New fix for the renderer error

[Gramphos]

Originally posted by 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.

Since there are other users of my tool who have reported complete success, and other users of the Fireaxis tool who report to have the same error you do I say that my tool is working. However, you have another problem, which most likeley is unrelated to the PAK extraction.

[warlordship]

Originally posted by shazbotian
warlordship, what part did you not follow to the letter?

I've tried this and just about everything else I've seen here to no avail. Check out my post:

http://apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=140944

Some dude said something about making a new user account, so I guess I'll try that, but it seems to me like my files are corrupt or something.

Well, I was just rushing around, doing multiple things. I ran the game immediately after unpaking the file. I realized I left the file, unchanged, in the same dir. I then renamed it to OLD_art0.pak (I like being organized) but that didn't work. I moved it then, into the XML folder, and the game no longer gave me an error, it just crashed to desktop.

About then, I noticed there wasn't an "Art0" folder, so I wondered if I extracted right. There was an "Art" folder, but that was almost twice the size of the PAK file itself. So I renamed "Art" folder, and watched to see if "Art0" unpacks to "Art" or "Art0" folders. It made an "art" folder. I then compared the size of the OLD "Art" folder and the new one I just made, and found the size of the new "art" folder to be smaller, matching that of the "Art0.pak" file itself.

Odd, I thought, maybe I ran the unpakker twice and it put twice the files in there. So I then tried running Civ4, and it worked, but came up with errors that there are no movie files. After exiting, I find WITHIN the old "Art" folder which files differ from the newly created one. I found movies. So all files missing fron new "art" folder I put in from the old "Art" folder, and it works now.

Long story short (too late), I messed up.

[Salveo]

I ran the Firaxis pakbuild and now I also get an error upon loading unitlight.nif. Anybody got an idea on what that's about?

[roboczar]

No idea, but we've got about an hour before Firaxis shoves off for the weekend and we're left in the lurch.

[warlordship]

I'm guessing they're gonna skip the weekend, but that may just be wishful thinking on my end here...

As for today, well, it's been silent hasn't it? Not many, if any at all response from official fireaxis people. Maybe I just missed them, I have a headache and don't feel like tracking them down.

[Craighallworth]

I have a Radeon 9600 pro 25b MB and I followed the whole damn procedure on the website and then did the unpacking thing. And it is not working. This is really pissing me off.

[roboczar]

I think we should form a support group. I have beer.

[Craighallworth]

Originally posted by warlordship


Well, I was just rushing around, doing multiple things. I ran the game immediately after unpaking the file. I realized I left the file, unchanged, in the same dir. I then renamed it to OLD_art0.pak (I like being organized) but that didn't work. I moved it then, into the XML folder, and the game no longer gave me an error, it just crashed to desktop.

About then, I noticed there wasn't an "Art0" folder, so I wondered if I extracted right. There was an "Art" folder, but that was almost twice the size of the PAK file itself. So I renamed "Art" folder, and watched to see if "Art0" unpacks to "Art" or "Art0" folders. It made an "art" folder. I then compared the size of the OLD "Art" folder and the new one I just made, and found the size of the new "art" folder to be smaller, matching that of the "Art0.pak" file itself.

Odd, I thought, maybe I ran the unpakker twice and it put twice the files in there. So I then tried running Civ4, and it worked, but came up with errors that there are no movie files. After exiting, I find WITHIN the old "Art" folder which files differ from the newly created one. I found movies. So all files missing fron new "art" folder I put in from the old "Art" folder, and it works now.

Long story short (too late), I messed up.

THIS PERSON IS A GENIOUS...THANK YOU FOR YOUR GOOD WORK!!!!

THIS IS A SAD F-ING DAY FOR FIRAXIS THAT USERS HAVE TO SOLVE A DETECTIVE PUZZLE TO GET THE GAME TO PLAY.

BOO!

[warlordship]

As I said in a previous post, I hadn't followed their directions to the letter initially. I assumed that since I messed up, then that was the reason it still wasn't working.

[roboczar]

I can't really figure out if you did anything different from what I've been doing.

[Gramphos]

You should not keep any fpk file in the Assets folder. And the reason for the extracted folder being larger is that the movies aren't paked.

[roboczar]

That's what I thought. Nothing new here, then.

[warlordship]

Yeah, my assumption was that there was already an "art" folder from before the pak, and that Art0.pak was unpakked to the same folder, overwriting or placing alongside other files already in the arts folder.

I don't know why, but the way I fixed my problem was creating a new art folder, and unpakking to that and putting all non-unpakked files to that same dir. Well, as I said in that post, it was my mistake.

[ac_snowman]

Originally posted by roboczar
I think we should form a support group. I have beer.

I'm in. I may not be able to play, but things are always better with beer!

[Gramphos]

Someone reported creating a new window user solved his problem. A long shot could be to try to delete Civilization 4 cache, that might have become bad with all your tests. The cache is located in your profile directory (usually something like C:\Documents and Settings\%USERNAME%\Application Data\My Games\Civilization 4) Try to delete the cache folder from that location, and see if it helps.