MAC: Text problems on new G4/Dual450?

[Joshik]

Tech question for MacHeads:

I just got a new G4 w/dual 450Mhz processor at work (whee!).

But upon launching the demo, the text is either showing up onscreen in black, or not at all. Even the QUIT dialog buttons are blank, and you cannot see any unit info at the bottom of the screen.

Does CM require a particular Mac system font that I may have inadvertantly removed?

Or is this a problem with just the demo (don't have the full game yet)?

Or... is there an incompatibility with the new G4/Dual450??? Hope not!

Any advice, fellow Mac users?

--Joshik

[Schrullenhaft]

Sorry, I no longer have a Mac, but I'll try to answer your question.

I don't know what version of the ATI software shipped with your G4, but it may not be the latest. I'm guessing that your G4 has a Rage/XClaim VR 128 for the video chip. In the CM-Tech Support forum (where you will want to post such problems in the future) a user has been able to fix a textbox problem with the latest ATI drivers.

ATI Mac Drivers:

http://support.atitech.ca/drivers/xclaim.html

ATI Driver Install Instructions (doesn't fully cover the latest Installer):

http://support.atitech.ca/infobase/3085.html

The user who had success with this uninstalled the ATI extensions/control panels and then installed them with the "Custom Install" option in this set of drivers.

Before you do any of this confirm what chipset you have in your G4. I can't really see any updates for the video available from Apple (which is the preferred source ATI will mention for drivers).

[David Aitken]

Never mind...

[This message has been edited by David Aitken (edited 08-18-2000).]

[Joshik]

Danke, Herr Schrullenhaft!

I'll give it a try... I was also unaware of a special Tech section.

Thanks for your input.

-Joshik

[zmapper]

I'm having the same problem on a G4 Cube running MacOS 9.04 with all the latest software updates available from Apple. The Cube has a single G4 processor (450 MHz) and an ATI Rage 128 Pro Video Card, Model ATY,Rage128Pro, ROM 113-72701-125, Rev 0. I see white text on a black background ("CD-ROM Required" and then "OK" inside a blue box) in the dialog box that pops up if I forget to insert my CD before starting the application. All other text dialog boxes are blank and black. For example, using command-q, I get two black dialog boxes. Clicking on the left box quits the game. I have no idea what the right box does. Another example, in the status window in the lower left of the screen, I can see text such as "Ammo", but the box next to that is blank and black.

[Guest Madmatt]

There is a new Universal Installer

available for Mac installed ATI video cards. That's the good news, the bad

news is in the odd way they have chosen to distribute it. In short, the

haven't, but there are ways to get it and we HIGHLY recommend upgrading any

ATI video card with them. Here is a thread from our Tech Support forum which

goes into detail about how to get them.

http://www.battlefront.com/discuss/Forum1/HTML/012650.html

Madmatt

[This message has been edited by Madmatt (edited 12-20-2000).]

[zmapper]

I changed only one thing and the "black text" problem was cured. I had OpenGL extensions version 1.1.5. (There are actually six extensions as part of that OpenGL package).

I installed OpenGL version 1.2.1 and the problem was cured. I had to download a demo of CroMag Rally to get a copy of OpenGL v 1.2.1, because it appears that it won't be generally available until MacOS 9.1 comes out.

[zmapper]

And I suppose I should heap praise on those that deserve it. I sent an email to battlefront.com tech support and received a reply (from Matt) within 24 hours which gave me several things to try. One of the suggestions lead to another discussion thread which suggested upgrading to a newer version of OpenGL, which is what worked for me. Thanks Matt. Great service!