No ship textures. Does my hardware suck?

from GalCiv2 Forums
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?
12,891 views 7 replies
Reply #1 from Stardock Forums Top
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.
Reply #2 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
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

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Reply #3 from Stardock Forums Top
Whoah! This 3DAnalyzer thing really works! Thanks Neonapple... you just saved me 200 bucks.
Reply #4 from Stardock Forums Top
Hey that was really useful. Promotions.
Reply #6 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
EDIT: wow checking dates is a useful thing, my bad, please ignore
Reply #7 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
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