From the demo I have funny graphics bug. It is as I think the shaders for the smoke, rain, or water particles is messed up. Instead they look like semi-transparent squares like blotchy.

ATI HD 3650.

I could not find "the" post on this. I would show a picture but I do not know the hotkey for screenshot.

I have the same exact problem, and I am also using ATI

ewww thats horrid. My ATI card works fine, did you update your drivers?

I have an ATI 4870 HD x2 that works fine with no problems. What graphical settings are you using? Your GFX Card could possibly be overheating, dusty, or you need to update the drivers.

Get your drivers here: http://www.amd.com/us/Pages/AMDHomePage.aspx On the right.

Is that on a laptop, overheating could do that.

I have HD4870 and the water looked OK in the demo, both low and high quality setting.

I do not have any problem with any other games. I tried other graphics settings such as super low.

It only does this on this game (rather odd) and I have alot of games. The drivers are your latest ones that work for HD 3650, which is not as powerful or the same as the 4000 series.

I could try some other companies drivers, not the original ATI ones. I will try the other drivers above. Maybe the older video card HD3650 drivers are not up to the newest version of DirectX and 3.0 shaders. Tropico 3 is a new game.

Pi-Xerxes Wrote:I do not have any problem with any other games. I tried other graphics settings such as super low.

It only does this on this game (rather odd) and I have alot of games. The drivers are your latest ones that work for HD 3650, which is not as powerful or the same as the 4000 series.

I could try some other companies drivers, not the original ATI ones. I will try the other drivers above. Maybe the older video card HD3650 drivers are not up to the newest version of DirectX and 3.0 shaders. Tropico 3 is a new game.

It's the exact same problem I've had with the Demo version and an ATI 1950 card, there are about half a dozen posts in the Tropico 3 PC Demo released! http://forum.kalypsomedia.com/showthread.php?tid=1713 thread commenting on the ATI 19xx problems

Can we have the specs of the rest of your PC? Like processor, RAM? V-Ram (Video Ram)

Pentium 4 2.8 GHZ, Sapphire HD 3650 Radeon 512 DDR2 VRAM. AGP port.

System RAM is 2 GB DDR 400 RAM. Windows XP OS SP2.

Fairly average, if a bit old. Once I thought I read somewhere there was an issue with the stock drivers for video Catylist Control Center (CCC). A person had to use just the basic driver and leave the Control Center off.

This is the only game I came across that has this problem. I have over 400+ collected. It even plays the new games BIOSHOCK and this other that needs shaders 3.0.

It does not support the extra fancy stuff that Nvidia cards do now. I hope it is not because of that.

The blocky shader squares occur where a particle would be created, such as the water, rain, smoke from the Power Plant Stack, and destroying a building.

It reminds me off when I used a small texture plain box to texture a particle in a 3D game engine. Some kind of conflict between the DirectX stuff and the Video Cards Drivers interpretation of the code I guess.

Hopefully, my case is rare. It could be a driver conflict inherent in this video card driver and DX.

Fixed the problem. Crappy old ATI AGP cards.

http://support.amd.com/us/kbarticles/Pag...otfix.aspx

The problem is with anyone who has a ATI AGP type card. It is no good. You must use an unsupported fix which I already have installed 9.9 hotfix. That is why the CCC will not even launch.

It it the only shader 3.0 DX10 style video card out there that will fit into the older AGP port style motherboards. There may still be alot of that Pentium 4 AGP style computer still in use.

Here is fixed picture on LOW setting since my computer is old.

I've a problem: I can't loadding game, It' always kick me out. I use ATI card too. should I update my driver card?

Has anyone gotten this game to work with a ATI x1200 video card? I have updated the driver to version 8.593.100.0 according to device mgr. My specs are: Vista Prem., AMD dual core 4400+, 2GB memory & plenty of HD space free. Can't disable VPU Recover because option is not available in Vista. Any help would be appreciated! Pretty sure it is not AGP, since I just bought pc in March 2008

Quote:Has anyone gotten this game to work with a ATI x1200 video card? I have updated the driver to version 8.593.100.0 according to device mgr. My specs are: Vista Prem., AMD dual core 4400+, 2GB memory & plenty of HD space free. Can't disable VPU Recover because option is not available in Vista. Any help would be appreciated! Pretty sure it is not AGP, since I just bought pc in March 2008

Does the ati x1200 support pixel shader 3.0?
In: Game Consoles and Gaming Hardware, Computer Games [Edit categories]

ATI - Official Drivers
Free Download: All ATI Drivers. Get Official ATI Driver Downloads.
Driver-Pro.com/ATI

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no it doesnt, it supports pixel shader 2.0

----------------------
Tropico 3
Minimum Specifications:


Microsoft Windows XP SP 2 / Vista / Windows 7 operating system
2.4 GHz Single Core CPU
1 GB RAM
1.1 GB of free hard drive space to install the game
DirectX 9c graphics card with 256 MB RAM
(Shader Model 3.0 required)(ATI/AMD Radeon X1300 or higher, Nvidia Geforce 6600 or higher)

DirectX Compatible Sound Card
DirectX 9.0c
--------------------------

Sorry, but that dog won't hunt.

Thanks for the quick reply Pi-Xerxes - I thought the 1200 did have shader model 3, but after posting I looked up the specs and found that it did not guess I'll be shopping for new card - any suggestions that would not require changing out the 250w power supply?

What is your motherboard? If your using a AMD 4400 dual core I assume you have a desktop not a mobile, you probably have maybe a PCI Express 16x graphics port.

I am sure you can get a PCI Express 2.0 Video Card to fit that which has shader 3.0.

Tell me exactly your Motherboard and spec. You just need another card that the ATI x1200 use to fit into. PCIe x16 . You can use Nvidia, or at leat the ATI x1300 +, or anything HD XXXX. Just find one that is still for sale that old. NewEgg.com or Ebay.com.

The next card up is that ATI x1300 and it does shader 3.0. I went with an odd ball AGP form of the HD XXXX series to fit my old motherboard. I like the HD xxxx because it will do DX10.1 whereas ATI x1xx only does DX9. You should be able to buy a decent cheap low power HD 3xxx like mine.

Just do not go for the power hungry models. Mine is a 350 watt power supply. But the HD 3650 is very easy on the power, I think you could get by on it. In you case, buy the PCIe x16 version to fit your motherboard, or get a cheap used ATI x1300+ (except for x1900 buggy on tropico 3) if yo do not mind DX 9 only games.

Pi-Xerxes Wrote:I am sure you can get a PCI Express 2.0 Video Card to fit that which has shader 3.0.

You just need another card that the ATI x1200 use to fit into. PCIe x16 .

This problem is also typical for ATI 1950Pro with PCI x16 interface. New ATI drivers (9.9 from 11.09.2009) on these cards are not installed, as well as support discontinued in version 9.4. Other games with shaders 3.0 work without problems ...
It looks like a bug fixed in the latest ATI drivers, which are intended only for cards HDxxxx.

So it would seem for Tropico 3 all ATI x1xx cards are going to have problems with graphic glitches.

If you have a ATI HD xxxx card with the latest drivers 9.9 or the Hoxfix for those oddball AGP versions like I have, then you will be OK.

I think there still is alot of those ATI x1xx cards in use?

The only ATI problem that can not be fixed with updated drivers or the AGP hotfix is with the X19xx line of cards. All other models work fine with Tropico 3. There seems to be a common misconception that Tropico 3 has some sort of general problem with ATI/AMD graphics cards, which is clearly not the case.

OK. That narrows it down to only the ATI X19xx cards. Thanks for the updated correction to my post. I do not wish to put out mis-information.

i have ati 4850X2 card and i can't use the "High" or "ultra" settings for anti-aliasing. he highest setting the game shows me is "medium".
i'm runnig the game on:
XP SP3
p5q
intel q9550

any idea why this is?

Pi-Xerxes Wrote:What is your motherboard? If your using a AMD 4400 dual core I assume you have a desktop not a mobile, you probably have maybe a PCI Express 16x graphics port.

I am sure you can get a PCI Express 2.0 Video Card to fit that which has shader 3.0.

Tell me exactly your Motherboard and spec. You just need another card that the ATI x1200 use to fit into. PCIe x16 . You can use Nvidia, or at leat the ATI x1300 +, or anything HD XXXX. Just find one that is still for sale that old. NewEgg.com or Ebay.com.

The next card up is that ATI x1300 and it does shader 3.0. I went with an odd ball AGP form of the HD XXXX series to fit my old motherboard. I like the HD xxxx because it will do DX10.1 whereas ATI x1xx only does DX9. You should be able to buy a decent cheap low power HD 3xxx like mine.

Just do not go for the power hungry models. Mine is a 350 watt power supply. But the HD 3650 is very easy on the power, I think you could get by on it. In you case, buy the PCIe x16 version to fit your motherboard, or get a cheap used ATI x1300+ (except for x1900 buggy on tropico 3) if yo do not mind DX 9 only games.

I'll have to open up computer to find motherboard info. Won't be able to do that until tomorrow. PC is a desktop Acer Aspire AM3100-U3201A. I know it has one PCIe x16 & one PCIe x1 slots. Also that the Supported Protocols are PCIX 1.0, PCI 2.2, APM 1.2, VESA/DPMS (VBE/PM V1.1), SMBIOS 2.3, E-IDE 1.1, ACPI 1.0b, ESCD 1.03, PnP 1.0a, Bootable CD-ROM 1.0, USB, 1.1~USB2.0. Thanks again and I'll post motherboard info tomorrow.

Timo Wrote:The only ATI problem that can not be fixed with updated drivers or the AGP hotfix is with the X19xx line of cards. All other models work fine with Tropico 3. There seems to be a common misconception that Tropico 3 has some sort of general problem with ATI/AMD graphics cards, which is clearly not the case.

Can you clarify if ATi X19xx cards will work 'eventually' with a game update or if Tropico3 will not work at all with these cards (ATi X19xx).

Thanks