Video Issue

[Dangling]

Hey,
When I play the game Graham is grey and other things don't look quite right either.  My video card is GeForce4 MX Integrated GPU.  I think it may have something to do with D3D.  I have it selected under options.  I tried changing it to OpenGL but I must not have that since the game crashes to the desktop when I select it.  Is there some setting changes I need to do on my computer or is this a 3d accelerator or video card that I need to get to make the game playable? I am running Windows XP if that helps.  I do not know too much about computers.  Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.  Thanks!
Bri
Here is what I am seeing.

[copycat]

Strange you don't have OpenGL on your graphics card. Do you have the latest drivers for that card installed?

[Yonkey]

Our game does not support D3D. 

As copycat mentioned, please upgrade your video card drivers to the latest version and retry.

[Dangling]

Thanks I will give it a try.  I guess I need to go shopping! Is this something that I can do as an upgrade? If so what would it entail just installing software or is their hardware that needs to be installed too? Or is this something where I have to get a new computer to get it?

[ciborium]

You need to know what video card you have.

Right click "My Computer"
Click "Properties"
Click "Hardware" Tab
Click "Device Manager"
Click "Display adapters"

This should list what video card you have.
i. e. "Intel 82810E Graphics Controller"

Now with this info you get chase down your driver.

Goto www.driverguide.com or www.download.com
(I like DriverGuide better.)
You'll have to sign up for a free account on DriverGuide.
(Just keep clicking "no thanks" on the special offer and survey pages.)

In the left column click "Drivers"
Then click "Graphic Adapters/Controllers"
Then it asks for the type of controller you have.
In my case I click "I" for Intel.
Then look for the model number. (82810E)

Download the file to your desktop and then run the file.
Reboot your computer and see if it works.



You can also go to the website of your video card maker, but if it's an old card, they may not still support it.

[Yonkey]

Is this something that I can do as an upgrade?

Yes, upgrading your video card drivers is pure software and free.  You just have to go to NVidia's website and find them.

[koko_99_2001]

Is this something that I can do as an upgrade?

Yes, upgrading your video card drivers is pure software and free.  You just have to go to NVidia's website and find them.

Though, I've had to have people walk me through each time I've updated (Alex once, and Jafar the other time ) because it can kinda be confusing.

And Neil, I keep hitting "modify" instead of "quote" the last few times I've tried to quote a post!

[Yonkey]

And Neil, I keep hitting "modify" instead of "quote" the last few times I've tried to quote a post!

Hehe, last week I hit quote instead of modify and didn't even realize until after it was posted.

[koko_99_2001]

Lol, good one, Neil

Anyway, Dangling, I do hope that we've been able to help

[Dangling]

Yeah you guys have certainly given me a place to start.  Just to make sure lets say I don't have OpenGL on my computer but I go to NVIDIA's site and find the driver for my video card and this will have OpenGL in it or is this just updating what I already have in the hopes that it will work?

[ciborium]

The drivers tell your computer how to use your hardware.

Your video card is probably comaptible with OpenGL, but the driver isn't telling your computer that it is.  So you need to replace the driver with one that will tell your computer that the video card is compatible with OpenGL.

When you bought your computer, OpenGL may not have been widely used and so the programmer who wrote the driver that you're using didn't put OpenGL capabilities in the driver program.  Then later on OpenGL started being used in more and more software applications, so another programmer had to write a new driver for the same video card so that those applications would work properly.



***Short Answer***
Download the latest driver available for your video card model.


Sometimes you can get away with using a driver for another model of the same maufacturers product and gain some of the other product's capabilities, but you have to really know what you're doing, and be prepared for the consequences is it doesn't work!

[Yonkey]

I'm not really sure if you want the technical info or not, but Windows XP actually comes with a very basic version of OpenGL, however it makes the game run at literally 0.2 frames per second rather than 60-70 (though I haven't measured recently and post 1.0.1. patch what FPS I get ).  Anyway, this is why you should always have the most up to date drivers on your system.

Windows 98 doesn't even have stock drivers for OpenGL, so people using that operating system have no other choice but to upgrade their video card drivers.

[Dangling]

Thank you guys so much for your help! I finally got it working although the driver set that finally worked was older then the ones that didn't .  I love you guys and can't wait to play the game! Thanks for all the hard work you put into it and helping computer hopeless people like me.  The newest drivers didn't crash the game in OpenGL mode but I couldn't see anything.  The old one definitely works but it somehow uninstalled part of my anti-virus so I ended up installing that aol anti-virus.

[Yonkey]

The old one definitely works but it somehow uninstalled part of my anti-virus so I ended up installing that aol anti-virus.

Do you have the Microsoft .NET Framework 1.1 or higher installed?   The link to download this can be found on the Trilogy page.

[Dangling]

Yep it is installed.  I must be doing something wrong though because when I went to try it out again OpenGL wouldn't work.  Before I updated if I checked OpenGL the game would crash.  After updating to the latest driver from NVIDIA it wouldn't crash anymore but a lot of things won't show up.  I think I installed the correct driver too because if I tried ones for a different card or operating system it wouldn't let me install.  I wasn't sure if I was geforce or geforce go but geforce worked and I looked at the compatability in the setup file and it said geforce4 as one of them.
*************
So on installing the drivers I discovered that windows automatically reinstalls the old drivers which may cause an issue.  I edited a registry file to add the new folder with the new drivers in it and I got it to work again.  So I think it is solved for real this time Thanks for the help I will let you know if it has problems again.

[Yonkey]

Geforce Go is for the 7xxx series I believe, so don't install that.

I'm glad you got the game to work, now please don't mess around with any more video card drivers.