interesting thread on civfanatics

[Willem]

Originally posted by sabrewolf


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]

Obviously they aren't keeping up with the times. Hardware T&L is becoming a standard requirement for games that use any type of 3D engine, it's not just a small number anymore. I have 4 of them on my system now, with at least one them being published three years ago.

[sabrewolf]

and why can't this be emulated by software/directX? pretty much all 2D and 3D calculations could also be handled by the CPU. ofcourse, it comes at a performance cost, but nonetheless it usually works.

and i really do not understand why civ4 is the old game that won't run on my 12" notebook.

how about the 64MB nvidia (NV34) card in my inspiron 8600?

[Franklinnoble]

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.

Why are you such an apologist? Do you work for Firaxis or something?

People who have systems that meet the published standard (Radeon 7500) are getting the black map problem.

The developer and beta testers dropped the ball here - instead of being an advocate for us, you're telling us all to buy new video cards. I'd like to know how I'm supposed to do that on my laptop.

You're doing a disservice to this community, in my opinion, by not taking the right stance on this issue.

[Stromprophet]

This question is to any beta testers, Solver, Soren, people associated with Civ 4.

If Nvidia GeForce 4 MX 440 cards are so common (and seem to be commonly having an issue) though other cards have the same black map issue.

Why was this not addressed during testing?

It seems like a wide, wide, range of graphics cards are all failing. I know, I know the texture and lighting feature is not supported, I followed this a lot though I didn't see much mentioned about it. Is it mentioned on the official requirements?

If it was going to be such a problem it would have been seen in testing right?

Also from what I am reading, once I start playing the game other errors are going to come up.

I already saw founding of religion cause a huge error for someone, diplomacy freezes, and the game crawls quite a bit. Seems to slow down from the start and only get worse. Also I saw there are huge memory leaks? How is that gonna get fixed?

Last question, when are they going to patch this sucker? Cause they need to get it together quick.

[Willem]

Originally posted by Franklinnoble
People who have systems that meet the published standard (Radeon 7500) are getting the black map problem.

And people are solving it as well, just keep looking around for solutions. You have to keep in mind that the 7500 is the bare minimum that Firaxis recommends, you can't expect it to run the game like a charm. The people who have managed to get it to work have had to do alot of fiddling and making a few compromises.

[Franklinnoble]

Originally posted by Willem


And people are solving it as well, just keep looking around for solutions. You have to keep in mind that the 7500 is the bare minimum that Firaxis recommends, you can't expect it to run the game like a charm. The people who have managed to get it to work have had to do alot of fiddling and making a few compromises.

I've done that. I played for an hour last night with the reveal map trick, and it was like I was in a permanent fog of war - viewable, but hardly enjoyable.

If I turn off the AGP, the game is unplayably slow. AGP on with map reveal, it is very smooth on my computer.

This can be fixed with software - and I expect Firaxis to do it in short order. If there's a real solution published in a reasonable amount of time, I'll be a happy customer - but right now, I'm justifiably very angry, because I just shelled out fifty bucks for a game that claims to run on my system (per the specs printed right on the box) but doesn't. And the workaround not only ruins the game strategically, it's just unpleasant to look at.

I understand the shift to 3D game development - but it seems like they went a little too far with the bells and whistles here. This is a strategy game - I didn't buy it for the eye candy.

[Willem]

Originally posted by Franklinnoble


I've done that. I played for an hour last night with the reveal map trick, and it was like I was in a permanent fog of war - viewable, but hardly enjoyable.

If I turn off the AGP, the game is unplayably slow. AGP on with map reveal, it is very smooth on my computer.

This can be fixed with software - and I expect Firaxis to do it in short order. If there's a real solution published in a reasonable amount of time, I'll be a happy customer - but right now, I'm justifiably very angry, because I just shelled out fifty bucks for a game that claims to run on my system (per the specs printed right on the box) but doesn't. And the workaround not only ruins the game strategically, it's just unpleasant to look at.

I understand the shift to 3D game development - but it seems like they went a little too far with the bells and whistles here. This is a strategy game - I didn't buy it for the eye candy.

What part of bare minimum didn't you understand? If you want to play the game smoothly, you're going to have to get a better video card. Sorry, but it can't be fixed with software, it's a hardware issue. The 7500 just barely supports Hardware T&L.

[Franklinnoble]

Originally posted by Willem


What part of bare minimum didn't you understand? If you want to play the game smoothly, you're going to have to get a better video card. Sorry, but it can't be fixed with software, it's a hardware issue. The 7500 just barely supports Hardware T&L.

Another Firaxis apologist..

There's a difference between "Minimum Specifications" and "This Game Will Suck Big Time Without A Better Video Card."

I have a new T42 ThinkPad. It's hardly obsolete by any measure, and I don't have the option to upgrade the video card.

Civilization is one of the few games I bother to play, because it's traditionally been one of the more "grown-up" games made. I don't want a pretty 3D "button-masher." My kids play those on the PS2. Civilization was always an intelligent strategy game, and the graphics were just icing on the cake.

I don't mind the move forward in graphics, but I think Sid has to realize he's risking losing a big part of his audience - namely, professional adults who want to play a little Civ in their spare time on their laptops.

[Willem]

Originally posted by Franklinnoble


I don't mind the move forward in graphics, but I think Sid has to realize he's risking losing a big part of his audience - namely, professional adults who want to play a little Civ in their spare time on their laptops.

You should be complaining to the laptop manufacturers then, not to Firaxis. It's about time they woke up to the fact that people use their laptops for more than just spreadsheets. If they're to cheap to stick half decent video cards in their rigs, you can't hold Firaxis responsible.

And no I'm not a Firaxis apologist. I'm just getting a bit annoyed at all these people that refuse to acknowledge that computer technology is advancing and at some point old systems become obsolete. Over at CivFanatics there was one person who was complaining that the game didn't run like a charm on a P3 900 mhz machine. Like really!

[Franklinnoble]

Originally posted by Willem


You should be complaining to the laptop manufacturers then, not to Firaxis. It's about time they woke up to the fact that people use their laptops for more than just spreadsheets. If they're to cheap to stick half decent video cards in their rigs, you can't hold Firaxis responsible.

And no I'm not a Firaxis apologist. I'm just getting a bit annoyed at all these people that refuse to acknowledge that computer technology is advancing and at some point old systems become obsolete. Over at CivFanatics there was one person who was complaining that the game didn't run like a charm on a P3 900 mhz machine. Like really!

Whether you choose to acknowledge it or not, my system is not obsolete. I'm hardly on-par with someone whining about a p3 900.

[Willem]

Originally posted by Franklinnoble


Whether you choose to acknowledge it or not, my system is not obsolete. I'm hardly on-par with someone whining about a p3 900.

If it only has a Radeon 7500 then yes it is obsolete. Video cards have progressed a lot since that one was first produced. A system is only as good as it's weakest link.

Go complain to your laptop maker for putting in a crap video card, that would be more productive than what you're doing now.

[archermoo]

Originally posted by Franklinnoble


Whether you choose to acknowledge it or not, my system is not obsolete. I'm hardly on-par with someone whining about a p3 900.

Actually, whether you choose to acknowledge it or not, as far as playing modern games goes, your system is indeed obsolete. Or is at the very least well on it's way towards becoming so. I'm sure I'll get labeled as an apologist as well, but oh well. When when minimum specs are posted for a game, if my system barely meets any or all of them, I expect that there will be problems. Obviously YMMV...

[ljw1004]

Originally posted by Franklinnoble
I have a new T42 ThinkPad.

I got my T41p thinkbad back in February 2004. It came with an ATI Mobility Radeon 9000. Civ4 works fine on it, first time, using drivers that come from IBM and then updating them with the ones pushed on me by windowsupdate.com. It's a bit sluggish, so I turned all the detail settings down to minimum and switched to low resolution.

[sabrewolf]

Originally posted by Willem
You should be complaining to the laptop manufacturers then, not to Firaxis. It's about time they woke up to the fact that people use their laptops for more than just spreadsheets. If they're to cheap to stick half decent video cards in their rigs, you can't hold Firaxis responsible.

you are confusing something here. notebooks have one great advantage: size. this leads to mobility and flexibility. that's why a lot of people do not have heavy desktops but use laptops instead.
at the same time size is the downside. because with reduced size, you are also limited in space of, and especially, between the components. if you have seen any decent modern graphics card, you'll see it has its own set of RAM, processors and nowadays its own ventilation.

in my case, i've got an IBM notebook for travelling. it's a neat 12" superlight, good laptop. IBM are imho generally the best quality notebooks at a reasonable price. only dell is comparable. now the downside of powerful mobile computers is that graphiccards are usually not the newest. blame intel, blame IBM... but most people do not need 64MB of video card memory as surely not T&L accelleration (which btw is proprietary nVidia technology and is only emulated in ATI cards)

And no I'm not a Firaxis apologist. I'm just getting a bit annoyed at all these people that refuse to acknowledge that computer technology is advancing and at some point old systems become obsolete. Over at CivFanatics there was one person who was complaining that the game didn't run like a charm on a P3 900 mhz machine. Like really!

well, people who cannot play the game are much more annoyed by those who keep saying "hey, **** happens, just be quiet". nobody expects a notebook or an oldish computer to perform super fluidly and at max resolution. but one can expect to at least run something...

please also remember that all the (p)reviews have been hailing the superb game civ4 (which i'm sure it is) and praising the bug-free-ness, but not a single time did you hear "oh, by the way, we had bough a super-new computer and it only ran on our 1 year old computer after we did a driver update on our ATI cards. and we never tried it on a business-focussed-notebook".

just understand our frustration. after drooling 2 months long about the game, then you buy it for expensive money (i ordered 2 copies, 1 even from the US) and you cannot play it... you can surely imagine that it sucks. and i'm pretty diplomatic here (because most other regular posters either were betatesters or don't seem to have a problem)... i can imagine some others are infuriated...

[sabrewolf]

Originally posted by ljw1004
I got my T41p thinkbad back in February 2004. It came with an ATI Mobility Radeon 9000. Civ4 works fine on it, first time, using drivers that come from IBM and then updating them with the ones pushed on me by windowsupdate.com. It's a bit sluggish, so I turned all the detail settings down to minimum and switched to low resolution.

nice addition to the 'p' version

but i do like you thinkBad pun