Problem with space indicators

[Fulgor]

Hi guys,
Firstly, I would like to apologize for my English, because I am not a native English speaker. Although I will try my best.

I have played in SC4 for a few years. Lately I took a long break from playing. A couple days ago I installed SC4 (Deluxe) again and noticed that not everything is working fine. For example in god mode I was unable to see indicators (green circles) of terrain which will be transformed. It does not matter which tool for terraforming I choose; it doesn't matter whether I press Shift button or Ctrl - there isn't any circle of space indicator which would inform me, how far the tool will be shaping terrain.

Also, when I switch to normal mode I don't see a yellow square under my cursor after choosing such things as street building button, highway or rail. It does not matter whether I turn grid on or off. I haven't played in SC4 for considerable time now, but I believe something such as these, lets say, "space indicators", were seen previously in the game by me. Is there any chance to turn them back?

Firstly I tough that there is a problem with some installed plugins, so I removed all of them. Sadly, it didn't work. I don't think the problem is either produced by patches installed (I installed update B638 and then an update which allows the lights to be seen at night).

My system is Win7x64, CPU is AMD quad-core. Graphic card is HD7850. I tried to mess with shortcut to the game on my desktop (adding and removing in command line such things as -intro:off -CustomResolution:enabled -r1280x1024x32 -CPUCount:1 -CPUPriority:high) but it didn't cause any effect. The game was never ever able to smoothly run at hardware rendering (which is very sad by the way), so I have always chosen a software rendering in options.

Is there a way to help me?

- - - - - - - EDIT - - - - - - - -

The problem is more severe than I previously thought. When I want to place buildings such as school, police or fire station, there are no circles of covering space either. This makes game utterly unplayable. I have no idea what I have done wrong    Maybe I should reinstall SC4 and try some other patches? But which ones?

[catty]

also, when I switch to normal mode I don't see a yellow square under my cursor after choosing such things as street building button, highway or rail. It does not matter whether I turn grid on or off

I don't ever see a yellow square under my cursor, and don't think I ever have had something like that, as for the

was unable to see indicators (green circles) of terrain which will be transformed. It does not matter which tool for terraforming I choose; it doesn't matter whether I press Shift button or Ctrl - there isn't any circle of space indicator ... When I want to place buildings such as school, police or fire station, there are no circles of covering space either

See attached picture of plopping a police station, but to take it I did have go out as far as possible, on the ground it wasn't possible to see the green line at all.

-catty

[whatevermind]

I would first check if setting your graphic settings at high resolves the problem, because that could be limiting what you see. It could also be a problem with your graphics card - some people have found newer cards need some tweaking to play nice with SC4. Otherwise, it's likely a bad install of either the game or the patches, so you might want to reinstall all that if the first two don't solve the problem. These things should still show properly even with both patches, so I'd maybe take a stepped approach of installing the game, then check, then one patch, then check, then the second patch, then a final check to see if things still work properly. If that's all good up to that point, then you can start adding plugins back in and see if the problem returns.

As far as plugins - most of this is controlled by your effects directory - so if you have any plugins that modify that, that could be the source of some of the problems. As far as the road previews, that's something of a mix of effects directory and some of the RUL code used by NAM - so a bad NAM install could also be a culprit. Of course, if it's either of these, running with empty plugins should fix the issue.

[APSMS]

Um, I know it sounds simple, but have you made sure color-cursor in the graphics options is selected?

[Fulgor]

Thank you for your replies.

@ catty
I played CS4 so long time ago, that I though there was some yellow cursor, although now I see I was mistaken. The same goes for "green" circle. My memory is really funny thing 

@ whatevermind,
By the time I was waiting for responses on the forum, I completely reinstalled SC4. During installation I was checking everything step-by-step, just like you said. The issue was indeed caused by the graphic options - setting everything on medium or high details solve the problem.

I am quite happy that I reinstalled the whole game - I don't know why, but now it runs somewhat faster than before. Due to information about some tweaking with graphic rules I have found on the forum, I am currently running on hardware rendering mode. Even now I encounter ultra-low framerate in large cities when zooming. But when I do not move camera much, the framerate oscillates from about 20 to 40 fps, which is quite bearable.

Tweaking is currently in progress, maybe I will be able to further optimize graphic rendering. Thank you for all your help!