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Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri™game plays in greyscale/wrong colour depth(17 posts)(17 posts)
(17 posts)
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This is my favourite topic
Posted January 23, 2012
Hi,

downloaded and installed the game from gog, and it runs smoothly, expect that everything is in greyscale (i.e. black and white), which makes it basically unplayable. I've tried all the various compatibility options, flicking all the switches in the .ini files, updating my card's drivers, closing explorer.exe with a batch file as I start the game, as well as deleting everything to do with it on my computer and re-downloading/installing, but nothing changes it.
I'm on an HP laptop with windows7, i7 processor and a Radeon HD6770M and 8gb of ram. Haven't found any other forum posts alluding to this problem either.

Any help would be super appreciated !<_< thanks!
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Posted January 24, 2012
high rated
Hmm -

When SMAC starts it switches to a custom 256-color palette. Your video card appears to have a problem with that. Try the following:

1. I know you said that you tried all the compatibility options, but did you try "Run in 256 colors"? If not, try that.
2. In the [Alpha Centauri] section of your Alpha Centauri.ini file, try adding (or changing if already present) the following:

directdraw=0
DisableOpeningMovie=1

BTW, if you're running Windows 7, in case you didn't already know, the location of the working copy of Alpha Centauri.ini isn't obvious. It's in

C:\Users\(user name)\AppData\Local\VirtualStore\Program Files (x86)\GOGcom\Sid Meiers Alpha Centauri

assuming that you installed the game in the default location.

EDIT: The above information about the location of the Alpha Centauri.ini is outdated, at least for newer installations of SMACX. If the ini file isn't in the location listed above, then it may be in the folder

C:\GOG Games\Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri

3. If none of this helps, do you have a graphics program that can open .pcx files? If so, what happens if you open some of the .pcx files in the main SMAC folder? Are they still in greyscale?
Post edited October 12, 2013 by Petek
Posted March 28, 2012
Sorry for the necromancy, but thank you. I had the same problem and struggled with it for what seems like hours. This fix was the only thing that did anything.
Posted November 17, 2013
avatar
Petek: Hmm -

When SMAC starts it switches to a custom 256-color palette. Your video card appears to have a problem with that. Try the following:

1. I know you said that you tried all the compatibility options, but did you try "Run in 256 colors"? If not, try that.
2. In the [Alpha Centauri] section of your Alpha Centauri.ini file, try adding (or changing if already present) the following:

directdraw=0
DisableOpeningMovie=1

BTW, if you're running Windows 7, in case you didn't already know, the location of the working copy of Alpha Centauri.ini isn't obvious. It's in

C:\Users\(user name)\AppData\Local\VirtualStore\Program Files (x86)\GOGcom\Sid Meiers Alpha Centauri

assuming that you installed the game in the default location.

EDIT: The above information about the location of the Alpha Centauri.ini is outdated, at least for newer installations of SMACX. If the ini file isn't in the location listed above, then it may be in the folder

C:\GOG Games\Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri

3. If none of this helps, do you have a graphics program that can open .pcx files? If so, what happens if you open some of the .pcx files in the main SMAC folder? Are they still in greyscale?
Hey man, thanks for this post, it fixed my weird color issue!
Posted November 29, 2013
Kudos. Worked like a charm.

Setting the game to 256 colors did not work, but adding the "directdraw=0" line did the trick.
There's no need to disable intro sequence, afaik. I have it enabled and it works great.
Posted December 03, 2013
The solution above fixed the bulk of the issues I had but the FMV videos still play in opaque pink and green colors and appear to be off set somehow but I can't tell for sure due to the pink and green blocks cover 80-90% of the video.

Is there maybe a video codec that I might be missing?
Posted December 08, 2013
avatar
Hybris5112: The solution above fixed the bulk of the issues I had but the FMV videos still play in opaque pink and green colors and appear to be off set somehow but I can't tell for sure due to the pink and green blocks cover 80-90% of the video.

Is there maybe a video codec that I might be missing?
Turns out it was a problem with Morphological Filtering, i just turned mine off like it recommends in this post and it worked fine for me.
http://www.gog.com/forum/sid_meier_s_alpha_centauri_/problems_with_cinematics
Happy Gaming!
Posted December 13, 2013
Hi,

I have win7, x64 and I used the suggestion to put
directdraw=0 and DisableOpeningMovie=0 in alpha centauri.ini

I did not use any compatibility changes.

This file is actually in C:/gog games/sid meier's alpha centauri for me as I used the default GOG install.

It seemed to cure the color issue just fine. Thanks!
Posted December 13, 2013
Just wanted to add that I also had the colour problem and the above solution solved it, thanks big time :)
Posted December 15, 2013
For some reason in my Alpha Centari .ini text document, there wasn't a listing for directdraw, but I just typed in directdraw=0 into the document, saved it, and it fixed my color issue, too!
Posted February 17, 2014
After trying the steps here, I stilled had the colour issue.

When I changed the compatibility from XP SP2 to SP3, the issue fixed itself.
Posted February 26, 2014
I have tried all the compatibility changes and the unlinked mu crossfire. Also the morphologic al filtering is off. I am running a windows 7 64 bit, AMD Phenom II X4 940 processor. Any other hints would be appreciated.
Posted May 16, 2014
If anyone experiences their second monitor switching to 256 color mode when running the game (like me), I can tell you that putting the "directdraw=0" line in your .ini file not only fixes the problem, but it makes the game run in widescreen. Hope this helps.
Posted June 17, 2014
avatar
Petek: Hmm -

When SMAC starts it switches to a custom 256-color palette. Your video card appears to have a problem with that. Try the following:

1. I know you said that you tried all the compatibility options, but did you try "Run in 256 colors"? If not, try that.
2. In the [Alpha Centauri] section of your Alpha Centauri.ini file, try adding (or changing if already present) the following:

directdraw=0
DisableOpeningMovie=1

BTW, if you're running Windows 7, in case you didn't already know, the location of the working copy of Alpha Centauri.ini isn't obvious. It's in

C:\Users\(user name)\AppData\Local\VirtualStore\Program Files (x86)\GOGcom\Sid Meiers Alpha Centauri

assuming that you installed the game in the default location.

EDIT: The above information about the location of the Alpha Centauri.ini is outdated, at least for newer installations of SMACX. If the ini file isn't in the location listed above, then it may be in the folder

C:\GOG Games\Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri

3. If none of this helps, do you have a graphics program that can open .pcx files? If so, what happens if you open some of the .pcx files in the main SMAC folder? Are they still in greyscale?
thank you! this helped me, too. I added to my config file,

directdraw=0
DisableOpeningMovie=1
Post edited June 17, 2014 by xtop54
Posted August 23, 2014
avatar
Petek: Hmm -

When SMAC starts it switches to a custom 256-color palette. Your video card appears to have a problem with that. Try the following:

1. I know you said that you tried all the compatibility options, but did you try "Run in 256 colors"? If not, try that.
2. In the [Alpha Centauri] section of your Alpha Centauri.ini file, try adding (or changing if already present) the following:

directdraw=0
DisableOpeningMovie=1

BTW, if you're running Windows 7, in case you didn't already know, the location of the working copy of Alpha Centauri.ini isn't obvious. It's in

C:\Users\(user name)\AppData\Local\VirtualStore\Program Files (x86)\GOGcom\Sid Meiers Alpha Centauri

assuming that you installed the game in the default location.

EDIT: The above information about the location of the Alpha Centauri.ini is outdated, at least for newer installations of SMACX. If the ini file isn't in the location listed above, then it may be in the folder

C:\GOG Games\Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri

3. If none of this helps, do you have a graphics program that can open .pcx files? If so, what happens if you open some of the .pcx files in the main SMAC folder? Are they still in greyscale?
Thank you!!!
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Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri™game plays in greyscale/wrong colour depth(17 posts)(17 posts)
(17 posts)