Black screen on launch

[Varsity]

This is also a problem with Darwinia. I load the game, and it sits there with a black screen, hourglass cursor, and ghost of the taskbar.

Defcon 1.0 steam built Sep 26 2006
Parsing archive main.dat...DONE
Parsing archive sounds.dat...DONE
Client listening on port 5011
Parsing Coastline data (1776 islands) : 229ms
Parsing International data (2753 islands) : 92ms
Parsing City data (2745 cities) : 124ms

I'd post the Darwinia blackbox for comparison, but it doesn't seem to be creating it. Darwinia is the pre-Steam version, so it's not some sort of filesystem thing.

My system is:

Code: Select all

P3 500MHz
256MB RAM
ATI RAGE Mobility-M1

Yes, it sucks, but then this isn't exactly the most demanding of games! The rig plays Civ3 perfectly well, and Source games at least run.

[Steven]

My system is:

Code: Select all

P3 500MHz
256MB RAM
ATI RAGE Mobility-M1

Yes, it sucks, but then this isn't exactly the most demanding of games! The rig plays Civ3 perfectly well, and Source games at least run.

You'd be surprised how demanding it is.

This is also a problem with Darwinia. I load the game, and it sits there with a black screen, hourglass cursor, and ghost of the taskbar.

But this shouldn't be happening, no matter how demanding it is. Civ3 and Source games use DirectX, not OpenGL. It's sort of an apples and oranges comparison. And was the debug.txt you quoted the -entire- debug.txt? If so, I'd say you've got an infinite loop somehow. I suggest reinstalling (I assume you're running Steam, so go into C:\Program Files\Steam\steamapps\common\ and remove the Defcon folder) could perhaps fix it.

[Varsity]

I validated the game, which is the same as deleting it minus the 'download it again' bit, to no apparent effect.

Perhaps it's worth updating my OpenGL libraries somehow? How do I go about that?

[Varsity]

I can run the games if I forced windowed mode. However, neither scratch even 1FPS on the lowest settings. There is no way Defcon's menu is this demanding - it's all down to CPU overload anyway, even for Darwinia.

There was a thread about this sort of thing on dual core systems last time I was here, perhaps I've run into another instance of that?

I'm also getting the auth issue, but at least that's more common.

[Jibbe]

My game hangs at the exact same spot as yours - I cannot even run it in the windowed mode. The debug.txt is identical. I have XP 2600+, 1G, 9600XT, so the machine is fast enough.

First I thought that it was my soundcard, EMU1820M, which isn't exactly a gaming card. But maybe it's a more general bug.

In any case I'm lost, I've tried reinstalling it,putting manually made preferences-files into Defcon's folder, things like that, but nothing has helped.

[jungletek]

My game hangs at the exact same spot as yours - I cannot even run it in the windowed mode. The debug.txt is identical. I have XP 2600+, 1G, 9600XT, so the machine is fast enough.

First I thought that it was my soundcard, EMU1820M, which isn't exactly a gaming card. But maybe it's a more general bug.

In any case I'm lost, I've tried reinstalling it,putting manually made preferences-files into Defcon's folder, things like that, but nothing has helped.

You already tried all the fullscreen modes, especially at 16-bit color depth? Assuming you have a preferences.txt, force fullscreen and 16-bit there... if you hadn't already tried this.

Latest vid drivers, etc?

[Varsity]

Things have improved for no apparent reason. The menu still runs at with single-figure FPS, but it is far more responsive and I was even able to start a rolling demo - at which point everything collapsed again, but it still wasn't as bad as it had been at first.

Only change has been the recent Steam update, but that can't have anything to do with it.

[thew00]

Same problem here,.. let me guess.. everything freezes, then it switches a black screen with the sound in the background, which kinda looks like ur monitor crashed.. but no, i think actually ur video card "crashed". Ur Video Card is prolly broken, must be a certain kind of effect the game uses. I pretty much tried everything that i could do and barely anything worked.

To support my Theory:
I started the game in windowed mode with 16 bit and all the effects turned off, it ran,... but slowly and it crashed as soon as i created a game.
I guess the thing that causes the blackscreen is the text that is scrolling down at the very beginning.

I think there's nothing you can do about this, you'll have troubles playing other games who use the same effects as Defcon, if anyone finds a solution, please post. I pretty much gave up.
Had updated Drivers, removed old sound drivers (bundles = bad) and installed them back manually, pretty much updated everything i could come up with.

Good Luck,
thew00

[Varsity]

If you are talking about my rolling demo, then no. I was referring to framerate.

Edit: dear god, even Uplink crawls! What did I do to deserve this?

[jungletek]

I guess the thing that causes the blackscreen is the text that is scrolling down at the very beginning.

You can disable this... something like menu effects, or special effects off of the options or tools submenu.

Also, do you guys have the latest version of directx from microsoft? (9.0c, I believe...)

[thew00]

I guess the thing that causes the blackscreen is the text that is scrolling down at the very beginning.

You can disable this... something like menu effects, or special effects off of the options or tools submenu.

Also, do you guys have the latest version of directx from microsoft? (9.0c, I believe...)

I know, it helps, but not for long.. as soon as you join the main game, your screen crashes.

And yes, the newest version