STICKY: Win2K and Europe

Pain...so much..pain..

from GalCiv2 Forums

This has been posted about in our journals and elsewhere but probably deserves its own sticky.

IF you are running Non-English version of Windows 2000 then the Stardock Central GalCiv2.exe will NOT work.

Microsoft apparently stopped supporting Windows 2000 non-English in May with their DirectX SDK. Galactic Civilizations II uses the October 2005 edition.

Early betas of GalCiv II used the October 2004 SDK (Because I compiled them and I'm a loser for not having updated sooner).

So what we will be doing for those users running Windows 2000 in Europe is create a seperate download that you will need to get and put into your GalCiv 2 folder. We expect to have that available later today.

Update: there is another workaround mentioned below, but you should be able to go into your Control Panel / Language settings and change the first dropdown to US English. That should sort things as well.

38,877 views 30 replies
Reply #1 from Stardock Forums Top
To throw in my two cents and to set some people at ease maybe, I am using non-English Win2k (SP4) and the game runs, it's just that the ship and planet graphics are somewhat "hollow" - don't know how to put that better.
I contacted support and they said it will be taken care of. If not, I'll keep bugging here.
Reply #2 from Stardock Forums Top
Stardock support found a (temporary) solution to the above mentioned problem: If you set the country settings in the control panel to "English (US)", the graphics in the game should be fine - at least they are for me. Better don't ask why and how that works, it sounds like evil magic.
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Reply #4 from Stardock Forums Top
We are trying to figure the optimal solution. The Language/Country setting thing should sort stuff in the interim.
Reply #5 from Stardock Forums Top
There's at least one person that had the same problem using non-English WinXP - and the same "fix" helped: Link.
Reply #6 from Stardock Forums Top
Hi Brad, I have my 1.0D.006 installed and somehow working even if I do not have any planet but circles and other strange visual behaviours.
Do you still plan to release a fix for win2k non-US? When/where can we get it?
Thanks, Gherardo
Reply #7 from Stardock Forums Top

There's a workaround: Turn your language/cuntry setting to English (it shouldn't affect anything else in the OS) and it'll work.

When we come up with a better solution, we'll release that.

Reply #8 from Stardock Forums Top
Ahhh its the evil USAs plan to yankify us oll into speaking like Americans. AAGGGHHHH!

You'll never get me you muppet.
Reply #9 from Stardock Forums Top
Hurray! Changing the language settings worked for me at least
This bug had me down for a long time, but everything is good now. Thx Established
Reply #10 from Stardock Forums Top
I'm not lucky. I'm running a non-english version of WinXP. So, I made this language modification. I noticed some changes : now I can see the Sol and I can see ships properly in the shipyard screen and in the "customize your civilization" screen, but planets and ships are still invisible on the main map
Reply #11 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Maybe this thread should be renamed to something like: "Graphics somewhat hollow? - help here!".
I stumbled across several people with this problem, but they didn't read a "Win2K and Europe" topic.

The problem is definitely NOT Win2K only, by the way.
Reply #12 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Well, am running WinXP SP2 EN professional edition. Local settings are set to finnish (FI) and regardless if I findle em to US-EN via regional/language setting, start screen is still unreadable - and so worth, am quite stuck here. Some of the texts are actually in english, but all button etc text seems like being cyrillic or similar kind of eastern European languge. I have a screenshot if devs are insterested to see.
Reply #15 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
No solution yet?
Here Win2K Pro, Spanish version, plus SP4
Temporarily setting preferred language to English makes the work, but is annoying
Reply #16 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Finnish WinXP Home Edition SP1 and the same problem. Annoying as **** because I am supposed to write a review of GalcCiv2 and I need to play the game at the same time. How do I write when the keyboard hasn't got the Scandinavian characters I need. Also even when I change back to Finnish country settings, the ä and ö characters keep disappearing at random. Please hire testers with various country settings next time.

Also Metaverse doesn't seem to work. I try to create a character and I get the following error:

Server Error in '/' Application.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Parser Error
Description: An error occurred during the parsing of a resource required to service this request. Please review the following specific parse error details and modify your source file appropriately.

Parser Error Message: Could not load type 'GalCiv2.gc_Legend'.

Source Error:


Line 1: <%@ Control Language="vb" AutoEventWireup="false" Codebehind="gc_Legend.ascx.vb" Inherits="GalCiv2.gc_Legend" TargetSchema="http://schemas.microsoft.com/intellisense/ie5" %>
Line 2: <%@ Register TagPrefix="UC" TagName="Header" src="~\Controls\UC_Header.ascx" %>
Line 3: <%@ Register TagPrefix="UC" TagName="Footer" src="~\Controls\UC_Footer.ascx" %>


Source File: D:\www.galciv2.com\Controls\metaverse\gc_Legend.ascx Line: 1
Reply #17 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Superbus: We're not sure what to do.  We're kind of at a loss.  Something changed in Microsoft's DirectX SDK and it'll be some time before we can hunt it down.
Reply #18 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I got it working by change back to an older version of the Detonator to my Geforce Ti 4200 (71.89) and it works just fine. and there was no need to change the this language modification.

I bought the computer in sweden if you all wonder
Reply #19 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Brad wrote: "...Something changed in Microsoft's DirectX SDK and it'll be some time before we can hunt it down."
What about MS fixing what they broke?
Gherardo
Reply #20 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
The problem is not only with Win2K, I also get the problem with Win ME, Language for both Systems is german. And I will not change the language because that would cause a problem with an other application.
Reply #21 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Ok, I've already dropped Brad an email about this. The problem itself seems to be not the language-selection, but the numeric format.
English notation is: 1,000.00
German notation is: 1.000,00
You can change this seperately in the language-setup in windows (it's called "Zahlen" in German Windows) try to change these settings (even with having selected German as language. This works perfectly for me.

I'm quoting WarEagle from another thread (Link), it works fine for me.

(Summary: Just change the numeric separators, no need to change anything else. Maybe this is linked to graphics calculations somehow...?!)
Reply #22 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
it's obviously a problem with floats

no need to change your whole regional options ...

just go to : Regional option/currency
once there change : "Decimal symbol" to "." instead of ","

this "decimal symbol" problem is widely spread among applications
many software & games have or had it....
Reply #23 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Referring to earlier problem posted by me on this thread, matter is solved. Problem was that mysterious language fonts shown on intial start screen was in fact using Latin-1 Unicode fonts. I was puzzled how on earth this was possible even when using XP PRO english version. So, I installed GalCiv2
to freshly installed XP (backup pc) and it worked. Then I tried to fiddle with language and regional settings to make it work on my main pc which was using localized country setting (Finland). No avail.
Well, atleast it worked on backup...
Then I started to think which makes the difference and noticed that I had - by purpose - disabled advanced text services on main pc and somehow enabling it back via language and regional settings cleared the problem once and for all! Marvelous! Now I can play this nice game on my 21" screen and it's so much more better....

I think there is a problem how this particular game handless the separators (which been quite classic problem with many games before). Anyway, seems like changing the separator may be half-way-there solution for some of us. Could be that advanced text services enables the native keyboard layout (if other than standard us-en) and fixes/sets the separator problem as well.

Maybe something that devs want to look at.
Reply #24 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Hi folks,
i use a german W2k and have had some problems too.
But only my solution of screen have had to be set to 32bit.
Now, with the actual beta version it works with some exceptions:
- the points to give for race attitudes are written wrong: example 1234569625448 instead of
2 or 3 for good inhibitant increasing etc.
- after loading a saved race there a some offsetts there a wrong
- some messages are still in english
- the frozen time after loading a saved time (look ChojinXYZ)

Do anyone know, if paradox is looking for testers for german versions?
i´am an database developer in Muenster /Germany and i like GalCiv very much...
[email protected]
Reply #25 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Hourrah, that solved my problem, at least for the time being.

I had these hollow circles as planets and my ships were so matte-black that they blended in perfectly with the background. This on an english W2k SP4, but with swedish setting. Setting it to US-English worked well.
Strange bug, though, that the decimal comma/point should trigger this.