In-game graphic problems

[tefka]

So apparently theres a lot of problems with starting up the game out there, but is anyone else having graphic problems IN the game? For me, there appears to be random funny lines on the terrain in game, the graphic icons randomly display random fuzzy colours, and the words appear as bluured lines. Also when i fully zoom out I get a random bunch of funny coloured lines scrolling across the screen like clouds .

I'm running win2k(w/ SP4), 512 RAM, and a Radeon 9600 (just udpated to driver last week) and i'mn running the game on medium resolution.

Any help would be nice!

p.s. srry if there are 1029784012974012974 other threads detailing the exact same thing, but I couldn't find any out there in the recent postings

[Martin Gühmann]

Probably again a T&L issure. The only way as I know in this case is a new graphic card with this feature.

-Martin

[vee4473]

tefka, i had the funny lines (mine were blue) across the fully zoomed out screen.

It went away when I zoomed back in, turns the map grid on and then off, and then zoomed out.

[phybre]

I'm not getting any interlacing or anything, but every so often during the mid-game (at least once per turn), everything will freeze, and everything will disappear except the globe. The farms disappear, but the farm fields don't. The roads don't. The cities do. The water appears as a solid blue field in some places, and fully detailed in others. Sometimes certain regions are covered in black (but not like the fog of war, just black). It'll last for 20-30 seconds and then resume. Usually the music keeps playing.

This only started after I switched the anti-aliasing from 0 to 2. That may or may not be responsible for it.

Also, when performing certain actions (seemingly at random) the game will freeze and there will be some display flickering, and about 30 seconds later it will resume. Sometimes it takes up to 2 minutes. The resolution is the same as my desktop.

I have a geforce fx 5200 256 and an onboard ac97 sound chipset. Nvidia drivers are current, problems persist even if I disable sound at the device level. There are no updated drivers for the board. It's an hp-compaqrap d530. But it is fully x86 compatible, and exceeds the recommended requirements, and therefore should be able to run the game without any problems whatsoever.

It surprises me how many problems this game was allowed to be released with. It has memory management problems, driver compatibility problems, numerous in-game glitches, bad disc labels, bad manual printings, bad this, bad that, bad the other thing.

Have these people even HEARD of QA? Why is there nothing in the support section at 2kgames whatsoever? For any game? Why is it giving me a bunch of mysql_numrows() errors? Is this Baby's First Website for them? How can a credible software company not have a working support system? Why is there no official statement on their website indicating what they are doing about the release of a game that is only 50% functional? Why does the game use python for anything at all? Let's implement game features in compiled languages like normal people do, hey? I guess it was more important that the game be easily accessible to the mod community than it be well-designed or well-tested.

I've tested software that has never seen the light of day, due to less problems than this game has. Perish the thought they might release the game when it's done, or else they wouldn't be able to beat the holiday rush and get the mad bling.

They have until Friday, and then I'm asking for a refund.

[aantonyp]

I get the same problem as the initial poster. I am not near my computer so can't give the full specs, but it is WinXP SP2, Radeon 9600 (I think with the most updated drivers) and an Athlon 1.4Ghz.

Zooming in and out doesn't help. Sometimes going to the options graphics screen and changing any option will seem to fix the problem, for at least a long while.

[Chernobyl2]

phybre, I've got a GF4 4200 Ti, and am having much the same problem you are. The "all but globe/terrain disapperaing act" came up like about 6 times, once it took as long as 10 minutes to "catch back up" and resume gameplay.
There's people with far superior hardware to mine reporting very similiar errors, so I'm not thinking as seriously about a system upgrade as I was.
I'm not starting it up again until they get a patch going.

Chern2

[nauris]

Count me in! Almost as my graphics card would be overheating. Strange thing is that no other game shows me any artifacts.

I'm with AMD 3000XP, Radeon 9800 pro and 1gb ram. Game is also awfully slow later on.

[Vyshka]

I get funky graphics in the mini-map and when I zoom way out and I have a GeForce 6800 GT. At least I have gotten past the system locking after about an hour of gameplay.

[Dzhel]

I have a nvidia geforce 6600 GT. It's completely random as far as I can tell. Sometimes I'll get these blue lines across the terrain on the minimap. Sometimes when I zoom all the way out on the actual terrain the blue lines show up. Looks fine the rest of the time. Latest drivers and all that.

[moderna]

I also have the lines problem on zoom out. AMD 3500+ with dual geforce 6600 SLI. New drivers.

[Ghosthunter]

Originally posted by phybre
I'm not getting any interlacing or anything, but every so often during the mid-game (at least once per turn), everything will freeze, and everything will disappear except the globe. The farms disappear, but the farm fields don't. The roads don't. The cities do. The water appears as a solid blue field in some places, and fully detailed in others. Sometimes certain regions are covered in black (but not like the fog of war, just black). It'll last for 20-30 seconds and then resume. Usually the music keeps playing.

Also, when performing certain actions (seemingly at random) the game will freeze and there will be some display flickering, and about 30 seconds later it will resume. Sometimes it takes up to 2 minutes. The resolution is the same as my desktop.

I am having similar problems with my GeForce FX 5700 128 MB card. I have initialized the logging system and I am also getting that tilearrow.tga problem people have listed. I have considered that these problems may be related to Autosave, since the games CTD around the time the game should be saving, but even with autosave turned off, it will still crash. I am in the process of updating my sound card drivers, but they have never caused any problems in the past with any other game. I have a P4 3.0 Ghz, 1GB RAM and I shouldnt be having these problems on this game.

I have updated my DirectX library as some have suggested and my game actually ran for 10 or 20 turns without any problems (very smooth and fluid) before it started to slow down and then CTD.

My graphics card drivers are up-to-date. I experimented with the new 81.87 beta drivers but that didnt seem to make a difference so I went back to the 80.85 ones. I have even downloaded Rivatuner and forced a 1.1 PS, but that has made no difference. When I monitor the core temp of the card and them memory usage, I find that the temp of the card goes up about 20 degrees and the memory usage is around 1.5 GB while running this game.

I have cleared the cache and ran the unpak tool thinking they may be related, but not much difference (as described for Ati users).

I did notice that after I delete the cache, the dialog box on loading a game is actually bigger than it is when I dont clear the cache.

I have never had any problems loading the game or getting one started. But by mid-era in the game, is when this started to occur on my huge terra map (about 8 civs). Before then, this was the best game ever...

Anyone have any thoughts about what else to do/try? Its a great game, but it doesnt seem to be as stable as it should be.

[KoBushi]

I am having this problem: http://www.american-refrigeration.net/civ4glitch.jpg

Is this simular to your issues?

Happens when I pan the map sometimes, but if I pan away from that spot, it works fine.

If I alt+tab to windows, then back, it fixes it, but then when I pan again the problem area is just in a difernet location.

P4 3.2Ghz, 1Gb RAM, GeForce 6600 GT 256Mb PCIe
Forceware 84.21 drivers.

I just switched to this card, previously I had an ATI X650XT PCIe; and it worked flawlessly (but then it died).

This card even runs the Nvidia 7800 GTX demo without slowing or glitching, so I know the card's good.

[Chernobyl2]

I've never had that one happen. The worst I had was the green tint to everything. I have a little ol' GF4 4200 and its been good, but slow in places. I honestly don't think most of my problems are graphic related though they could be...most of my issues occur in the late game. when I rebuild my system this year I won't settle for less than 2GB ram.

Chern

[Urban Ranger]

Things to try first:

1. Change graphics settings to low. Use low resolution textures if available. Turn off in game antialiasing (if on).

2. Use 16-bit color depth.

3. Use "performance" instead of "quality" setting for your graphics card.

4. If you are using AGP and have 1GB RAM, adjust the "AGP aperture" in BIOS to 256MB.

5. Update the driver to the newest version (nVidia) or rollback to a previous version if you are using the latest one (ATI).