No ship textures. Does my hardware suck?

After playing, and then looking at people's screenshots, I realized my ships don't have high quality textures. I've got the basic hull and trim colors, but there's no bump mapping or anything. Typically there's a setting under options in other games that let's you scale your graphics quality, but I didn't see anything like that in GCII. So, does my graphics card just suck, or do I have some sort of bug? I've got a NVIDIA GeForce4 MX420. Any suggestions on upgrading so the little ships look prettier?

Locked Post

Advanced Search

Watch this post

Do not email me updates for this post Email me updates for this post

Successfully updated karma reason!

Yes, I hate to say it, but your hardware sucks. The ships are drawn "multipass" style, which increases the detail, but your card is too old to handle it all.

Try http://pricewatch.com/ for prices, and get yourself something in the middling range to save money.

Successfully updated karma reason!

Using 3D Analyzer
You can emulate the Hardware Limitation Caps to increase the number of passes that are done on the 3d models. Before using 3D Analyzer I had basically white ships with a blue line. Very boring. This is due to my video card limitations. However after using 3D Analyzer, I was able to enjoy the 3D ships in all its glory. I was worrying about a performance hit, but for my work computer with a low end card, I saw no difference!

I hope this helps out some laptop and low end video card users. The options I enabled were under:
Hardware Limits (cap bits)
---
emulate HW TnL caps
emulate pixel shader caps
emulate bump map caps
emulate max. sim. textures.

You can mess around and optimize it even more if you want.

The only side effect I noticed was the initial Stardock Splash animation does not display even though you can hear it. Just click on the blackness and it will take you to menu.

Remember to select the galciv2.exe over the launcher within 3d analyzer.

After you have all you settings complete, create a batch file at the bottom and launch the game using that.

Download 3D-Analyze

Successfully updated karma reason!

Whoah! This 3DAnalyzer thing really works! Thanks Neonapple... you just saved me 200 bucks.

Successfully updated karma reason!

Frogboy

Join Date 03/2001

+2415

Hey that was really useful. Promotions.

Successfully updated karma reason!

Where would I be able to download this 3d analyzer program?

Successfully updated karma reason!

EDIT: wow checking dates is a useful thing, my bad, please ignore

Successfully updated karma reason!

LOL

http://www.3dfxzone.it/dir/tools/3d%5Fanalyze/download/

If your still looking for it you can find it up there.U HAVE TO PATCH THE GAME FIRST for it to work !!!!!!!!!!.

The patch will fix missing textures and the emulator will add extra BEAUTIFUL textures over them.
My video card:

GEFORCE MX 440

Successfully updated karma reason!

Welcome Guest! Please take the time to register with us.

There are many great features available to you once you register, including:

Richer content, access to many features that are disabled for guests like commenting and posting on the forums.
Access to a great community, with a massive database of many, many areas of interest.
Access to contests & subscription offers like exclusive emails.
It's simple, and FREE!

View all recent posts

Mark all posts as read Delete cookies created by the forum Return to Top

Stardock Forums v Server Load Time: Page Render Time: