Larian Studios Forums Divine Divinity (English) Technical Problems Mini and auto maps messed up

Yo !

I'm kinda new here. Actually I'm here only because I failed to cope with some nasty problem on my own.
I dunno if someone already asked of it. I looked around and didn't noticed similar topic or just overloked such. If I'm asking of thing that has been already answeared elsewhere don't get angry and just post a link for me.

So, here it goes.

I have some severe problems with maps. Minimap, the one that pops up after pressing m is all blue/purple and shows only creature dots (me, friendly and hostile npc's).

Automap in my diary doesn't show terrain either. It shows my location (dot that is) and flags, red and blue. That works ok and everytime.

But:

When I enter automap when it was last active screen sicne my last "visit" in diary it shows terrain I'm currently standing on in 1:1 but without any detais ie buildings, containers, anything. As I said I still see me and flags.

When I enter automap when it wasn't last active screen and swith to it I still see last screen as a ... background (?) and I can see dot of me and flags correctly. Moreover when I hover pointer around the screen it works like ... spray in paintbrush. It leaves trace marks and when I stop it in one place it ... dunno how to put it in english ... pumps more paint in one point ... so to use paintbrush language.

In both cases of automap +/- option works well ... I guess. Distance between maps is changing so I think it's working.




I've already tried different game settings, I cleared Dynamic folder, reinstaled game, restarted game to check if it's save fault, tried playing with different characters, installing latest patch, all without results.




It's kinda tricky playing without map. Minimap helps a little bit cuz I use it just like radar to see enemy but it takes me quite long to find a way around. I'm at the 4th lvl of catacombs and I've killed some orcs to the south of the first town and it was difficult not to lost. I had to flag things like "village entrance" , "this is a house" to easier my life.
While it kinda works for me now I'm affraid I'll get more and more lost when I'll go to new locations so solving this problem is "to play or not to play" for me.

If someone actually knows what I'm talking about and knows how to help me thaks in advance for any hints.

welcome!

ouch, thats not good, I know the fix is SOMEWERE on the forums, just can't find it either.


have you got the new patch? reinstall the game? ( i think you can do that while keeping save files, just back up saves before hand).

When you un-installed, did you re-boot, make sure everything other than save games were gone from the Divinity folder, shut down all non-essential programs and then re-install?

Did you get any errors during the install?

There is a file verification procedure described in;
Troubleshooting Tips (& manual install procedure)

Thanks for reply.

Yes, I've tried to make as "clear" reinstal as posible ie. rebooting, switching other aplications off (anty vir was first of course).
While I was trying this my saves were in other cataloge so game wasn't spoiled by them.
And like I said I downloaded and instaled latest patch.
You know, I tried to do as much as I could before bothering others so I tried many many things that people suggested in various threads ... too bad I didn't find thread that would gave me exact hints what to do. Heh ... But if LewsTherinKinslayer13 says the answer is somewhere here I'll look once again through all topics.


... if I'll fail I'll have to memorise all those map pics posted in Help/Tips/Tricks section. DUH !





Edit:

Ok, I found similar topic with error descryption fitting my problems. The thing is solution has been found somewhere in Troubleshooting and Manual Install Procedure section. If I only knew what exactly I have to do cuz I tried it already ... or again maybe I missed the thing which could help me. I'm going to post in the other thread and ask what that person did. I hope I'll get my answer. Heh, patience pays off but to tell the truth I overlooked that similar thread at the first approach.


Edit #2:

Heh, call me blind. There are plenty of threads with problems like mine. Ah, it seems I tracked down a solution, but can't fix it myself. It seems I need to replace automap files but manual extraction wont work. There is certain file automap_0_4096.lzb which is corrupted and cannot be extracted nor repaired. Before you ask, yes I tried it with different cd drivers and I tried to extract it from hd instead of cd.

By the way, it's too common to be just some random cd or cd content flaw eh ? It looks like some greater number of games with this certain flaw was reliced.

Ok, it took me several hours but I think I worked up a solution.
Well, it's rather compromise than 100% fix but it's better than nothing I would say.

I've tried to dig up to that darn file and noticed that on cd there actually 5 different automap sets. I experimented with it and discovered theyre each for certain performance quality setting. So I tried switching files and sometimes I was able to bring my minimap to normal. Than I just thought about adjosting performance settings and that was it. I lovered it a little bit and now minimap and automap works well.

P.S
But it's still bugging me why this automap file problem is so common, why there are so many messed up versions of this game.

P.S # 2
I'm happy I menaged to solve one problem but now I have another. My "mapless" saves don't want to work. They're crushing my whole system to point where reboot is needed while I'm trying to load them. Yea, I know catacombs are just begining but I also think I were quite lucky with my item drops so I will miss those saves if nothing can be done.


Quick summary:

If you experiencing map problems similar to mine try to go to options, and in video section go to performance. There is quality switch. If you have maxed quality (3d shadows, fog, that doesn't matter) just lower it a bit. This will load different set of maps that hopefully wont be corrupted. If the probem persist try lowering it even more just to try all sets.
Hope it heps.
Cheers.

[color:"orange"]But it's still bugging me why this automap file problem is so common,[/color]

This isn't a very common problem. The other post you replied to about this was nearly a year old.


[color:"orange"]why there are so many messed up versions of this game.[/color]

Nobody every comes to a technical support forum to say that everything is working fine, so with any software/hardware you are only going to see a list of problems. The posting rate for the technical problems forum is much lower than that for the general or help forums.


Maybe re-install again to make sure the swapped automap files are all back the way they should be (or at least were originally)? Also 'corrupt' files (from CRC errors during install) can be extracted manually, as described in the troubleshooting post. A different optical drive might not have the same problems reading the CD, so you could try a different computer.

Try maxing the quality settings again, and load the previous saves, then (if that works) turn off the mini-map, reduce the quality settings and save.


Thanks for the update. As you found, people are not necessarily specific if they post that they fixed a problem.

<img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wave.gif" alt="" />

I didn't noticed date on threads I visited, sorry.

As to files, I checked them few times on different machines and they're corrupted on cd (when I enter them on cd or after copying them on hd I recive message about errors and can't manualy extract specific file) but cd has no visible damages and it's original not a copy.

Anyways I can live with that as long as other map sets will work.



Now I'm working on restoring my saves but they're crashing when I load them. Maybe playing with bad map files spoiled them so they're no longer usable. Hmm... I'll try to make new character of the same class (male wizard that is), save game as far as it will be posible and try switching particular files from old saves to new ones. Maybe this way I'll menage to get back quests I've done or items I collected (propably they'll be useless as soon as I move to another area but still ... ) and save some time.

You did re-install the patch, correct? Are the files in the saved games marked as read-only, if you backed them up to CD-R?

If you start a new game and save, then make a copy of your previous save game folder, you can start copying files from the working save to the copy of the non-working save, to help identify which files are the problem, if any.


One person was able to copy the rar file containing the automap_0_4096.lzb file to the hard drive, and then use Winrar to fix the archive and properly extract the file. Another person tried that but it didn't work. I think there were maybe a dozen posts with this problem awhile ago.

It seems all I could do was to regain items I found during the game. The only files that wanted to work were inventory files. Flag file worked too but automap was making game unstable this way.
So I copeid inv files to new save and my new character was fully equiped, though he couldn't take advantage of some items due to his too low agility and strenth.
Moreover stuff I stored in 2 certain chests was there just like in old saves. I had to find those chests though because they're back into their original positions.
All items in game seems to spawn correctly since I didn't used any plot important (or so I think) container.
I'm only a little bit concerned about extra telepotration pyramid and 2 healing gems (that were in my inventory but I shouldn't have them yet). I only started testing of what I just did but it shouldn't take long to check what influence those extre items will have.

Right, so I decided only to kill things to the point where I finished last time and don't pick stuff from ground to keep it fair play ... let's see if I can resist when I find some better items <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/evilgrin1.gif" alt="" />

I checked what will happen with duplicated items and it looks game handeled with them pretty well.

Extra healing stones dissapeared after completing a quest.

Additional teleportation pyramyde was concidered as the second one thus when I droped it and picked up I recived experience for quest and pyramide in catacombs hasn't been spawned.

Only thing that left is magic mirror. I guess dumping it somewhere and forgetting about it won't hurt the game.