3 Technical problems in running Civ3.

[Huntred]

Hello,
Sorry if this appears again, I've had some difficulty in maintaining a connection. I've posted this on Civ3 Help but wanted any other ideas from the General site.

System:
P3-500
256MB
Riva TNT - 16MB RAM, Detonator Drivers 21.83
DirectX 8
Win98SE

Install went fine (excepting the registration wants a great deal of information).

Issue 1:
There is something funky with the text being displayed both on the main menu screen and in the game screen. The best way I could describe it is that multiple lines of text are being displayed on the same line, making quite a jumble. The main menu I don't care so much about, however this problem carrys over into the actual game. to where I cannot read the lower right information which tells me about the unit, it's location, what year it is, etc.

Issue 2:
Preferences menu is screwed up a bit where the selection items are out of alignment with their corresponding check boxes - this isn't just aesthetic, it's to the point to where I cannot tell for certain what I'm checking off.

Issue 3:
I have the sneaking suspicion that my Domestic Advisor is trying to tell me things however the text is not coming across and I just see a blank window. In the tutorial game, I see her face and her text box but it's empty. After toying around with the units for a few years, she pops up again - again blank.

I haven't actually gone through the tutorial or manual yet however the readme didn't have anything to offer on the subject. I'll have more time to fiddle and read tonight and I have another graphics card that I will try to plunk in the box to see if that makes a difference.

Other ideas welcome.

Thanks.

[Huntred]

Preferences Menu

Just a shot of what I'm talking about with regard to preferences. I believe the text is only shifted up by a half notch but I'm not certain.

[Jahi]

1. reinstall direct x 8a
2. check for newer video drivers, the TNT2 was never that great.
3. go to the windows update page and d/l any patches

[Huntred]

Preferences Menu

Just a shot of what I'm talking about with regard to preferences. I believe the text is only shifted up by a half notch but I'm not certain.

[Dan Magaha FIRAXIS]

Re: Preferences Menu

Originally posted by Huntred
Just a shot of what I'm talking about with regard to preferences. I believe the text is only shifted up by a half notch but I'm not certain.

Looks like your problems are font-related; the in-game font doesn't look anything like the font I see in the screens you posted, so that would explain most, if not all, the anomalies you're experiencing.

I'll see if I can get some info on a resolution.


Dan

[LdyMox]

I have having the same problem. Which makes the game unplayable.

Win98SE
256 RAM
Voodoo 3
Viewsonic G90F 19 inch monitor
AMD 500
Direct X 8 (all new updates)

Do you per chance have a large amunt of fonts installed like me? There is a font file named LSANS.TTF I am going to check if it got installed right

[Huntred]

I don't believe so - I'm not big into fonts so I doubt I have much more than the standard compliment.

While the game is fairly unplayable like this, it's very tourable. What little I have seen of the landscape is beautiful. I liked the 3D terrain - and especially features like how one can see a mountain "off in the distance" (outside of the 3x3 visibility grid). Also, one can't "cheat" like in SMAC where you can get an idea as to the nature of the surround terrain by the grid contour.

[jglidewell]

Re: 3 Technical problems in running Civ3.

Originally posted by Huntred
Hello,

Other ideas welcome.

Thanks.

On windows you can select how much hardware acceleration you use. I had a similiar porblem to this with Railroad Tycoon. After adjusting the acceleration to a minimum there were no more troubles and the screen would show normal.

[LdyMox]

Ok I made sure that font was installed, reinstalled OpenGL and DirectX8a and still no change.

[LdyMox]

Ok I also reinstalled my video drivers. Still no change.

Sir Fraxis could you e-mail me if you do get a resolution? [ Tammy@wodgraphics ] or at least post it on this thread? The game is simply unplayable until this is fixed for me.

[Gramphos]

Re: Re: Preferences Menu

Originally posted by Dan Magaha FIRAXIS


Looks like your problems are font-related; the in-game font doesn't look anything like the font I see in the screens you posted, so that would explain most, if not all, the anomalies you're experiencing.

I'll see if I can get some info on a resolution.


Dan

Do you say that you forgot to include the font used in the game?

[Boris Godunov]

I'm not having these issues at all, but isn't there a line in the readme.txt about the font issue? Not sure...

Dan, my music is skipping horribly and I had to shut it off. It's not affecting gameplay at all, but it was very annoying. Any ideas?

[rockville]

In case you didn't see this in the other thread that you started on this...

Are you using a desktop theme? If you change your desktop settings back to the defaults does the problem remain?

[Dan Magaha FIRAXIS]

Re: Re: Re: Preferences Menu

Originally posted by Gramphos

Do you say that you forgot to include the font used in the game?

Huh?? What I am saying is the screens he posted show a totally different font than what ships with, and is used by, the game. It could be a font conflict, "small fonts" forced on, some font program, or even just running out of memory. All fonts in my Internet Explorer tend to start looking like that "bold, sans serif" that are present in both of his screens when I've got too much going on in my machine at once.

Dan

[Dan Magaha FIRAXIS]

Originally posted by Boris Godunov
I'm not having these issues at all, but isn't there a line in the readme.txt about the font issue? Not sure...

Dan, my music is skipping horribly and I had to shut it off. It's not affecting gameplay at all, but it was very annoying. Any ideas?

Just the usuals, drivers, etc.. did you do a full install? What OS are you running?

One other interesting DirectX thing I found out recently that may help you is that apparently MS ships DirectX with debugging turned on in nearly every module, and this consumes precious CPU cycles. There is a control panel applet you can download, drop it into your system folder, and then you can access it via control panel and see if debugging is turned on, and if so, you can turn it off. It helped stop stuttering sound on some other games I play quite a bit (Unreal Tournament notably) though truthfully I've never had any sound problems with Civ III.

I'll see if I can find a link to that applet, it may help some of you out.


Dan