Freezes and graphics problems in Civ4

[PenguinLust]

You can look to http://forum.winehq.org/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=19453 for background on this problem.

My problem is now that the game graphics are weird and loading a game freezes. It goes like this:

• I started a game, but the ground looks like it's made of clouds. I tried lowering the graphics and restarting, but now I've got freezes.
• Whenever I load a game, the progress bar goes 75% of the way, and then the game freezes. Eventually, I push ESC and get a CTD.
• Wine seems to create a desktop that's bigger than my screen. If I move the mouse to the bottom of the screen, the whole image scrolls up leaving a black void at the bottom. This persists after I close the game.

I'd love to give you screenshots, but I don't know how to get it out of fullscreen mode.
I start the game by executing

WINEPREFIX="/home/PenguinLust/wine32" wine wine32/drive_c/Program\ Files/Firaxis\ Games/Sid\ Meier\'s\ Civilization\ 4/Civilization4.exe

I'm running openSUSE 12.2 64-bit and

rpm -qa | grep wine
wine-32bit-1.6-262.1.x86_64
wine-gecko-2.21-38.1.noarch
wine-1.6-262.1.x86_64
wine-mono-0.0.8-1.1.noarch

[dimesio]

Graphics card/driver?

Try running in a virtual desktop (winecfg, Graphics tab).

[PenguinLust]

Hmm... good question. I have an nVidia GeForce GTS 250, but I usually build a graphics driver using the script that nVidia provides. That's 319.23 right now, but it may have been replaced by an rpm. How could I find out?

Well I don't know if i'm doing it right, but first I ran:

WINEPREFIX="/home/PenguinLust/wine32" winecfg wine32/drive_c/Program\ Files/Firaxis\ Games/Sid\ Meier\'s\ Civilization\ 4/Civilization4.exe

and set for a 1280x1024 screen. Then

WINEPREFIX="/home/PenguinLust/wine32" wine wine32/drive_c/Program\ Files/Firaxis\ Games/Sid\ Meier\'s\ Civilization\ 4/Civilization4.exe

like I normally do. That got rid of the freezing, but not the bad graphics, which are now set to "LOW' and effects disabled.

[dimesio]

What does

Code: Select all

glxinfo | grep version

return?

[PenguinLust]

server glx version string: 1.4
client glx version string: 1.4
GLX version: 1.4
OpenGL version string: 3.3.0 NVIDIA 304.88
OpenGL shading language version string: 3.30 NVIDIA via Cg compiler

That 304.88 makes it look like it isn't the script's module.

[dimesio]

If you installed the rpm without first uninstalling the .run version, or vice versa, that could definitely cause problems. Ask for help on the openSUSE forum; it's not a Wine issue.

[PenguinLust]

Ok, I uninstalled the scripted version and put back the rpm. Now my version is:

server glx version string: 1.4
client glx version string: 1.4
GLX version: 1.4
OpenGL version string: 3.3.0 NVIDIA 319.32
OpenGL shading language version string: 3.30 NVIDIA via Cg compiler

However, it hasn't made any difference--the ground still looks like it's made of clouds No new screenshot necessary

[dimesio]

I'm not seeing that on my system (openSUSE 12.3, Geforce 8400GS, 310.44 driver) with Civ4 Complete, running fullscreen in a virtual desktop set to 1200x800 and graphics set to high.

I do have overrides for d3dx9_36 and msxml3. I set those long ago (the wineprefix is a couple of years old) and don't know if they're still needed, but you could try them if you haven't already.

Civ 4 Complete came with many bugfixes, and no DRM, so I did not have to install any patches. My experience here is that users of older versions of Civ4 often run into problems that do not exist in the Complete version.

[PenguinLust]

So my last hope is the overrides? How do I apply them?

[dimesio]

You can install them both with winetricks.

[PenguinLust]

As in

winetricks d3dx9_36 msxml3

? It told me I already had the first one, then told me to download msxml3.msi and try again. I did, it seemed to install properly, but it didn't make a difference. Did I do it right? Would this have had an effect on my wine32?

Edit:
Well, I guess not, because then I tried

WINEPREFIX="/home/PenguinLust/wine32" winetricks d3dx9_36 msxml3

and now the ground looks proper. Hopefully, this'll be the end of it.

Thanks.