Black Map Syndrome

[Akominatus]

Apologies if this is covered elsewhere; my search didn't turn anything up. For some time now, my local and/or world maps suddenly turn black, with only location names remaining on a solid black background. The only way to restore the maps is by restarting the program. Recently it's been getting bad (i.e., happens sooner and more frequently), but what's worse is that the darkened areas on the world map remain dark even after a restart. Ideas? Thanks in advance...

[cmac]

I'd suggest updating your graphics drivers- my game has been known to get flaky (i.e. developing bright spots in the sky) after some time without a NVIDIA update.

 

Graphics drivers can be downloaded from the card's manufacturer wesbsite.

[Akominatus]

Thanks for the suggestion, but I don't think it's a card problem; I'm not having any problems with other programs. I have noticed that the black map effect crops up after jumping from one location to another, whether by teleport, strider or ship. Usually it occurs immediately after the second jump.

[PierreBeauregard]

That used to happen to me too sometimes. My suggestion is to leave your map focused on the "world" instead of "local" while you're switching cells. AFTER you switch cells, then look at the local map. What might be happening is that you look at your map before morrowind is completely done loading the cell you're in.

 

This is because morrowind "thead loads" your cells as you move through the world so that the load is less noticeable. You can change it so that that game stops to wait for a full cell load as you go into another cell. You get longer loading times, but your performance increases and this might fix your black map problem too.

 

It involved changing a single value in your morrowind.ini

 

-Locate this line:

DontThreadLoad=0

-Change to:

DontThreadLoad=1

 

If you don't like the loading and it doesn't fix the problem, change it back.

 

Also, maybe your cell cache is too small. If so, you could increase it a bit:

-Locate these lines:

Interior Cell Buffer=16

Exterior Cell Buffer=32

Experiment with the values (32&64, 64&128, etc.)

Higher values use more RAM

[Note: I have 512 megs of RAM, and I use the values 32/80]

 

Also, to make sure your cache gets flushed properly after you quit the game:

UseExistingTempFile=0

(otherwise you might be loading a cell from a different save)

 

I hope that helps, and at the very least, improve performance.