Text and freezing

[zell2k]

I've searched for quite some time for others with the same problem but have only found similar issues. I'm problem is this: when I run Graal V4 I do not see any text at all (such as on the login screen, the menu, or in the game as characters names, or what they say). I have learned that I can can uncheck the "Use Bitmap Fonts" option, which does work and displays the text, however, if I do anything else, such as click a button or move from one level to another, my game will freeze and I will have to end the program. When I try to lauch Graal again, nothing will come up and I will once more have to ctlr-alt-del. The only way I found to change it back to no text instead of freezing is to revert my harddrive to a point before I made this change. But this puts me back in the same position, either have no text at all, or have the game freeze.

I have tried changing from 32 to 16bit, which allowed me to see the login buttons (the door and base), but has done nothing for the text. I have also tried to change the font, but to no effect.

My computer is old (Gateway - 650 mhz) with windows 98 SE.
I have an Nvidia Riva TNT2 Model 64 graphics card with the latest drivers.
My ram is 160mb and I have the latest version of directX.

Once more, very sorry if I have missed this exact issue before, I have truly looked everywhere and have found no suitable solutions; this is my final option.

[Admins]

I would say there is a problem with the graphics driver. At home I have a Riva TNT (1) and finding the good driver is not really easy since the latest Nvidia drivers don't work for those cards. What driver version do you have ? Sometimes it is helping to uninstall all existing gfx drivers and then installing the good one. Do other games work fine ?

[zell2k]

The version of my drivers seems to be 4.12.0001.0369. I believe that they are the latest, however, I could be mistaken as they appear to be from 2000. I'm not familiar with the process of uninstalling old drivers and then installing the updated ones, I only know how to go through the device manager and update drivers. In terms of other games, the only other game that I ever play is Age of Empires II, which runs great with no problems.

[spydrct02]

Sounds to me like your hardware acceleration is disabled. If that is the case, it could be caused by corrupt or missing DirectX files. I know a lot of stuff doesn't show on my Graal (v4) when my hardware acceleration is off. What's strange is it actually runs much faster when it is off -- there's no level load times or freezes at all. Which also wants me to bring up the fact that higher resolutions (with hardware acceleration on) like 1280 x 1024 and 1600 x 1200 make Graal 4 very slow with level loading/rendering. It literally takes about 2-3 seconds to switch between levels.

Go ahead and go into dxdiag (start > run > type dxdiag) and see if it gives any errors during the Direct3D and DirectDraw tests (both are in the display tab). Also check the DirectX files tab and see if it says about missing files. Also, what DirectX version do you have? If you're correct on having the latest, it'd be 9.0c.

[zell2k]

I ran the DirectX Diagnostic tool and I do indeed have DirectX 9.0c. I then ran both the test for DirectDraw and Direct 3D and both test were successful with no problems found. Next I checked the DirectX Files tab and it said that no problems were found in the notes box. Thank you very much for the suggestions, anything else that you believe might solve the problem would be much appreciated.

[Admins]

About the driver:

I have checked my card, my version is
4.12.01.0631
(October 2000)

It was a driver provided by the manufacture of the card though (asus), not from Nvidia, also I had to google the driver since it was not available on the asus site.

Finding the right driver on the Nvidia site is not really easier. It is still saying 'Geforce and TNT2' in the list of graphics card, but the driver is actually only working for Geforce3+.
It seems following driver should work: http://www.nvidia.com/object/win9x_71.84.html

I don't know why they don't make older drivers available, there are still drivers for Riva 128 but not for Riva TNT (1).
Here seems to be a download for the driver version I have: http://www.gpdownloads.co.nz/dl.dyn/Files/2524.html
But like I said, it is better to get the one from the manufacturer of the card. Also you need to uninstall the old driver first.

About fixing it without changing the driver: Do you get any errors in the F2 log window? Eventually post the content of graal4console.log, which should be in the Graal folder.

[zell2k]

I've tried the drivers from Nvidia in the past but none seemed to work. However, upgrading to a Nvidia RIVA TNT2 Model 64 Pro set of drivers did allow me to see the bitmap text, which has solved the main problem. However, although it does not matter now, unchecking the box still causes the game to freeze, which isnt really a problem anymore anyway. Furthermore, the game takes several times longer to load now, somewhere around 30 -45 seconds, but I can live with that.

Thank you very much for solving a problem and releasing such an enjoyable game that I have had such a great deal of fun playing over the years.

[Admins]

Good that it works better now

[spydrct02]

Were any of the accelerations disabled? If they are, try enabling them all.

Changing drivers makes your Graal load slower now? Do you mean the time it takes to start Graal? Does it take long every time to load or just the first time?

[Admins]

I don't remember any accelerations which you can turn on / off for Riva TNT1/2

[zell2k]

Both DirectDraw and Direct3D Accelerations were enabled, however, AGP Texture Acceleration was not available. I'm not sure if thats important or not. The time is takes Graal to launch from my desktop is slower than it use to be. But as with anything because of RAM and Cache is loads much faster with every launch after the first. Overall, both fresh launch and re-launches takes longer than it had before I upgraded, but its really no big deal, I dont mind the extra wait.