problem may be a video driver issue!
I just downloaded a beta driver - Forceware 82.10 (x32) - from guru3d.com at

http://downloads.guru3d.com/download.php?det=1227

So far, it has not killed my Inspiron 8200 with a GeForce4 440 Go.
This may be very risky but the terrain is visible now although there are still some artifacts in the fog of war (maybe a bug).

[Willem]

Originally posted by Khaim
So it should be something fixable by drivers, I would think.

Maybe, though it could very well be a hardware problem as well. From what I can gather, the 7500 was one of the first Radeons to use T&L. Maybe the hardware it used for it is no longer compatible. Just speculating though, I'm not a techie. There seems to be an issue with these cards at any rate, even with the new fix available.

[sabrewolf]

Originally posted by Willem
Blame Intel for that. T&L has been around for awhile now, so there's no reason why their graphic cards don't support it.

this is what intel says:

http://support.intel.com/support/graphics/sb/CS-011910.htm

[q=intel website]Intel® graphics products do not have hardware support for T&L. In most games, transform and lighting calculations can be performed on the processor with acceptable performance. A small number of games that specifically check for hardware T&L support may fail to run.[/q]