Help Black maps

[Solver]

People are so demanding of graphics these days. I am quite happy with cardboard counters myself.

I'm not very demanding, either. I'd play Civ4 with Civ1 graphics, no problem. But that doesn't mean that I wouldn't want my video card to support at last the basic features and of course to have dedicated memory. I don't want to just lose 64 MB from my system RAM.

I am not so sure. I don't really care if I can zoom in very close to look at the buildings and stuff. I don't even know why this "feature" is included. A bit silly if you ask me.

That's not what I said. I said the requirements are low. Just take a look at the minimum/recommended requirements of Civ4, and compare them to other recent or very soon coming games - Age of Empires 3, Rome:Total War, Quake 4, Empire Earth 2, TES4:Oblivion, HOMM5... these all are games with higher to much higher system requirements. And only one of them is a shooter, which is kind of supposed to have high requirements.

[Digital_LySeRG_]

Gentlemen, a lot of information on these pages but can someone please answer the ofllowing question?

I have a notebook with the intel 82852/82855 graphics controlller family. I've got 512mb RAM ,of which I'm prepared to devote 64mb to the graphics.

Will Civ 4 run? The demo appears black, but with the amendments to the .xml file suggested elsewhere the terrain appears fine. Can anyone shed light on this?

Thanks in advance.

[uglyduck]

I would say "No" as 825/855 does not supoort T & L which is a minimum requirement

I direct your attention to this thread:-

See Here

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Solver
That's not what I said. I said the requirements are low. Just take a look at the minimum/recommended requirements of Civ4, and compare them to other recent or very soon coming games - Age of Empires 3, Rome:Total War, Quake 4, Empire Earth 2, TES4:Oblivion, HOMM5... these all are games with higher to much higher system requirements. And only one of them is a shooter, which is kind of supposed to have high requirements.

Fair enough.

My gripe is even with this low requirement you still need an T&L graphics card with 64MB video memory. Seems very high for a turn-based strategy game.

[Solver]

My gripe is even with this low requirement you still need an T&L graphics card with 64MB video memory. Seems very high for a turn-based strategy game.

Fair enough, too. 64 MB isn't a lot, though, all dedicated cards have at least that, and most integrated cards now use 64 MB of shared RAM.

The problem lies in T&L, of course. You probably know that T&L can also be performed by the CPU, but that usually warrants a performance hit. An example is The Sims 2. With a T&L-capable card, it requires a 800 MHz processor. Without a T&L-capable card, it requires a 2.0 GHz processor, that's a huge difference. I can assume that, if Civ4 ran T&L calculations on the CPU, then the performance would be below acceptable even on top-of-the-line machines. But I don't really know.

BTW: I just checked, and dedicated cards supported T&L in 2000. Maybe there was some card in 1999, I'm not sure. But it IS quite shocking. Basically, integrated cards even nowadays are released without a feature that has been available on real cards for 6 years, wow! I can understand a year or two, maybe three, but six!

If this trend stays true, then in another four years, integrated videos won't even support pixel shaders

[greenday_234]

I went to purchase a new video card not to long ago and it bothers me that no matter what card I looked at the box said nothing about T&L capabilities. It seems that a card manufacturer might want to tell the customer that seeing as so many games require it nowadays instead of forcing them to look through hidden forums all over the internet to find a secondhand list of supported cards.

[Sabre2th]

Any decent dedicated card will almost certainly have T&L capability. They probably just think of it as a standard feature that's not worth mentioning.

These T&L issues are primarily people with laptops, crappy integrated video or absolutely ancient (in computer terms) dedicated cards

[Solver]

Basically, any dedicated card will have T&L. Consider, GeForce 2 had T&L, and I don't think you could even find GeForce 4 easily now, they're so outdated by these standards.

Card manufacturers do indeed thing of T&L as a standard feature, instead, the stuff they write on the box pertains to pixel/vertex shaders and whatever other fun stuff there might be.

[greenday_234]

How long has T&L been a standard game requirement? I'm not trying to be a smartass, I really don't know. As far as I know the first time I saw it was with Rollercoaster Tycoon 3 or 4 can't remember now and The Sims 2. Which by the way I was incredibly dissapointed in.

[Solver]

I *think* that T&L is used in most games that are 3 years old or newer. However, many games on the older side can do that T&L stuff with the processor.

Then again, since T&L on cards itself has been around for 6 years, then probably the top-of-the-line games back then made use of it.

[The Emperor Fabulous]

So for those of us here who are Civilization enthusiasts yet know little about computers...

...how can I find out whether I have a dedicated card with T&L (whatever the hell that is), and if I don't, what can I do?

I have the same problem as this guy. So did monolith, but I think he just decided not to play it. I want to play it. I also have problems with the incredibly dodgy load screens...I get fine audio, but the video is terrible.

[The Emperor Fabulous]

Though now that I've checked...I have 448 MB RAM...although VRAM is 672. Does this tell you anything?

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by The Emperor Fabulous
So for those of us here who are Civilization enthusiasts yet know little about computers...

...how can I find out whether I have a dedicated card with T&L (whatever the hell that is), and if I don't, what can I do?

Go to Device Manager and look under Video Adaptor. It should tell you what you are running.

Originally posted by The Emperor Fabulous
I want to play it. I also have problems with the incredibly dodgy load screens...I get fine audio, but the video is terrible.

What are your graphical settings? What is your patch level?

[uglyduck]

Originally posted by The Emperor Fabulous
Though now that I've checked...I have 448 MB RAM...although VRAM is 672. Does this tell you anything?

It suggests to me that you have an intergrated chipset and not a Card. It also tells me that it is using 64MB of your system RAM and does not have a seperate dedicated memory chip of its own.

Have a look at this list:-

Here

To see if your Graphic chipset/Card is on the list as having T & L.

If it doesnt have it (and I would expect it doesnt) then you will need to get and fit a card that does.

[Not Happy]

Ok so is this problem fixable. Is there a code u can just type into one of the system files and boom it has a conection path so that I dont have to see my citys in darkness and wach my worriors walk over nothing....Its very inoying and the needs to be a way to fix this...my leader portrates are fine its just the background the vidios and the mouse that are giving me problems the mouse flickers like crazy....