New fix for the renderer error

[Collorado]

It's now the 13th hour I try to get civ4 started. I tested different drivers for my graphic card, re-installed the game, created a new user account, organized an old graphic card, tried it out and reinstalled my Radeon 9600 card afterwards, did exactly what is written on the official support page, extracted the files from the art0.pak with fpk_tool, tested chaning the .ini-file with sound off or movies out and ... and... and.
And still: the loading box appears, the loading bar moves until 3/4 full ...then the loading box closes and no civ4 is started. I think I know every suggested solution in this and other forums and tried out every single one.
Do someone has the same problem as me, and found a solution which has not been posted before?

[opor]

Originally posted by JimmyTango
It also says you need a video card that supports Hardware T&L.

Hmm...
Age of Empires III requires a card with support for Hardware Transformation & Lighting too and its working fine on my video card...

Why Civ4 not? ..Buuuuuuu..

[OutFlanked]

"And still: the loading box appears, the loading bar moves until 3/4 full ...then the loading box closes and no civ4 is started. I think I know every suggested solution in this and other forums and tried out every single one."

I was stuck a the loading bar too. I'd get to the done part and it would hang.

I tried d/l the catayst driver only (not the control panel) and went through WINDOWS (XP) to update my video card drivers.

It worked!

For a bit. Played a couple of turns then :

Played through the tutorial and finshed it.

Tried to play a game and now it hangs after Nimoy talks OR (last time) when I tried to turn tiles on.

Intel P4 2.53, 512M
ATI (clone) 9000 128M

TO FIRIAXIS : What if I don't want .net frame on my machine!
HUH, What then?

This thing should have never been released in this state.

Sad

First and last time I buy a game before the customers (read you and me as beta testers) have had chance to finsh working out all the bugs.

Unexcusable

And to those apologists, keep up the good work as you watch more and more PC user either never get into PC gaming and'or leave for the consoles.

One of the reasons I bought a console.

God Bless and Good Luck to all of us luckless users.

gnos

[crimsonmage]

Just wondering

For my own personal knowledge - What was the problem. Was it that the game didnt extract that one certain file correctly and thats why it crashed???? Or was it something else?

CrimsonMage

[Strapp1969]

Worked great for me!

X700 XP sp2

Made me late for work today cuz I was up so late.

[roboczar]

I'm glad the Firaxis PAK tool worked for so many, but this game is listed as being able to run on Win2k machines. We win2k users need some love.

Gramphos' fpk_tool seems to do the job...sorta. The Civ 4 loader can't load essential files, even though the files are where they are supposed to be.

I took the liberty of opening up the Art/Terrain/Lights/UnitLight.nif file, to make sure it wasn't corrupted. It's a compressed data file, but it does have the Gamebryo header at the beginning, so I don't know why Civ isn't able to load it.

The resmgr log file in the Civ 4 logs always stalls at this file, and I believe it accesses this file when it initialises the Scene Lighting for the game, which incidentally is where the init log stops.

What's going on here? Is this something we can tweak? I don't want to have to return my copy of Civ 4 if it's something I can fix on my end.

[CIVGreekGod]

I have an ATI X300 card and performed the fix with no success. I kept getting the renderer error. I then changed the .ini setting to enable "windowed" mode and it worked.

I am playing the game in windowed mode with no problems. I would like to know what I can do to play the game without having to do so in windowed mode.

Any ideas would be appreciated!

Firaxis:
I have been looking at the posts for the last two days and your due dilligence in fixing this issue is greatly appreciated!!

[roboczar]

I've also tried windowed mode and have had no success.

[jasev]

Solver, I've translated your post for the Spanish Forum

http://apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?postid=4090902#post4090902

I hope you don't mind

[frazzledog]

Not on 7500

The Mobility Radeon 7500 most definitely has hardware T&L but like the others I have the no terrain problem even after updating to latest drivers and running this fix. I haven't tried the Omega drivers but I am reluctant to do this on my work machine. If anybody tests them and has sucess please let us know.

[Solver]

Jasev - I'm glad .

For those running Win2K, the unPaking tool should be updated soon.

The problem itself was apparently an issue with a number of ATI cards being unable to deal with such a large art archive - not all ATI cards, but some.

[jancsi]

Sorry to say with me it did not work. I do not have the "Renderer Initialization" error any more, but when it start to load the game it crashes back to the desktop screen.
My system: ASUS A7N8X 2.0,
Athlon XP 2800+ processor,
ATI Radeon 9600 / 256 Graphic
Jancsi
1 GB RAM

Well!!
I made it work after all. This time I removed the game completely, including the .ini file from C:\... My documents\My games\Civilization 4 (or whatever file name you choose to install the game under.)
Reinstalled it completely, did NOT tried to start, but installed the patch, rebooted.
......and then it started.
Now I hope that when I go back it will start again.

[dondada30]

Originally posted by jancsi
Sorry to say with me it did not work. I do not have the "Renderer Initialization" error any more, but when it start to load the game it crashes back to the desktop screen.
My system: ASUS A7N8X 2.0,
Athlon XP 2800+ processor,
ATI Radeon 9600 / 256 Graphic
Jancsi
1 GB RAM

I got the same problem. Seems like there isnt a solution for us yet

I've got ATI Radeon 9950 with 512mb ram

[greenday_234]

Don't know if you tried this

For those of whom it crashes back to the desktop, I had the same problem until I unistalled the game and reinstalled it and ran the pak program again. Also make sure that you are unpaking the files to the assets folder, I unpaked it several times to the my documents folder without realizing it, WinXP requires you to click on the actual folder to which you want to unpak, clicking on the plus signs will not do it. Also for those of whom who the pak worked for and now are experiencing graphical problems please see my post "Weird Graphical Problems, Soren Please Help" near the bottom. Post something so that way soren is aware of the issue and may work on that. Thanx guys

[dondada30]

Re: Don't know if you tried this

Originally posted by greenday_234
For those of whom it crashes back to the desktop, I had the same problem until I unistalled the game and reinstalled it and ran the pak program again. Also make sure that you are unpaking the files to the assets folder, I unpaked it several times to the my documents folder without realizing it, WinXP requires you to click on the actual folder to which you want to unpak, clicking on the plus signs will not do it. Also for those of whom who the pak worked for and now are experiencing graphical problems please see my post "Weird Graphical Problems, Soren Please Help" near the bottom. Post something so that way soren is aware of the issue and may work on that. Thanx guys

i did everything in the fix listed in this thread and also on the support site. so i've done the unpaking of the files to the assets folder. are you saying i have to do the unpaking again again after I uninstall and reinstall the game? do i delete the my games folder/civ iv and the civ folder as directed in the fix or do i just uninstall and reinstall the game and run through the unpak process again?

I hope that makes sense. i almost feel like i'm missing steps or doing something wrong since i've tried so many fixes listed and havent had any luck