Hi there! You are currently browsing as a guest. Why not create an account? Then you get less ads, can thank creators, post feedback, keep a list of your favourites, and more!
Field Researcher
Original Poster
#1 Old 15th Jan 2013 at 7:59 AM Last edited by falcophoenix : 15th Jan 2013 at 8:15 AM.
Weird missing texture?
I recently reinstalled Sims Medieval, for a while everything looked normal, now all of a sudden the papers on all the writing desks are missing their textures it looks like? They're all grey and shiny and letters don't appear on them when the sim writes. My graphics are up to date and my settings are almost all maxed, and this problem literally sprung up ingame, and really has never happened before with previous installations. And apparently it's only happening with one kingdom. So...weird right? @_@ There is literally no information on this. And it's super minor I know but medieval paper shouldn't be all metallic.
Advertisement
Field Researcher
#2 Old 15th Jan 2013 at 9:04 AM
Try this:
1) back up the folder in //...documents/electronic arts/the sims medieval/saves/ which has the name of your kingdom on it. It will be named KingdomName.tsm and has 3 files in it. I presume you know where the "Documents"files are (My Documents it is called on most Windows systems now) - you know, the one in the (Drive Letter: usually "C")/Windows/Users/UserName... *This is most important because you will overwrite them!*
2) in the same "saves" folder there is also a folder named KingdomName.tsm.backup - it also has three files in it. Copy these 3 files.
3) paste them into your KingdomName.tsm folder (in saves, not your backup of it.
4) you will be asked if you want to replace these three files, click yes.

What this has done is back up your game to the last save you made before the glitch happened. Run the game and that Kingdom (KingdomName in my example) and see if you have solved the glitch. If you have then either your file somehow became corrupted or something you did in between the time you have gone back to and where the glitch was noticed has caused it. Try to remember if you added anything during that time, if so try removing it and running the original version you backed up (put in saves/KingdomName.tsm folder). In this manner you can track down the cause, it usually is a mod of some sort and almost never is the game that caused it. As the last resort, should you find your original files were corrupted, you can leave the files in that were replaced in the steps above and just replay the time in between. This way you do not loose so much progress as if you had to remake the Kingdom.

I hope these instructions can be followed, I tried to make them as straight forward as possible. I also hope this solves your problem.
Field Researcher
Original Poster
#3 Old 18th Jan 2013 at 6:48 AM
I solved it: turning off advanced shaders. *facepalm*

I regret losing the fancy shadows but oh well, least on the plus side it's a few more FPS.
Scholar
#4 Old 18th Jan 2013 at 7:00 AM
I always turn the shadows off as they creep off the floor and up over the foot, making sims look like they're wearing see through dirty shoes, if their feet are bare, or the toe of any shoes/boots look horrible.
Not sure if this is the game or my graphics though.
Field Researcher
Original Poster
#5 Old 18th Jan 2013 at 7:16 AM
Yeah, the shadows do that for me too. Probably just how the rendering is handled. (Just a guess I know nothing of modelling/animation wut)

though I do miss the pretty clouds. But having clear skies is nice too ~
Scholar
#6 Old 18th Jan 2013 at 7:50 AM Last edited by ChickieTeeta : 18th Jan 2013 at 8:07 AM.
I'm pretty sure I still have clouds, but maybe not. Going to have to go and look at some screen shots now.

*edit* I still have clouds, although I can't say if they were better than what I have now before I switched shadows off.
Field Researcher
#7 Old 18th Jan 2013 at 11:33 PM
I think you need to have like a state of the art graphics card or something for them to work properly. Since I am running a pretty old laptop (it came with Vista originally) I run pretty low settings on most of the graphic stuff just to get the game to function. I updated to Windows 8 after Vista trashed yet another hard drive on me, and that has actually fixed quite a few problems (like now the cheats editor actually works, etc) but of course even with nice upholstery and new paint a model T is still just that.
Scholar
#8 Old 19th Jan 2013 at 12:45 PM
My computer is quite old now, I'm in the process of building another one, just waiting on the motherboard now.

The one I'm on just now has an
Athlon dual core 4200+
Radeon HD 5700 1GB graphics card
4GB RAM (it's an xp 32 bit system)
gigabyte AM2+ s series board.
This has been an amazing build and I'm surprised it still runs everything I throw at it just fine (Guild wars 2 looks worse than I'd like it to, and secret world was made with dx11 in mind so although it looks really good already I know it could look so much better, and Sims 3 can always use more thrown at it lol and Tera looks absolutely amazing even though I get messages about texture resolution and 32 bit systems in certain areas, so can't wait to see what that should look like)
I'm not salvaging anything from this one as I'd like to keep it intact, but it's very far from high end.

My new system will have an
AMD 8 core Black edition FX 8350 processor
Asus geforce GTX660 TI 2GB graphics card
Asus Crosshair V formula-z motherboard
8 gig ram to start with, since that's what I have lying around (Windows 7 64 bit)
So should hopefully be good for years to come as well.

Oh yay, I just checked the tracking on my motherboard and it's on it's way to my door *happy dance* won't be editing that baby anytime soon now, gonna play with my new toy =D
Field Researcher
#9 Old 25th Jan 2013 at 3:09 AM
That is very cool, always good to have new toys. If you find as I did that windows 7 is just Vista with a prettier interface and still just as hard to run games on, try an upgrade to Windows 8. It has greatly improved my laptop's ability to run games and it performs better too, way less lag. Of course I did a clean install since I was starting with a fresh hard drive, but I expect an upgrade would produce similar results. The version I am running is Windows 8 pro and I installed it from a new disc I just bought for the occasion. Thankfully I got a short time gig cutting some wood for a guy and that paid for it.
====almost forgot====

Oh, I almost forgot, I did make one modification to my windows install. I did not like how it handled the start menu so I downloaded an aftermarket add on to give me a traditional start menu. Other than that it is completely stock.
Scholar
#10 Old 25th Jan 2013 at 3:39 PM
Quote: Originally posted by Silverprinz
That is very cool, always good to have new toys. If you find as I did that windows 7 is just Vista with a prettier interface and still just as hard to run games on, try an upgrade to Windows 8. It has greatly improved my laptop's ability to run games and it performs better too, way less lag. Of course I did a clean install since I was starting with a fresh hard drive, but I expect an upgrade would produce similar results. The version I am running is Windows 8 pro and I installed it from a new disc I just bought for the occasion. Thankfully I got a short time gig cutting some wood for a guy and that paid for it.
====almost forgot====

Oh, I almost forgot, I did make one modification to my windows install. I did not like how it handled the start menu so I downloaded an aftermarket add on to give me a traditional start menu. Other than that it is completely stock.


I haven't had any problems with windows 7, I find it to be very similar to xp, more so than I thought it would be, which makes me happy. I also bought Windows 7 in preference to Windows 8 as I don't consider 8 to be an upgrade.
Given what I've read on here about 7, I was very apprehensive when I installed S3PE but I haven't had any problems with it so far. Although I haven't done anything with it yet besides check that the grid on medieval files is accessible, which it is, but that's the problem that most on here are reporting, so it was a relief when that went smoothly.

Windows 8 is no good for gamers, or more to the point, for game developers. There are stores that are offering to downgrade computers to windows 7 from windows 8 for free in the same way they did with vista to xp. Valve and others are already making a move to Linux because of it.
If all you're worried about is making your games run more smoothly at the moment then windows 8 is probably great for you, more so than 7, but when your access to what games you can run becomes restricted, it defeats the purpose, and Microsoft is moving away from it's fantastic open source code with windows 8 which is bad for developers. I don't support the OS, and I don't know any gamers who do.
Field Researcher
#11 Old 25th Jan 2013 at 6:08 PM Last edited by Silverprinz : 25th Jan 2013 at 6:10 PM. Reason: typo
NP. I only know that I could not even use cheat codes in Windows 7 or Vista (I tried them both), that DEP was constantly messing with files I was trying to iinstall, and that the game ran like I was on one of those really old 386 computers or something (very slowly). All of those problems for me disappeared with windows 8. It may just be that my computer, which was allegedly designed to run Vista, likes 8 better, IDK. So far I have had no new headaches and quite a few are gone now.

Have fun with your new computer, it sounds like it will fly.
Scholar
#12 Old 25th Jan 2013 at 7:42 PM
Quote: Originally posted by Silverprinz
NP. I only know that I could not even use cheat codes in Windows 7 or Vista (I tried them both), that DEP was constantly messing with files I was trying to iinstall, and that the game ran like I was on one of those really old 386 computers or something (very slowly). All of those problems for me disappeared with windows 8. It may just be that my computer, which was allegedly designed to run Vista, likes 8 better, IDK. So far I have had no new headaches and quite a few are gone now.

Have fun with your new computer, it sounds like it will fly.


I had your solution for dep problems with S3PE bookmarked just incase I needed it, glad I didn't, but thank you so much for that post with the step by step solution anyway.

Vista wasn't good for anything, especially not laptops, and if 8 works for you where 7 doesn't then obviously it's an upgrade for you and you'd be a fool to stick with 7 if it's practically grinding you to a halt. I'm not knocking anyone for buying it, it was just my reasoning why I chose to buy 7 over 8.
Field Researcher
#13 Old 27th Jan 2013 at 3:13 AM
I think that computers are like most things, as they get more sophisticated they get more choosey about things. It seems like what will work best on one rig will not do well on another with different specs. The specs you posted about your new computer make me think it should handle about anything you want to throw on it, even sims 3 and related games. lol.
Field Researcher
#14 Old 27th Jan 2013 at 9:36 AM
They work fine for me, though I sometimes have a problem where all the fountains in my kingdom receive a wooden texture, I can get rid of it but it usually re-appears.
Field Researcher
#15 Old 2nd Feb 2013 at 10:31 PM
One thing that sometimes messes up graphics in games is that Dx10 left out some files from Dx9 that you may need. I have had problems with this in the past but not now because I fix ny directX as soon as I install windows before ever installing anything.
Here is how I do that:
!) Find one of your game discs that has an install of directX 9.0c on it.
2) Do a manual install of directX from that disc.

There is no need to be concerned about overwrite, this will not replace any of your existing dx10 files but it will install all of those which are missing. Also Windows Vista, 7, and 8 will run them just fine. If you have Windows XP you do not need this since you are already running dx9.0c.
If you are the careful type, and I do not blame you if you are, make a restore point first and run dxdiag.exe after you have done the install. You can run the program from your run bar or by using a command shell. The dxdiag.exe program is located in system32.

This proceedure has always fixed all of my directX issues, and I hope it helps you too.
Back to top