Help - Battlescape Black background!!!

[BARMA1982]

Hi, I could really use some help with this...

The game seems to work fine until I go into Battlescape after shooting down a UFO- I can see the bottom toolbar with all the options on it, the cursor and even the square that outlines the soldiers movement, however where the ship and the surroundings should be all I can see is a black backgound!

I can move the cursor and have done so and found that it is not just 1 block but the whole map is not visable...

I REALLY want to play this game been a massive fan of the original - any advice would be much appreciated! [&:]

[bman654]

what sort of video card?  I recall some people havnig trouble with the fog of war.
 
1st try installing patch-2.  If that does not work, I can give you instructions on how to disable the fog of war which might help you.

[BARMA1982]

Sorry i'm not up on all this stuff...how do I find out what video card i've got? I bought the PC from a friend of a friend and don't have all the documentation etc.

I've already tried installing Patch 2 with no result.

Also if it helps when I first tried to play the game I got the message other people seem to have had regarding shaders - I have only got this far by running the game using 3D Analyzer.

What is the fog of war?

Thanks for your response.

[Greg Wilcox]

You should be able to check the video card by going into the control pannel, selecting Printers and Other Hardware (if using catagory view). Select System under "See Also", click on the Hardware Tab, click on the Device Manager button and then click on the "+" next to Display adapters.


hope that helps,

-Greg

[BARMA1982]

Cheers Greg that was a great help, after following your instructions it seems my video card details are as follows:

NVIDIA GeForce4 MX 440

Hope that makes sense to someone...[&:]

[bman654]

yeah that's a pretty old card and even though it says "GeForce4" it was a marketing gimick by Nvidia and it is really not much different than a "GeForce2".  I used to have that card in fact long ago and upgraded to an ATI Radeon 9600XT.  Much better card, though now it barely gets me by.
 
Fog of War - when you are in a mission, the terrain is all black until your soldiers have seen it.  By disabling fog of war, the game won't draw the black so you will be able to see the terrain.  But I don't think you see the aliens until they are close.  Hopefully doing this will let you play.  Give me a few minutes...I'll upload a file for you to use to disable it.

[bman654]

Okay here is a link:
 
http://www.savefile.com/projects/808504622
 
Ignore most of the stuff on this page.  Go to the very bottom and there are 2 files:
UFOET - Partial Fog Of War
UFOET-No Fog of War
 
Download the "Partial Fog Of War" file.  It is a zip file.  open the zip file and inside is a "system.xbg" file.  Place this in your UFOET\data folder (backup the original system.xbg first).  See if this will let you play a combat.  This file disables the partial-fog which is used for areas you have seen but are not looking at.  If this one works then great.  If not...
Download the "No Fog Of War" file.  Extract the system.xbg file to your UFOET\data folder.  This file completely disables the fog of war in combat.  Hopefully it will work if Partial didn't.
 
Good luck.
 
If one of these works and in the future the time may come that you want to play the game with my Bman mod (you can learn more about it at http://www.ufo-scene.com - it makes a *ton* of changes to the game such as a mini-map in combat, alien and soldiers sounds, adds the old xcom aliens, improved combat AI, improved UFO AI many many more).  Anyway if such a time comes you'll need a version of the mod that has the fog disabled as well.  Just post over on those forums and I or someone else can make it for you.

[BARMA1982]

It worked! Cheers mate your a star... [&o]
 
Had to use the 'No fog of war' - i'm thinking of getting a new PC which will obviously come with Windows Vista rather than XP - will this game run using Vista?
 
Your mod sounds really good - i'll give it a go when I get the time.
 
Thanks again. 

[bman654]

yeah i play on vista.  install goes really slow though (like 45mins).  glad it worked.  have fun.

[BARMA1982]

I just got a brand new laptop with Windows Vista (Noy just to play this game I needed a new PC anyway) - the install went fine.
 
I can't believe it but I STILL get the error message for shaders etc! What the hell does this thing need to just work!?
 
 

[bman654]

weird.  what does your laptop have for video card?

[BARMA1982]

Hi, sorry I didn't get back to you about the laptop video card - I don't know how to find out what video card the laptop has as i'm using Windows Vista and don't know my way around it very well.
 
But I installed 3D Analyzer and it worked fine....for a while!!!
 
I now have a NEW PROBLEM - I have played the game to what I would say I think is about a third of the way through however for some reason it is now crashing and flashing up the following error message:
 
'Internal error occured - please send error log file crash080212_140222.txt to technical support.
 
There seems to be no rhyme or reason as to why i'm getting the error message, however if it helps I have just finished my first Alien Base mission and the game crashes when my ship is about half way back to my own base.
 
Any help would be much appreciated so I can get on and keep playing...

[bman654]

yeah open the crash file and paste the contents here.  I know there were some crash bugs related to ufo's trying to goto a base you just destroyed but I think those were fixed in patch-2 which you've installed on the laptop I presume.