game won't play, help!!

[TheVeryMoon]

Installed the game and DirectX, and everything was flawless. Here's the problem that happens when I try opening it.

1) little screen comes up, shows loading, no problem yet
2) screen goes black, looks like its about to go full screen, instead its just another small screen and my resolution goes screwy, as my desktop icons take up 3/4 of my whole screen
3) mini screen says "Done", cursor can move, and music is playing, but nothing else is going for me. Can't click anything

I've tried Alt+Enter to switch back to it, what happens is the screen goes completely black, cursor and music still work, nothing else

I saw the tread about unpacking thr Art0.FPK file, and did that, but all that does is to do the loading process again and again and again, each time to no avail.

Any ideas on what I can do? and yes, i will be eternall grateful to anybody who can help

**note, my computer fits all the required and recomended stats on the game

[xmaddingox]

im having this same problem, i tried the fix for the ati render error, the art unpack..still does the same thing, it loads, says done, cursor changes, music plays, have to alt/tab to get to the civ screen, which is inturn allblack, with just the music and a movable cursor, any help would be much appreciated

[wundermonkey]

worked

It worked- Radeon x800 XL AGP 256mg

[xmaddingox]

huh?

[TheVeryMoon]

grrrrr, this makes me mad


any ideas?

[xmaddingox]

none..i've tried every fix posted so far, to no avail, computer is about to go out the window though, thats for sure=P

just uninstalled civ3 and installed civ4 just for it not to work..sigh..need my civ fix..

[TheVeryMoon]

i'm with yah xmaddingox, this is beyond frustrating

is there anything else i can do besides the art unpack?


I've never had a problem with this ATI RAEDON 7500, but now its my worst enemy

[xmaddingox]

well i got it working abit, i had some programs in background that made it freeze, im using a radeon 7000 actually, lol. i installed all the new ati drivers, had to reinstall them once, restart, reinstall civ3..then it worked..i could get to menus and see them, and start a game, comp froze cause of to much running though=\ stupid programs..hope this helps you some though. install the latest ati drivers off their site, reinstall civ3, might need to reinstall the drivers as well..but goodluck

[kozzer]

Try creating a new user account in windows (I used a limited account), then switch to that account and try to fire it up.

I tried everything else posted here, and none of it worked, but this did!

WinXP MCE SP2
Radeon 9550

[xmaddingox]

well i got it all the way to an actual game...now, my map is black...grrr...5 hours plus of working on a game thats brand new just to play it.