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Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri™Issue: Blank menus/unreadable text(24 posts)solved(24 posts)solved
(24 posts)solved
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Posted July 17, 2013
I have a serious issue with my recent purchase.

When launching my game, the intro cinematic plays correctly, and the menu appears afterwards. When it loads, the text on each menu option is just... gone. It isn't there. When loading the game up through blind clicking, the ingame text is completely indecipherable, due to each pixel either being black, white, or a shade of brown.

I cannot play this game at all in this current state, as I have no way to read any of the text presented by the game. I am really hoping this issue has been long soled, because I could not find it on the first two pages of the forum.

Specs:

OS: Win7 64 bit
Graphics Card: Intel(R) HD Graphics Family, with total memory of 1696 MB.
Current Display Mode: 1366 x 768 (32 bit) (60 Hz)
RAM: 6144MB
DirectX 11
I'm running it in compatibility mode for Windows XP (Service Pack 3), with 256 colors and 640 x 480 resolution, with display scaling on high DPI settings disabled. I am also running it as an administrator every time I've tried to play the game, by right clicking and selecting the option.
This question / problem has been solved by DeMignonimage
Posted July 17, 2013
Have you tried running it without compatibility mode turned on, and/or without the forced 640x480 / 256 color settings?
Posted July 17, 2013
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Garran: Have you tried running it without compatibility mode turned on, and/or without the forced 640x480 / 256 color settings?
I just tried it, and there was no change whatsoever.
Posted July 18, 2013
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PrayForSnow: I'm running it in compatibility mode for Windows XP (Service Pack 3), with 256 colors and 640 x 480 resolution, with display scaling on high DPI settings disabled. I am also running it as an administrator every time I've tried to play the game, by right clicking and selecting the option.
Turn that all off and try this to bypass DirectDraw:

Alter the DirectDraw entry in the Alpha Centauri.Ini file as follows:

[PREFERENCES]
ForceOldVoxelAlgorithm=1
[Alpha Centauri]
DirectDraw=0
ds3d=1
eax=1

The game should now run in your desktop resolution.
Make sure, that the width is divisible by 8. A desktop resolution of e.g. 1366x768 will crash the game when scrolling while e.g. 1680x1050 seems to work.
Post edited July 18, 2013 by DeMignon
Posted July 18, 2013
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DeMignon: Turn that all off and try this to bypass DirectDraw:

Alter the DirectDraw entry in the Alpha Centauri.Ini file as follows:

[PREFERENCES]
ForceOldVoxelAlgorithm=1
[Alpha Centauri]
DirectDraw=0
ds3d=1
eax=1

The game should now run in your desktop resolution.
Make sure, that the width is divisible by 8. A desktop resolution of e.g. 1366x768 will crash the game when scrolling while e.g. 1680x1050 seems to work.
Well, this makes the game run smoother... but the text is still missing.
Posted July 19, 2013
So it's no DirectDraw problem.

Maybe SMAC uses your system's fonts and your font cache is corrupted. Windows stores fonts in a font cache file to load them faster. You can delete the file and reboot the system to automatically rebuild it.

1. Go to C:\Windows\System32\ folder
2. Make a backup copy of Fntcache.dat
3. Delete Fntcache.dat
4. Restart your computer

Fntcache.dat should be rebuilt. If your office programs like MS Office or OpenOffice or WordPad work fine, you don't need your backup copy of the old Fntcache.dat anymore.

Check if it made a difference in SMAC.

========

Another idea: Maybe you have installed a lot of extra fonts, thus SMAC has problems with font loading. I've heard of similar problems with Sid Meier's Civilization. Maybe your System substitutes the font SMAC uses with one that causes your problems. Well, to find out, you've to delete fonts (Control Panel => Appearance and Personalization => Fonts) and clear the font cache. But before, I recommend to create a restore point (Control Panel => System => System Protection), to get them back if you want to.
Posted July 19, 2013
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DeMignon: Well, to find out, you've to delete fonts (Control Panel => Appearance and Personalization => Fonts) and clear the font cache. But before, I recommend to create a restore point (Control Panel => System => System Protection), to get them back if you want to.
You should just be able to copy all the fonts in e.g. C:\Windows\Fonts to a backup folder, no?
Posted July 19, 2013
I don't believe the game pulls its fonts from Windows. Instead, they are located in the main SMAC folder and are

ALPHC___.TTF
ARIALB.TTF
ARIALI.TTF
ARIALN.TTF
ARIALR.TTF

One or more of these files may be missing or corrupt. If you can't find these files somewhere, suggest that you reinstall.

Edit: On second thought, my suggestion may not be correct. I deleted the above font files from my SMAC folder and the game still displayed the text correctly.
Post edited July 19, 2013 by Petek
Posted July 19, 2013
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DeMignon: Another idea: Maybe you have installed a lot of extra fonts, thus SMAC has problems with font loading. I've heard of similar problems with Sid Meier's Civilization. Maybe your System substitutes the font SMAC uses with one that causes your problems. Well, to find out, you've to delete fonts (Control Panel => Appearance and Personalization => Fonts) and clear the font cache. But before, I recommend to create a restore point (Control Panel => System => System Protection), to get them back if you want to.
I've been in contact with gog.com's support staff, and was able to find out that it was a third party conflict of some kind. Now, I have the issue of the game crashing at random intervals. I'm going to keep playing it in order to try and establish a patern of when the game crashes, to see if anything unique causes it.

In the meantime, can anyone direct me to common crash causes?
Posted July 19, 2013
Glad to hear that you solved the font problem. I'd be curious to learn what what was causing the conflict.

For the crashes, I suggest that you download and install scient's unofficial patch 1.0, found here:

http://alphacentauri2.info/index.php?action=downloads;sa=view;down=27

As you can see, it fixes several known crashes (as well as containing other fixes). Warning: GOG might not provide support for the unofficial patch.
Posted July 19, 2013
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Petek: Glad to hear that you solved the font problem. I'd be curious to learn what what was causing the conflict.

For the crashes, I suggest that you download and install scient's unofficial patch 1.0, found here:

http://alphacentauri2.info/index.php?action=downloads;sa=view;down=27

As you can see, it fixes several known crashes (as well as containing other fixes). Warning: GOG might not provide support for the unofficial patch.
I uninstalled, reinstalled, and added the patch, but I am still crashing.
Posted July 19, 2013
Okay, I got my final issues solved: My screen resolution shifted back to 1366x768 after a clean boot, and I had to change it to 1360x768. Now Alpha Centauri is running smoothly for at least an hour, and with no further issues.
Posted July 20, 2013
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DeMignon: Well, to find out, you've to delete fonts (Control Panel => Appearance and Personalization => Fonts) and clear the font cache. But before, I recommend to create a restore point (Control Panel => System => System Protection), to get them back if you want to.
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Gydion: You should just be able to copy all the fonts in e.g. C:\Windows\Fonts to a backup folder, no?
Yes, this might be enough to reinstall everything, but could be insufficient to delete them as information about fonts is also stored in the registry. I don't know whether Windows 7 adjusts this registry entries on startup according to the actual content of the Windows\Fonts folder. To avoid further problems, I suggested uninstalling via control panel and recovery via restore point - just to be on the save side. On my machine, I'd just move all the fonts out of Windows\Fonts and rebuilding the font cache. I guess Win XP would handle this pretty well.

Eventually that wasn't the problem anyway.

@PrayForSnow: Can you specify "third party conflict of some kind" any further, so other users experiencing the same problem might find a clue.
Post edited July 20, 2013 by DeMignon
Posted February 07, 2014
I am having the exact same problem as the OP in this thread.

http://s17.postimg.org/9pck3nd9b/alphacent.png

http://s14.postimg.org/lvotlx7ld/alcentblack.png

I have turned DDraw off, I have tried all sorts of shenanigans, but no success.

Running Windows 8.1 using an AMD 7950 and Catalyst 13.12

Curiously it is the same issue as a person had in 2004 with a WINE port.

http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-206854-start-0.html

I am at a loss, the game is obviously unplayable - but it seems like such a silly problem.

The game runs 100% fine apart from this. :(


(PS. it is annoying that this topic is marked as SOLVED when it really isn't ... well it may be for the OP but he didn't share his solution)
Post edited February 07, 2014 by Atlantico
Posted February 07, 2014
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Atlantico: (PS. it is annoying that this topic is marked as SOLVED when it really isn't ... well it may be for the OP but he didn't share his solution)
I suggest you do as the OP did, then, and contact GOG support. Might be a good idea to point GOG support at this thread, too, in case they can pull up whatever solution they gave the OP to see if it solves it for you too.
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Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri™Issue: Blank menus/unreadable text(24 posts)solved(24 posts)solved
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