11-01-2005 01:36									#1
	Bought Civ III - have black screen Avatar Enlargement: We've got the solution

Just bought a triple package with Civ III, Collectors ed and Conquests and was prepared to loose a lot of sleep, but the damn program don't start.

At first I didn't set the Nosound=1 and had some mumble but no pic. After inserting Nosound i got rid of the mumble but still no pic.

I have installed w2k binkw32.dll.

My system is :

win2k SP4
DirectX 8.1

Intel Pentium 1,7 Ghz
261 Mb ram
plenty disk
1024x768 screen - 256 colors
Nvidia Vanta card - driver vers 5.00.2165.0327

Anyone out there that can help me out of my misery ?

Don't know if is any help - SMAC/X has worked fine for a couple of years.

	11-01-2005 02:58									#2
	Avatar Enlargement: We've got the solution

Well, part of the problem could be Win 2 K

Another part could be the very odd amount of RAM onboard.
(261 MB instead of a normal number like 256 MB)

Also note that Firaxis recomends having 400+ MB free disk space when running Civ III.

	11-01-2005 04:12									#3
	Support Apolyton buy from Amazon

256 Colors??

	11-01-2005 04:15									#4
	Lose 30 kilos (of popups)

My guess too, but I can't imgine that I'm the first to try to run it under w2k/SP4.

As far as I can see the Civ process only takes up 39 Mb of ram, so there should be lots of room to the little weird max of 261 Mb.

I have 7.8 GB free disk so i guess that i'm on the secure side

I have noted one extra thing. After start and the black screen there comes a 'pling' and when I hit I returns to Win and the program is gone - if I do anything else I have to take the power.

There are a nice little file named logfile.txt which is touched when trying to run the program, but unfortunately it's empty.

	11-01-2005 04:20									#5
	Support Apolyton, buy Alpha Centauri

quote: Originally posted by alva 256 Colors??

Yeah, it doesn't sound sensible, but I sometimes need to take remote control with other machines and if I use 16 or 32 bit it takes a minor war to refresh the screen - especially when the remote screen are 21" and the local are 17" .

I have tried to run with both 16 and 32 bit, but that doesn't help.

Still get the 'pling" and returns to win when hitting .

	11-01-2005 04:47									#6
	Support Apolyton, buy GURPS/ Alpha Centauri

quote: As far as I can see the Civ process only takes up 39 Mb of ram, so there should be lots of room to the little weird max of 261 Mb.

Eugh, I've seen Civ go over 300 and 400MB personally.

	11-01-2005 05:14									#7
	Help yourself to an AD-FREE life

Yep, that's when it's up and running - my 39 Mb is just the start.

Anyway, I have come a step further. In pure desperation i installed Civ conquests (usually I prefer to get one thing running before going to next version), and that helped (didn't solve) a bit. That version demanded a directx 9.x and after installing 9.0c i can se what happens.

Now at least I know that it is openGL that are out of match. If I'm not wrong it's my damn Nvidia Vanta card that are the problem, and it's a real problem. M$ claims they have a update to the drivers, but when installing it, it defaults to 640X480 because of some failure. It doesn't help much that it seems that Nvidia doesn't seem to know anything about Vanta, so I don't know what drivers to fetch from them.

Anybody have some experience with Nvidia Vanta ?

	11-01-2005 06:16									#8
	Support Apolyton buy from Amazon

You can also try placing the KeepRes=1 in the ini files.

(You might want to check to see if I got the capitialization scheme right first.)

(Hopefully it ran enough to create it before crashing)

	11-01-2005 06:37									#9
	Increase Your PM Length

I have tried everything mentioned in the readme.txt but both Civ III and Civ Conquests responds with (civilzation3.ini is created) :

quote: nVidia OpenGL driver Driver components - mismatch. Exit is the only option.

	12-01-2005 05:25									#10
	Support Apolyton, buy Galactic Civilizations

quote: Originally posted by BlackCat Now at least I know that it is openGL that are out of match. If I'm not wrong it's my damn Nvidia Vanta card that are the problem, and it's a real problem. M$ claims they have a update to the drivers, but when installing it, it defaults to 640X480 because of some failure. It doesn't help much that it seems that Nvidia doesn't seem to know anything about Vanta, so I don't know what drivers to fetch from them. Anybody have some experience with Nvidia Vanta ?

Get the latest drivers from the NVidia site...Microsoft never has anything that even resembles the newest drivers

Edit: I'd also uninstall the old drivers first just to make sure

	12-01-2005 05:33									#11
	Support Apolyton, buy Alpha Centauri

Have just tried that this evening (both Nvidias newest and that upgrade M$ claims I'm missing), but Windows vill not accept them. Got the very clear message "Videocard gives wrong answer" (maybe not correct citation, but same meaning).

	12-01-2005 05:42									#12
	Support Apolyton, buy Galactic Civilizations

Did you uninstall the old drivers first? If you did, you may be looking at somewhat more drastic measures to get it running

Edit: I've done a quick search and I'd try adding "KeepRes=1" to Civilization3.ini or Conquests.ini (whichever you're running now) and also try fiddling with the Win2k compatability options. I believe these ideas were posted above, but they seem to be the easiest fixes

Last edited by Sabre2th on 12-01-2005 at 05:50

	12-01-2005 20:29									#13
	Get a bigger avatar today!

Problem solved, it was my realtime virus monitor that messed up installation of the driver.

Goodbye nightsleep

Just to collect my experiences, it could be useful for others :

If the VC doesn't support openGL and using directX 8.1, then you get a black screen that hides the message about "no openGL". That even CIV III claims that 8.0a should be enough.

Installing directX 9.0c removes the black screen and reveals the "no openGL" message.

When installing new drivers, then remember to both uninstall old drivers AND disable virus check.

Latest driver for Nvidia Vanta (+ alot of other Nvidia cards) can be found here :

http://www.nvidia.com/object/winxp_2k_66.93

Thanx for the answers.

	13-01-2005 02:56									#14
	Support Apolyton, buy Call to Power 2

Good to hear it's finally working...I'll add the antivirus thing to my list of fixes. Enjoy not sleeping

	13-01-2005 05:10									#15
	Remove this text

Is your monitor on?