PATCH 1.09 is out!

[Orcrist]

Originally posted by Proteus_MST
O.K., I´ve installed 1.09 now and it works fine,
even seems to run a bit faster.

I´ve also tried out what was mentioned earlier in this thread i.e. using FreeRAM XP Pro after loading a game.
It is really as it was mentioned. After loading a game the available RAM sunk to 2%. After using FreeRAM it rose again to 30-40% (and stayed there during play).
After I reloaded a game during the same session it sunk again to below 5% (and using FreeRAM a second time got it to 25-30% again)

I would be very skeptical about the usefulness of this information. Those 'free ram' programs are generally complete BS. If RAM can be freed, that usually means it's being used for caching/buffering which is what is to be preferred. Free RAM is useless if you don't let it be used; a good Operating System -- and even Windows XP for that matter ;-) -- will use free RAM to cache and buffer disk access and the like. A program which does a lot reading from disk might do something similar in order to cache in a more 'specialized' manner. That's a performance enhancement because then stuff can be read from cache instead of spinning up the disk. The very fact that the RAM could be freed would show that program/OS have done things correctly so that another program could in fact free the RAM if it actually needs it and not just if you feel like seeing how much free RAM you make. I'm not saying there definitely isn't a memory leak or similar problem, but 'freeing' RAM for the sake of freeing RAM is pointless unless your OS is really suffering from insufficient memory which is usually something that. I'd leave the memory analysis to experts unless you have a better idea of which 'kinds' of memory are being used and how (system, user, cache, buffer, etc.) or unless your OS literally complains (warning/error dialog) about insufficient memory.

In fact I just thought of a little test: Try loading a game, then without doing your 'free RAM' thing or quitting the game re-load that game again. Did it load any faster? Now, quit the program, re-start and load a game. Do your 'free RAM' thing and re-load the game. Notice a difference? My prediction: First time loads will both be similarly slow. The re-load without 'freeing your memory' will be a little quicker, and the re-load after 'freeing your memory' will be just as slow as an initial load. Now my prediction might be false, maybe because they cache in a different place or their caching doesn't help speed much, or maybe there even is a memory leak; but, the principle I explained above is still valid: RAM which can be freed by a separate program without killing a program is RAM which should only be freed to use in another program, not just so it can be free!

-chris

[mikelazenby]

I really like the way the patch reset all my options so I could see every time I had to restart the game how much marginally faster the loading was.

[Tattila the Hun]

I got Jaguar (warriors) showing up in the tech tree when playing Persians... Could not build them, though.

Also got these funky mushrooms...





Though, this only happened when I lobbed three nukes or so at the same time...

Also, this nifty futuristic interceptor...


Got this when grouping fighters and bombers, and telling the group to (I)ntercept.

[AEdwild]

Installed patch -- game will not run at all now. When I start the program, the pop up window with the multi-lingual "Loading" message pops up and then the program ends.

I wonder if this is because I have an ATI card and needed to use the workaround to play the game in the first place.

[andy_ktoi]

Well the patch made a significant difference to me but I'm still getting a crash to desktop after a couple of hours playing. At least it tells me why now.

Runtime error. Does anyone know what that is?

I have an athlon 2600xp with 512 ram and a gf4200ti (64mb) card. Latest drivers etc etc.

What was happening beforewas that the game ran on medium settings for a couple of hours then i got the slowdown with the game not drawing anything cept the map then crash to desktop. Reboot PC, all runs fine till the nextime.

With the new patch i can play the game on full settings for an hour or two then instead of no draw i get green tiles then a ctd.

First time I've seen anything mentioned tho. Thats an improvement.

[Standup]

1.09 reset my preferences which is slightly annoying but not earth-shattering.

Wonder movies now barely play at all. Previously the video would play fine with audio glitching. Now the video rarely plays at all - some stick on first frame - and the audio is very patchy.

No CTD but didn't get them before until the modern age and haven't got that far yet.

P4 3.4Ghz, 1GB Ram, Audigy 2ZS, X600 256MB with all the latest drivers (and the audigy).

[GeoModder]

Got a bit of the same as Standup here. Wonder movies now mosttime stop playing at the moment the "drawing" part of the movie switches to the "building" part of the wonder. The audio plays fine, and plays out after which the info text of the Wonder appears.

The bread only glitch is a thing of the past now.

Gameplay seemed slower from late Renaissance on, but that could be for I played with an extra civ with my last game. OTOH, I did an OCC, so less of a resource hog from my own civ. (played on a small icy continent map, with 8 civs)

AMD Athlon 2.8Ghz, 512 RAM, nVidia 420 Go 32 VRAM.

Still have to try the new low texture feature.

[Raion]

I see most of the above is with a 4 series Geforce card. May I suggest having at least a 5 series video card.

I thought the game hung when loading up the new game I was playing -- I thought it was stuck or froze on the screen. Just about the time (and I did wait quite a bit) I hit the Esc key to see if it would do anything, which it did not seem to do anything, the game loaded and started working fine!

It just seemed that with the map part of the game loaded, and still not the bottom and top part of the Interface, that it as hanging there, but again, it finally did load, and it all finally did work. It did take what seemed to be a long time on a large map game Custom_Continents with 6 Civs.

The game did not start lagging when the First Diplomacy Contact came like it did before, but the game does take a lot of Virtual Memory -- I am running 512mB of main memory with Windows 2K Professional, FX5200 Geforce wtih 78.01 drivers. I am still the B.C. Years, and a lot of that Continent uncovered. However I am still able to play the game, but I think the game is going to take -- a lot of memory.

I just wonder about later in the game if already it is taking around 860mB of Virtual Memory -- although I have over 2gB set for Virtual Memory.

It still is playing though, whereas before I doubt if I even have gotten that far on a large map!

However -- a Loading Message may have come in handy for the above, because I might have been impatient and thought the game was not working, when it was working.

However, the same thing is on the main map -- Press Return to End the Turn -- when it should be -- at least -- Press Shift -- Return -- to End the Turn ---

The Enter Key pressed only works on the City Screen and the type that appears on the screen.

However the game is still working, with my 1.8gHz Celeron and FX5200 so I guess that is something considering that I am still using Animations and just Single Units with the Default Settings of 1024 x 768 mode and all of that with High Textures still set and that.

However I lag, so to me, if the game is a little slow, I am slow also!

Have not had a Wonder Movie yet, and the years just seem to be flying by so far, but the game is working okay!

[Drachasor]

Originally posted by Aileron

Originally posted by Stone-D
Hmmm. Last sunday I sat down and went through all the dds files in the art directory, resizing them all. In most cases, I cut the resolution in half, in others, to a quarter. All leaderhead textures I cut to 512, and removed all mipmaps.

!?! What software did you use to do this? Any chance you could post your reduced graphics as a mod? I would love to reduce the graphics to speed up play.

I just went through and resized all the non-unit DDS files, cutting the resolution in half for them. The game then displayed graphical bugs (wrong color terrain and other things) and crashed.

I didn't remove the mipmaps, but I don't see how that would make a difference--admittedly I am not very familiar with 3D graphics processing and how the formats are used, but it seems to me removing the mipmaps would be a bad thing.

I'll look into this a bit more and see if I can come up with something.

-Drachasor

[PJL]

Originally posted by soztabak
i got installed v1.09.

however the eyes of julius ceasar has shifted and his eyes are white totally. although he is more scary now, has this happened to anybody else and is there a fix for it?

Turn off low-res graphics option, and he (and the others) should appear normally. Unless it seriously affects computer performance, in which case you'll have to put up with it unitl a later patch.

[bsmith51]

Greetings,
Well, I have downloaded 1.09, but am in a "catch-22".
My problems go back to the initial install- problems described by others: no text, the "cheshire cat", faulty maps, etc. My hope was the patch would solve these problems. However, since I can't see any of the menu choices I wasn't able to use the auto download and downloaded the file to my hard drive.

My question(s) is: now what? Where do I put the Civ4patch.1.09.exe.part? Do I delete the "part" of the file name? Is the patch going to solve my problems?

TIA
Bruce

[TheHateMale]

By the sounds of it, you've downloaded the patch with Firefox. The .part file is deleted once the file has finished downloading - you'll need to redownload.

Possibly you closed or had crash your browser before the download finished?

You should have an exe that you just run.

[vovan]

Mouse positioning bug?

First of all, sorry if this has already been posted - I did a search and didn't turn anything up, but search around here is known to be flaky sometimes, and I didn't actually read this thread...

MousePositioning Bug
Version: 1.09
Problem: When pointing a mouse at a tile on the map, the game thinks it's a different tile. This problem manifests itself in several ways. For example, if a unit is selected, and I right-click and hold the mouse on some tile, then the actualy target of the walk will be different. Also, sau I mouse over a tile, the little window in the bottom-left showing the details of the tile shows the info about a different one. So, suppose I have a unit selected, hold alt and mouse over anoter unit. The thing will not shwo the odds, however, if I move the mouse a tile up and a few to the left (the number changes depending on the zoom level, I think), then eventually the game will think I am mousing over the enemy unit and show me the odds.

Don't know if others are having the same problem... I would expect to see more reports of this, if they did.

[Dr,ape]

the mouse cursor coordinate bug is not from 1.09. I noticed it in 1.00.

[TheHateMale]

I've had the problem with city name/information appearing a tile away from the proper position, but rotating the map (ctrl + left/right) fixes it (providing you don't revert the view).

Would this help with the mouseover problem?