Got rid of Chesire cat - got new problem - lost it - chesire cat returned...

[Capsicum]

OK, I need some really smart people to look at this and suddenly figure everything out, please!

Dell Inspiron 5100
2.4 GHz Pentium
512 RAM
ATI Radeon 7500

I never had the rendering problem, but the Cheshire cat and black terrain was there alright. So I read the forums and installed the Omega drivers. It actually worked, the heads all had faces and the land was visible! Hooray!
... Except that the land was really, really, pale. Trees, units, and so on all had the right color, but the actual ground was practically all white. There were slight hints of different yellow shades, but it was basically impossible to make out the differences in terrain (at first I thought it was winter). Also large bodies of water have a large, flickering houndstooth-like pattern in turqoise and black.
So I read some more and realized I had made a big mistake - I had not removed the original ATI driver first. So I did this, and then installed the Omegas again and... Lo and behold! Creepy Chesire cat teeth are once again threatening to bite me, over the black, black land.
Seriously people, I really don't get it. Please help?

[aceshigh]

Right there with ya. I have Radeon 7500 also. Omega Drivers installed + lowest possible settings = working, to a point.

In my case, the ground looks fine and animated characters on the map look fine, but I get that weird triangle looking pattern in the water. The 'cheshire cats' are still there where applicable for the leaders.

I can play the game a while on a duel or tiny map, using military advisor freezes up and I have to reboot my system. Anything above tiny map immediately freezes up on loading screen.

I've gotten this far (from not being able to play at all) so... I still have hope that these issues will be able to be resolved to the point I can play.

I'd be very happy to play with the cheshire cats and the triangle water if it would just stop crashing on larger maps/under certain conditions.

[piranhaZ]

Ack well, looks like we're the now "unsupported vidcard" lot and thus swept into the dustbin. Laptops need USB vidcards or something.

Solidarity

[aceshigh]

Unsupported? If you're referring to the claim that some have made that the 7500 doesn't support T&L, well...

What is the Radeon® 7500 graphic card and what chipset does it use?

A1: Radeon® 7500 (Radeon® 7500 64MB DDR) is ATI's high performance graphic solution addressing a wide range of home and business graphic needs. Radeon® 7500 graphic cards are powered by the Radeon® 7500 GPU (Graphics Processing Unit). The Radeon® 7500 GPU is able to perform the complex and demanding T&L (transform and lighting) calculations that are required by the latest 3D games and applications. To address the wide range of needs that are demanded by the consumer, the Radeon® 7500 graphic card also supports dual display, TV output and can drive a digital flat panel monitor (DVI-I).

Source: http://www.ati.com/products/radeon75...n7500/faq.html

So... Either the developers/distributors of this game are lying that T&L is the minimum requirement, or ATI lied.

For all we know, pixel shaders may be the requirement rather than the recommended. If that's the case, then Take Two or Firaxis needs to start making some official announcements I would think, considering the official technical site and documentation states that a card with only T&L is required, even listing the Radeon 7500 by name...

[piranhaZ]

I agree with you 100%. I'm in the same boat you are. Laptop with no hope of vidcard upgrade.

It even says supported on the box, although it is slowly being "unsupported".

[LDiCesare]

Ack well, looks like we're the now "unsupported vidcard" lot and thus swept into the dustbin. Laptops need USB vidcards or something.

Yes, laptops defnitely need upgradeable video cards. I know ATI had a project to allow for this, but I think the tech is far from mature (didn't check for a while).

[aceshigh]

Just a small update on some discoveries I found:

If you're having similar crashing problems and 'cheshire cat' leaders, turn off AGP speed under the SMARTGART tab in display properties. This -fixed- the cheshire cat problem, and the fog of war issue, but, for me it introduces a new issue where the ground textures are extremely bright and white/yellow, while the trees and player avatars look normal.

No cheshire:


Weird ground textures:


Zooming out and then back in slowly seems to remedy this problem:


That said, I can play the game on the largest map possible with little problem and no crashes.

Turning AGP speed back up makes the cheshire cat and fog of war problem (and crashing problems) come back, but the ground textures look fine...

In both configs, the water has black/white triangles in it.

I'm at a loss for a fix that will allow both of these at once, short of a patch or new ATI drivers. For now I'll probably just play it with the weird ground textures and see how things go. I hope this is fixable either by a patch, workaround or new drivers from ATI at some point though...

[Falconius]

I'm as far as you are now. Same Vid Card: Radeon 7500. Updated drivers so now have no Cheshire and no black terrain, but now have the "whitewashed" terrain. And the triangulated water.

Tried your "zoom out and in" solution, and at just the right height, the terrain gets its color back. Unfortunately, it's a little too far out.

So for now, I guess I'm playing on the whitewashed terrain and the triangulated water. And like you, I'll just wait for news of an upgrade or patch from ATI or Firaxis.

[piranhaZ]

How's the performance going? Does the game flow at an acceptable speed or does it take minutes to watch the little units move around or to scroll the map around?

(nice run-on sentence, hehe, I'm tired)

[Peppla]

I have the 7500 Moblity. With the aGP at 0, the chesire cat problem is solved, but the game moves way too slowly to play.

[Khaim]

Thanks! I'd much rather play with yellow terrain than black terrain, especially if I get rid of the chesire cat while I'm at it.

Related note: I'm also getting the bug where it displays two bread icons on every tile when it should be showing the production, both in city screens and on the main map. Is that related to the black map/chesire bug, or is it something entirely different? I also have 256MB RAM with XP, which is technically below the min requirments- but I get the feeling those requirements are more for them to be able to deny responsibility than anything else.

[Khaim]

Okay, I tried the fix, and the game was slow to the point of unplayability, just as Peppla said.

Edit: I also can't seem to get rid of the fix. I'd rather play with black terrain and actually be able to move, then with white terrain and my computer moving glacially. I set AGP back to 4x but it's not changing. Help?

[aceshigh]

It took me several reboots and some fiddling with my BIOS to get AGP to turn off, but it came right back on when I changed it back. All I can say is keep trying a few times, or use the driver cleaner from ATI and reinstall the drivers and perhaps that will help?

I'm afraid I'm not using a laptop, so take any of this advice with that in mind... Sorry the fix doesn't work as well for laptop users.

[Falconius]

Regarding the triangulated ocean: while playing, I noticed that if one of my boats is in view on the screen, the triangles disappear! And the seas look like seas. Not sure if this works with the AI's boats, since I haven't seen any yet.

This, of course, begs the question: if it can look normal some of the time, why not all of the time?!

[Franklinnoble]

Originally posted by Falconius
Regarding the triangulated ocean: while playing, I noticed that if one of my boats is in view on the screen, the triangles disappear! And the seas look like seas. Not sure if this works with the AI's boats, since I haven't seen any yet.

This, of course, begs the question: if it can look normal some of the time, why not all of the time?!

Because it's a software problem that CAN be fixed if Firaxis decides to address it.