Battle Map Problem

[dude]

I have installed and am playing Medieval Total War. The Campaign Map works fine, and I can play that. I can get to the Battle Map without it crashing, but that isn't very useful since the battle map looks like this:
http://www.maj.com/gallery/rottenapple/things/med1.bmp

What can I do?

[macsen rufus]

You have a video card/driver issue. The best place to start looking is in the Apothecary (see further down the forum index). I'd hazard a guess at an Nvidia card with a new driver - you may need to go to the Nvidia site and download an older one if this is the case.

If it's not that then you really need to send your generals for drugs testing :laugh4:

[dude]

Actually, my video card is a Ati Radeon Xpress 200M. Are there any known issues with this video card? I'll look in the Apothecary as you suggested.

[dude]

I found someone with the same problem and video card, (https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=86003) but no solution.

[dude]

https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=22236 Found a solution, but could anyone please tell me how to get to the Direct3d options?

[macsen rufus]

I think you need to run dxdiag from the command prompt, that should run you through the various options. Good luck.

Edit: sorry, I'm assuming you know this, but if not: go to the START menu, select RUN, then enter "dxdiag" into the box.

[dude]

I did what you said, but the menu looks like this:

http://www.maj.com/gallery/rottenapple/things/directx.bmp

I can't find any option to turn on or off full screen anti-aliasing. Is there anything I can do?

[R'as al Ghul]

I can't find any option to turn on or off full screen anti-aliasing. Is there anything I can do?

Awesome screenshot dude! :laugh4:
For the anti-aliasing option you need to check your video driver control panel.
There may be a little ATI symbol beside the clock, if not go to the the "system control panel" and choose the "Advanced"- option under "Display settings".
You should see the options available for your video card there. One option should be anti-aliasing, probably "anisotronic filtering" etc.

R'as

[dude]

I did that, but there is no option to turn either Anti-aliasing or Anisotropic filtering off, just options to turn them from 2x to 16x. I had both at 2x. Is there a certain setting that works best?

[macsen rufus]

Different cards all have their own quirks. I used to have a laptop which actually ran the game with 4MB LESS video RAM than the minimum spec (ie 12MB instead of 16 - go figure!) Generally unless someone has already had the same card and documented any solutions, the best approach is "suck it and see". I've never needed to fiddle with anti-aliasing myself, so can't honestly advise.

What I would suggest though is try these few things through the game options, and try to cut the workload for your card:

* turn all the "eye candy" off or as low as it will go - ie smoke, fauna, etc
* try running in 800x640 resolution on both battle and campaign map
* try smaller unit sizes
* try different AGP memory settings (I think if you don't HAVE AGP then it is best set to 0 - if you do then crank it up, but I could be wrong)

I see from your dxdiag screenie you're not using AGP texture acceleration - have you tried enabling that?

[dude]

Thank you for your help everyone. I will fiddle around with the graphics settings and try to get it working.

(I had AGP texture acceleration enabled and it didn't work then. I turned it off following advice I found on this forum but it didn't work.)