Problem with tree graphics

[Hermitage]

I am having problems with erratic terrain graphics in some games in CMBB. When scrolling over the map I see trees disapear and reappear, pines changing to birch and back, sometimes victory flags spurt up in bunches, where there should be none, then disappear as I continue to scroll, or elongated craters appear standing on end in the place of trees. These weird effects only happen when the camera is moving over the map. When trees are turned off, no glitches appear and the game plays normally.

I have done searches on various combinations of "glitch" "trees" "graphics" etc. with no results that relate to my problem.

I use a Mac OS 9.2.2, G4, 867 MHz, 512 MB RAM, GeForce2 MX with 32 MB VRAM.

I have scanned for the Mac viruses AutoStart, Code9811 and SevenDust with none found.

Seems that only scenarios I've downloaded exhibit this problem; scenarios from the CMBB CD play fine at home and through PBEM.

The graphic glitches are a minor irritation but I just had a PBEM game go flakey on me which had these video glitches. Would hate it if my system has gone corrupt.

Has any other (especially Mac) user had this problem? If there is a relevant topic in the forum, could you direct there?

Any help would be appreciated.

[Schrullenhaft]

Trees, buildings, 'doodads' disappearing, especially out further towards the edge of the map, is normal behavior for the CM series. I'm not absolutely sure about the switching of tree graphics (birch for pine, etc.), but that may also be normal behavior.

What doesn't sound normal is crater graphics replacing trees, multiple flags appearing where there should be none, etc. This sounds like either a driver/software environment problem or your installation of CMBB is having problems. I don't know why only downloaded scenarios show this problem and not the ones that come with the CD.

Are you running version 1.03 of CMBB ? Is this a BFC or a CDV version ? Do you have graphics mods loaded, especially higher-res versions of the ground/grass ?

What you may want to do is reinstall CMBB to a different directory if you have the disk space. Patch it to 1.03, but don't apply any mods. See if this runs OK with your downloaded scenarios, etc.

Oh, and do the typical MacOS stuff by elimnating any extra extensions/control panels that aren't necessary. I can't remember what 9.2.2 loads up, but it may be loading up some ATI extensions by default that you could pull out (I'm sure that they see that there isn't an ATI card installed, and therefore don't actually load up fully into memory). As far as I'm aware 9.2.2 has the latest Nvidia Mac drivers, so there isn't anything newer available from Apple/Nvidia for OS 9.

[ January 11, 2006, 10:15 AM: Message edited by: Schrullenhaft ]

[Madmatt]

From the sound of it, you are getting some weird video corruption with lower resolution graphics filling in for higher ones. This could be due to some sort of data corruption but usually exhibits itself when the game runs of accessible VRAM (video memory).

Have you looked at possibly reinstalling the game or your video extensions? Are you sure all 32 megs of VRAM on your card is being properly addressed and utilized? I know on the PC there are various utilities to test VRAM, I would assume such also exists for the Mac and I would suggest perhaps seeing if you can locate one and run some tests on your video card as what you describe should not be occurring, normally.

Madmatt

[ January 11, 2006, 02:44 PM: Message edited by: Madmatt ]

[Hermitage]

Thanks for the replies, guys. After some testing today, it seems that the problem is in the unzip utility that I was using. It may have been adding some corruption to files I unzipped after downloading.

I used a different program to unzip today's PBEM turns and they loaded and ran flawlessly. I'm hoping that the new zip utility has solved my problem permanently.

Schrullenhaft, your point about the ATI extensions is a good one. They are present in the extensions folder so I will disable them (along with a bunch of others I haven't bothered to disable yet) so that they won't pose any potential interference. Or at the very least, so they won't take up any memory. I've only had this particular machine for a few months so I haven' bothered to put on the hip boots and wade in to rationalize the extentions; 'bout time I did that, I guess. . .oh, yeah, and I have upgraded to ver. 1.03 (the CD is an early BFC disc) and no mods of any type on this machine.

So, Madmatt, looks like it was data corruption when I unzipped the downloads; good call. I had been using "ZipIt"--paid for it and everything, curse it! It had been shutting down due to type one error for a while; I would reload it periodically to get it to work again but didn't realize it might be corupting my files.

Once again, thanks for your quick replies and help. I've only used my new download method once so far but I'm hoping everything will be smooth sailing from here on out.

Hermitage