3 Technical problems in running Civ3.

[Shadowstrike]

Originally posted by PrimitiveCiv
Hey is anybody having any problems with the TNT2 cards? Just curious......i should have the game by tommorow.

Yeah, I'm pounding my fists into the wall in frustration right now.... Grrr......

*Runs off to wrap cold towel around hands*

[faded glory]

Looks like its going to be a long nite for the guys a foor-axis

Looks like its a sack of bugs.

btw- no troubles on my end. Of course I dont own it yet

[Boris Godunov]

Originally posted by Dan Magaha FIRAXIS


Doh! Didn't realize the message with the instructions didn't go through because of the attachment.

You need to copy the file into your [WINDOWS]/System32 directory, then you will have a "DirectX" control panel applet available. Open it up and you should be able to click around on the tabs in there and see if debugging levels are turned on for various components of DirectX (sound, 3D, etc.) Turn them to "Off" and you should see some performance gain, especially if you're using an older/slower PC.

Dan

Dan, unfortunately this didn't work. I got the driver and set the debugging to none...same sound problems. It seems the music got really bad in diplomacy/advisor screens and had something to do with the clicking sounds of the interface messing up with the music. After clicking a lot, it skipped horribly and then eventually crashed.

So I turned the music off again...works beautifully, with sound effects. Any ideas?

Cheers.

[Koyaanisqatsi]

Solution!

A solution to the font and divide by zero error:

Uninstall fonts from your system, until you have <256 remaining. If you want to keep the fonts on your system, you can create a new folder somewhere on your hard drive, copy a bunch of files from your font folder to there, and the delete them from the font folder. You can add and remove them later if you want to by drag and drop, but CivIII can't seem to find the Lucidia Sans font with more than 256 fonts installed.

Have a nice day.

[Utrecht]

This fix was able to solve your problems? (It sounds promising - if not wacky!) How did you end up figuring this out?


I Just spoke to Tech Support......


And here is thier suggestion.

Turn off all 3rd part applications and try it again.

Apparently,

"Civ 3 is a robust application and needs alot of system resources"

I will not be able to actually do this for a couple of hours, so I will let you know - as well as test the font issue

[Zizka]

Re: voodoo3-2000

I have one as well. Game runs and is playable except for the really bad scroll lagging. Yep. I built my system P2-450. One thing i found that helps (not just to re-iterate but to emphasize!) turn off all teh background software.. you wont believe what peopel have running that clogging their system.. especially OEM systems.!!

Z

[Zealot]

How could Firaxis and Infogrames not tested nVidia video cards?!?
This is just nuts! Thank God I didn't spend money on the game yet!

But this is really sad! It looks like another CTP2!

[Utrecht]

Actually,

This problem really seems to be graphics card independent......

So, if the solution turns out to be as dv8ed says, than I can understand how this slipped through testing. After all testing machines tend not to be loaded with lots of fonts.

[LdyMox]

I tried thiss already and sadly it didn't help. I deleted a bunch of fonts and it didn't help. Probaly for whatever their next relase is I will be better letting people test it first and wait until a patch is made. I'd understand more if I owned an uncommon or an unpopular graphics card. A lot of the ones having the problem are fairly common. Also I have not heard back from tech support (I e-mailed them yesterday afternoon). If a fix is going to take a long time (like months) I am better off returning Civ3 and waiting until the fix and by then it will probaly be cheaper.

Win98SE
Voodoo3
4 gigs free space
256 ram

Originally posted by Utrecht
This fix was able to solve your problems? (It sounds promising - if not wacky!) How did you end up figuring this out?


I Just spoke to Tech Support......


And here is thier suggestion.

Turn off all 3rd part applications and try it again.

Apparently,

"Civ 3 is a robust application and needs alot of system resources"

I will not be able to actually do this for a couple of hours, so I will let you know - as well as test the font issue

[Koyaanisqatsi]

Originally posted by Utrecht
This fix was able to solve your problems? (It sounds promising - if not wacky!) How did you end up figuring this out?

Yep, reducing fonts fixed my problem, Civ is now playable and hasn't crashed at all. Of course, I had 979 of them in the first place, so it might have been that my font subsystem was overloaded even before now, and Civ just pointed it out. If that's the case though, I don't know why it would have had the exact same symptoms as the other people in this thread.

[Miatezhnyi]

Re: Solution!

Originally posted by dv8ed
A solution to the font and divide by zero error:

Uninstall fonts from your system, until you have <256 remaining. If you want to keep the fonts on your system, you can create a new folder somewhere on your hard drive, copy a bunch of files from your font folder to there, and the delete them from the font folder. You can add and remove them later if you want to by drag and drop, but CivIII can't seem to find the Lucidia Sans font with more than 256 fonts installed.

Have a nice day.

I was having the problems with the text being unreadable and the division error when designing a custom world. dv8ed's solution worked great fro me. Had to move about 750 fonts, though.

Many thanks dv8ed... This forum was much more helpful than either of my two call to tech support....

Miatezhnyi

[LdyMox]

Re: Re: Solution!

Hmm I deleted down to 200 fonts and things look like its working. Of course I hope they fix so I can have over 200 fonts but at least this could be a work around! I saved my old fonts and I can reinstall them when a fix comes out.

Originally posted by Miatezhnyi


I was having the problems with the text being unreadable and the division error when designing a custom world. dv8ed's solution worked great fro me. Had to move about 750 fonts, though.

Many thanks dv8ed... This forum was much more helpful than either of my two call to tech support....

Miatezhnyi

[Huntred]

Originally posted by dv8ed


Yep, reducing fonts fixed my problem, Civ is now playable and hasn't crashed at all. Of course, I had 979 of them in the first place, so it might have been that my font subsystem was overloaded even before now, and Civ just pointed it out. If that's the case though, I don't know why it would have had the exact same symptoms as the other people in this thread.

I haven't tried reducing the number of fonts I have - there are only 93 in the Fonts folder.

However I don't have the Lucidia Sans font, I only have Lucidia Console.

I feel an experiment coming on...

[LdyMox]

If you don't have it just install it from the civ3 folder.

Originally posted by Huntred


I haven't tried reducing the number of fonts I have - there are only 93 in the Fonts folder.

However I don't have the Lucidia Sans font, I only have Lucidia Console.

I feel an experiment coming on...

[Utrecht]

Well reducing the number of fonts solved my problems as well.

I also had to stop all other background apps to get my system resources above 80% - it liked it and my problems went away!!!!!

Thanks