help with AoM font problem

[prairie-buffalo]

Platform: Mac Mini (G4, pre-Intel) running OS 10.4.11 at 1.25GHz. 32M video card.

The MacSoft game Age of Mythology works normally in single-user mode, except that menu and some other fonts are invisible (masked?) unless clicked. Dialog buttons appear normal. This is especially problematic in the game editor, where not only the screen menu but also the descriptions of items to add are blank.

A search of this problem shows some advice for the Windows version:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/810381
However, I haven't found newer drivers for the Mac, and replacing the fonts, both within the installed game and also in the user's /Library/Fonts has made no difference. I don't know how to apply some of the other advice given for the PC version to the Mac version, e.g., MS XML Core Services.

Has anyone else had this problem, or know how to fix it? Thanks.

 

[redsteven]

While I can't offer you a fix specific to this game, I can offer some general advice.

Open up "font book" in your Applications folder. I've used Font Book for a couple of things, mainly checking for corrupt fonts and for disabling duplicate fonts.

Highlight all the fonts (simple cmd+a), then go to the Edit menu and select Resolve Duplicates.

Any font that had a dot next to it's name was a duplicate. There should be no more dots next to the fonts' names. One copy of each duplicate should be automatically disabled now.

Once again, highlight all of the fonts. This time, go to the file menu and select Validate Fonts (even validating every font on my system only takes a couple of seconds).
Take a look and see if any of the fonts have errors. To make it easier you can choose "Warnings" or "Errors" from the drop-down menu on the left to show only problem fonts.

If one of the fonts is corrupted then you should probably get rid of it and try to find another copy of it, if you need it.

See if that helps.

 

[Sweep'n Streets]

Go into the Font Book application listed above. Highlight any "Giovanni" fonts and click on the Disable button at the bottom of the window. Exit Font Book and AoM should look fine.

 

[prairie-buffalo]

redsteven & sweep'n: Thanks for the ideas, but these had no effect.

I may have misled you by calling this a "font" problem. In the game editor, selecting a category creates a dialog box at the bottom of the screen. Part of the dialog is drop down text, which starts out blank but appears as highlighted text with mouse roll-over (same as the menu at the top of the screen). The other part is (I assume) images of things that can be clicked on and placed into the environment. This is blank, whether clicked on or not. Basically, the game works fine, other than being unable to see what we're selecting.

I just reinstalled the game from the CD. No change.

 

[redsteven]

have u tried contacting macsoft?