Emperor Graphics Problem

[Apollyon]

Emp starts up fine as always, all the gameplay options work. Indeed the only thing that doesn't work is the text display: 90% of all text, including buttons, housenames, menus, etc, are garbled and totally unintelligible. I recently installed a new motherboard and processor and suspect that has something to do with it. Any suggestions?

[Andrew]

I remember hearing about this problem before in the last 2 months. check some older threads.

It might have to do with video card needing to be updated.

Or reinstall video card drivers.

http://www.dune2k.com/forum/index.php?topic=15962.0

similiar problem? Think installing newer vid drivers fixed it. Or reinstall and see what happens.

[Apollyon]

Thanks for answering, Andrew.

I tried:

1. Updating drivers from my older version -> no effect

2. Then I tried the Omega drivers. Again no effect.

:-

EDIT: Incidentally, though, that is the exact problem I have.

[Apollyon]

Ahah, I installed the game the same way the guy in that thread did. Maybe some bizarre kind of protection?

[Andrew]

You mean it is now working properly?

[erjin999]

instead of updating drivers for gfx card, try downdating them. It worked for him.

[Jaekwon01]

i8 had the same problem with the text

instead of "quit" there was sumthin like "emperor" and the font was kinda weird

this happened to me after i installed the directx version which is on the emperor cd

when i deleted this one and reinstalled the (older) version on my w2k cd everything was fine again

i hope i could help u

[Apprentice]

I'm having the exact same problem but I'm a little reluctant to downgrade my graphics driver and Direct X version, since that game works normally on my sister's computer which is identical to the one I have, only she runs Windows XP and I run Windows 2000. As graphic card, weboth have an NVIDIA GF4 Ti4400. Any idea's other then downgrading the drivers ??

[jfk9003]

I've got the same problem, but even with my oldest graphics drivers installed, the menu is still unreadable.

any suggestions?

[cfexrun]

Just a tidbit, I saw this same behavior when I copied the direct3d DirectX 8.1 dlls into the Emperor directory to try and correct a different issue. Something that occurs to me, in your cases, is to try and downgrade DirectX, preferably to whatever your OS shipped with, then upgrading it again. It may also be worth your time to re-apply any service packs. My gut feeling is that you've ended up with a mixed bag of old and new DirectX files. Might also be a good idea to run the system file checker, which is sfc /scannow in the run box.

Good luck.

[Apollyon]

I fixed it a while back by updating my VGA drivers.

[Megashrap]

instead of updating drivers for gfx card, try downdating them. It worked for him.

Thats exactlly what works, I had the same problem way back and the only thing that worked was downgrading graphics driver.  You don't have to downgrade Direct-X or anything else just graphics driver vers. is all. The newer Nvidia drivers don't enhance Gforce4's anyway so it's not like you will loose anything. I actually changed to the Omega drivers I think the vers. i'm using now is 15672a. But that is for my 5200 SE. Any newly updated drivers I tried always made the buttons look out of wack, so using one of the older ones will fix that problem, wether it's Omega or Nvidia. Remember, your not downgrading your video performance, just the driver. Long story short, older cards really don't benefit much at all from newer drivers with added features that it can't utilize anyway.