Anyone get nVidia GeForce4 440 Go to work?

[tandleheart]

I have a Dell Inspiron 8200 with nVidia GeForce4 440 Go. I'd like to confirm if my game symptoms agree with other people who have seen with the same video card. And more importantly, does anyone have a good solution to fix the problems?

The primary symptom I see is that the terrain features of the primary playing map is all black. However, riverbanks and resources and a few terrain features are visible. Units seem to be visible. The minimap is visible, and the main map becomes visible if you zoom out sufficiently (but disappears again when zooming back in). No "Cheshire cat" problems-- Sid shows up just fine in the tutorial. My game successfully initializes, without start-up problems.

As far as the hardware, this card should be supported. The system requirements state a 64MB video card with hardware T&L. The GeForce4 440 Go supports hardware transform and lighting. This card does not support programmable pixel and vertex shaders, but these advanced features are separate from T&L and are not part of the system requirements for the game.

I've heard of two potential solutions to the game for the time being: (1) Downloading beta drivers, since laptop manufacturers (Dell, for me) do not have the most recent nVidia drivers. This requires downloading drivers and then replacing an INI file to "convince" the installer to install the drivers. (2) Change the XML files to temporarily disable the "fog of war".

Has anyone else found alternative solutions?

Cheers!

[AoA]

I have very similar problems with a Toshiba 5205 laptop with a nVidia GeForce4 460 Go. (although I never checked the tutorial Cheshire yet) I have the 3.6.3.9 version of the driver and apparently Microsoft, Toshiba and nVidia can't provide me with a more recent version.
I don't have the skills or intelligence to go a beta driver route.
You can bypass the Fog of War, by clicking on the WorldBuilder and deactivating the Fog of War, then going back to the game. However, seeing the whole world in front of me does diminish the game somewhat.
I just checked, no Cheshire cat problem in the tutorial. Also the Wonder movie music (and the initial Nimoy voicerover) skips every second or so, but all other sounds/musics are fine.

Here's my post with my PC stats...http://apolyton.net/forums/showthrea...63#post4094107

[tandleheart]

AoA:

Going through the world editor to disable the fog of war is a good idea, especially for users who are uncomfortable editing text (XML) files. But in agreement, losing the fog of war does take away from the early exploration of the game.

I do not know much regarding the difference between the 440 Go and the 460 Go, but hopefully the same fix will address the game for both cards. The fact that you are observing the same symptoms is probably helpful in that hope. Its also good for Firaxis and the user community to know that it isn't only the ATI people who are having graphical issues with the game. And our video cards are T&L capable.

Cheers!

[PanzerEric]

Tandleheart - I too have a NVIDIA Geforce440 and am experiencing exactly the same thing as you describe.

Anyonw have any fxes for this problem. Surely a techie is out there somewhere who can post a guide on solving ths problem.

[Addled Platypus]

We use to have a 440MX, was in the same boat

upgrade to the 550 FX 128mb not one problem sonce



note
adding another 512 ram did not hurt either

[Manax]

Same graphic issue. (And coincidentally had a similar one with Pirates... that I never was able to resolve). Although I seem to have a slightly sub-minimum system:

Geforce4 420 Go (with only 32M of RAM!! Grrr)
2.4Gz P4
768 RAM

I've tried turning all the graphics down to their minimum, which hasn't helped. Oh, and this is also a Toshiba laptop (Satellite S2435-255).

Hopefully a solution will present itself...

One very odd thing I noticed was that I could actually see some terrain, off to the upper right corner. And I could see it regardless of the fog of war. And it looked to be in the proper shape of the FoW... which suggests that somehow, the FoW was disconnected from the terrain it was supposed to be over, and stuck, even while the rest of the world scrolled beneath it.

[tandleheart]

Manax--

Hmm, I'll have to check later (when I have access to my gaming PC) if I can see the "misplaced fog of war" phenomenon. I do not believe I am suffering the audio problems that AoA is seeing with the wonder videos or the voice over.

I tried turning down all of the graphics details to minimum, too, but that didn't fix anything.

My gaming laptop configuration has a 1.7 GHz Pentium IV with 512 MB of RAM. The 440 Go is a 64MB video card with T&L but no vertex or pixel shaders. All at or above the minimum system specs.

I feel for your 420. The reason why I upgraded to this machine was because one can't upgrade the video cards on the vast majority of laptops, and my machine at the time didn't have T&L. I'm starting to feel the impending end of this machine too (current and future games will use pixel and vertex shaders)-- but Civ IV should've worked.

Cheers!

[Darrell999]

You can get modified Nvidia drivers for laptop Geforce 2Go cards at laptopvideo2go.com. It worked for me! I have a Toshiba laptop (Satellite S2435-255). It took away the black terrain.

[Manax]

In case you aren't reading all the threads, this thread helped me. Civ IV runs great now, maximum settings. I'll have to try Pirates, since I expect that's fixed too.

The important bit in the other thread is to upgrade the video driver to something a bit more recent, via laptopvideo2go.com.

[AoA]

I've decided to not worry about the audio problems for now, as the Fog of War issues are much more problematic. And realistically, ALL audio appears to be fine during my game, except for the skipping during Wonder movies and the Intro when you are crowned king. I'm not impressed with the Wonder movies (especially compared to Civ2's and SMAC's) so I'll just not watch them.
Darrell's site didn't help yet, but I'll keep looking for a workable driver.

[tandleheart]

I mentioned installing beta drivers in my original post.. its certainly an option, but I'm going to try and avoid that route. I'm a technical user with experience on lots of laptop and desktop machines, but I've had problems with finicky drivers for this particular machine in the past. If it ultimately becomes the only real option, then that's what it has to be, but I want to see if a more stable solution presents itself in the near future, first. (At least there is an option... even if potentially unstable... which is good.)

Cheers!

[Imran Siddiqui]

At the very least that website (laptop2go) seems very good. There is the problem that laptop drivers haven't been updated like the desktop drivers have. Stupid Dell (I got one as well)!

[AoA]

I scoured the laptop2go site to clarify this INF issue (thank you Imran, I wasn't aware I had to change that as well). They had a good step-by-step way to change the drivers with the INF....unfortunately, I got the could not boot windows black screen amd then had to boot my laptop in safe mode and use a Restore Point, which tells me that it could not fully restore. Though it seems my PC is working fine now.

Another failure for Civ4, but it was worth a shot. I'll wait for someone with a lot more experience to have it go successfully before I try again. I just don't have the knowledge or skills to make any changes.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Changing the INF didn't help? That's strange. I have a GeForce4 440 Go and I had absolutely no problems. You may want to try a 71.xx driver. It may be the driver number.

[AoA]

Imran, would you know where I'd find my DeviceID and Subsys info for the Driver search screen

I'll give it another shot.....I got the idea about the INF, but do I need to know anything about the NFO?