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Black screen when trying to play Dark Mod?


lukeman3000

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So I just installed Dark Mod for the first time, and the first time I launched it, it was fine except for the fact that it was windowed instead of fullscreen.

 

I changed the resolution to 1920x1080, and I think I changed the option that said "automatically open unlocked doors", and then I quit the Dark Mod so that the resolution changes would take effect.

 

Now, whenever I restart Dark Mod, all I get is a black screen : (

 

I don't know what in the world is going on.. I even deleted my doomconfig.cfg file out of the darkmod folder because I figured that Dark Mod would just put a default config back in there when I started it again and it didn't detect doomconfig.cfg. However, although it did replace the file, it looks as though it kept the resolution at 1920x1080 so it didn't seem to go back to default.

 

What's going on here? I play other mods at 1920x1080 no problem.. and I really want to play Dark Mod lol : /

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I've only seen this caused by either something putting gamex86.dll's in the wrong place, or replacing the doom3 default ones completely (or if the official patch messes up). Graphics mods that change doom3 defaults can also cause this. You should be able to search for all gamex86.dll's in /doom3/ and subdirectories and delete them all, they'll hopefully be replaced as needed, keep backups ;)

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It's not enough to delete Doomconfig in the darkmod folder. Normally you should UNinstall any FM first but in your case if you cannot see the menus then change or delete the Doomconfig in your current game folder (shown in the file darkmod/currentfm.txt.)

 

This is what should be in your DoomConfig.cfg:

 

seta r_customHeight "1080"

seta r_customWidth "1920"

seta r_fullscreen "1"

seta r_mode "-1"

 

 

If for some reason the resolution you want doesn't work then you may need to select a different one.

 

[EDIT] BTW the Dark Mod menus might not necessarily show the true res even if it is working. I just tested the above on mine and the res worked but didn't show correctly in the menu. Use your monitor to check what res you are actually in.

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It's not enough to delete Doomconfig in the darkmod folder. Normally you should UNinstall any FM first but in your case if you cannot see the menus then change or delete the Doomconfig in your current game folder (shown in the file darkmod/currentfm.txt.)

 

This is what should be in your DoomConfig.cfg:

 

seta r_customHeight "1080"

seta r_customWidth "1920"

seta r_fullscreen "1"

seta r_mode "-1"

 

 

If for some reason the resolution you want doesn't work then you may need to select a different one.

 

[EDIT] BTW the Dark Mod menus might not necessarily show the true res even if it is working. I just tested the above on mine and the res worked but didn't show correctly in the menu. Use your monitor to check what res you are actually in.

 

Ok, I finally got it to work, but it didn't involve either of the fixes you guys were talking about.

 

First, I would change only these options:

 

Screen Ratio: 16x9

Resolution: 1920x1280

Fullscreen: Yes

Are you sure you want exit (Ask every time?) No (in other words, I told it not to ask me every time).

 

Then the next time I started dark mod, black screen. Although I saw the fps counter (which by the way is rather odd in my opinion to have enabled by default..)

 

So I went into my doomconfig.cfg and started changing everything back to default settings. Still black screen. (Weird, huh?)

 

Next, I overwrote the entire darkmod folder with the one I had originally downloaded (unaltered). It worked, but I had the same problem as in the beginning (wasn't full screen, lower res, etc.)

 

So I begun changing options again, restarted, and black screen.

 

Then, I simply the darkmod.cfg from the original, unaltered darkmod folder that I downloaded, and overwrote the one in my darkmod folder, and then it worked! Although oddly enough, it was still set to 1920x1080, 16x9 and fullscreen was enabled when I started dark mod. I thought it would've overwrote it back to default settings (1280x720 and whatnot), but it didn't. Instead, it worked. Although it did seem to forget that I told it not to ask me if I wanted to exit for some reason.

 

So whatever. I'm just glad I got it to work. Although I think something strange is at play here..

 

Edit: As a side note, it'd be nice if there was a "mods" option on the front end dark mod menu so that I could switch to another mod. I modified my doom 3 shortcut to start right into darkmod, but unfortunately I can't switch to other mods after I do that, so I may just take that out for now and switch to darkmod within another mod.

Edited by lukeman3000
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Although I saw the fps counter (which by the way is rather odd in my opinion to have enabled by default..)

 

It's not enabled by default, which is further evidence that something odd is going on.

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It's not enabled by default, which is further evidence that something odd is going on.

 

Ok, well although I got it working 1920x1080 in fullscreen at 16x9 ratio, I can't play missions.

 

All my missions show up in the list, but whenever I install one (and tdm restarts), it says Mission Installed: "" i.e - it's blank.

 

However, I have the option to start the mission, but then I get this error.

 

So.. what's going on?

 

I have deleted my entire dark mod folder and replaced it with the one I originally downloaded, but it doesn't make any difference. The FPS counter is still enabled by default as well.

 

Plus, when I try to use the tdm launcher after a mission is installed, I don't see the usual dark mod initial loading screen. Instead, I see the regular doom 3 loading screen (with the planet), but then the dark mod appears to load, but the screen is now black.

 

So yeah.. I don't know what's going on. Sometimes I get a black screen and sometimes I don't, but I can't play any missions regardless.. : (

 

Maybe simply deleting my darkmod folder isn't good enough? I noticed that there were some additional files installed to my doom 3 base directory, but I'm not sure which ones they are, so maybe someone could tell me how to completely uninstall darkmod?

 

Or if you know what's causing my problem and how to fix it, that'd be great as well..

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Mine goes "darkmod/fms" not "fms/darkmod"

 

The "darkmod" folder goes in the "doom3" (or "Doom3" or "Doom 3"...) folder and "fms" goes in that "darkmod" folder.

 

Oh, and then the FM pk4s go in the "fms" folder when you download them.

 

Yeah, good catch. It should never be fms/darkmod. A correct folder directory would be something like doom3/darkmod/fms

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Yeah, good catch. It should never be fms/darkmod. A correct folder directory would be something like doom3/darkmod/fms

Yeah, that's exactly how my directory structure is setup. Doom3/darkmod/fms

 

The only other mods I use are Perfected Doom, sikkpin's hdr mod, and the rotoscoped mod. But how could they be overriding it if I launch directly into darkmod? Man.. this blows. I really just want to play darkmod cause it looks freaking awesome

 

Edit: Here's a picture of my doom 3 directory

 

So I understand that fms/darkmod is incorrect, but why is tdm looking at the directory structure that way?

Edited by lukeman3000
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Edit: As a side note, it'd be nice if there was a "mods" option on the front end dark mod menu so that I could switch to another mod. I modified my doom 3 shortcut to start right into darkmod, but unfortunately I can't switch to other mods after I do that, so I may just take that out for now and switch to darkmod within another mod.

 

Maybe this side note is the key to your troubles describe what you have done.

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Maybe this side note is the key to your troubles describe what you have done.

 

Well I have Doom 3 for Steam, and you can set "launch options" for Doom 3. The option I had set was:

 

+set fs_game sikkmod (to start the hdr mod made by sikkpin)

 

But then I decided to change it to:

 

+set fs_game darkmod (to start the dark mod)

 

Then I read you were supposed to use tdmlauncher so I took that out of the launch options, but still no joy.

 

Edit: Anyways, I took the launch options out and I just double-click "tdm launcher" but I'm still getting a black screen (after seeing the default doom 3 loading screen)

Edited by lukeman3000
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The only other mods I use are Perfected Doom, sikkpin's hdr mod, and the rotoscoped mod. But how could they be overriding it if I launch directly into darkmod? Man.. this blows. I really just want to play darkmod cause it looks freaking awesome

 

For whatever reason, other mods can interfere with each other. I don't know why that's the case, but I have read about it happening. Try moving the other mod folders outside of the doom 3 directory perhaps and see what happens there. Barring that, perhaps one of the other mods made changes to a file somewhere? It's hard to know, but it does sound like something is over riding TDM and causing settings to be changed.

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Well it looks like I've made some progress by removing a couple of my other mod folders. They must've somehow been interacting with each other.

 

That said, why do you think my default darkmod doomconfig.cfg would have "showfps" enabled?

 

Would anyone be willing to upload their entire doomconfig.cfg out of their darkmod folder so that I can be sure I have a truly "default" config?

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Well it looks like I've made some progress by removing a couple of my other mod folders. They must've somehow been interacting with each other.

 

That said, why do you think my default darkmod doomconfig.cfg would have "showfps" enabled?

 

Would anyone be willing to upload their entire doomconfig.cfg out of their darkmod folder so that I can be sure I have a truly "default" config?

 

Not sure why show fps would be enabled by default, that is strange. Is it enabled in any of those other mod folders I wonder?

 

I would suggest removing all of the other mod folders while playing TDM...that way doom 3 shouldn't be passing settings into the doomconfig folder any longer, and you could delete the doomconfig file and restart the game through the launcher to recreate it. I would think that once you have the other folders removed, deleting and restarting should give you the proper settings.

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This is happening to me. After extracting the archive I got from moddb, I run tdmlauncher.exe and it works correctly. But, even if I don't mess with the configuration and I just quit, every subsequent time I launch the game it starts at a smaller resolution than the first run and everything is black except the fps.

 

Edit:

I made md5s of the files before and after running and DoomConfig.cfg and gamex86.dll were both modified.

 

Edit:

Yeah, so I replaced those two files from the downloaded archive and it fixed every launch thereafter.

 

I had to modify the DoomConfig.cfg file in the training_mission directory in the root of the doom 3 install directory in order to change the resolution settings. I thought that was kind of odd. It seems to work anyhow.

Edited by sqwishy
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This is happening to me. After extracting the archive I got from moddb, I run tdmlauncher.exe and it works correctly. But, even if I don't mess with the configuration and I just quit, every subsequent time I launch the game it starts at a smaller resolution than the first run and everything is black except the fps.

 

Maybe the archive from moddb contains a bad DoomConfig.cfg (and/or no config.spec file so D3 thinks it needs to write a default config)?

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man." -- George Bernard Shaw (1856 - 1950)

 

"Remember: If the game lets you do it, it's not cheating." -- Xarax

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Maybe the archive from moddb contains a bad DoomConfig.cfg (and/or no config.spec file so D3 thinks it needs to write a default config)?

 

Ok, I completely nuked everything. I uninstalled doom 3, deleted every file, and re-installed it through steam. Then, I wan tdmupdate.exe to download the dark mod instead of downloading it from another source.

 

Now, everything seems to be working well, except even though my resolution is set to 1920x1080, it looks like a much lower resolution. It is fullscreen, but it's nowhere close to 1920x1080 because the text is kind of blocky, and so are the textures while playing. It looks like 800x600 stretched to fullscreen or something like that.

 

Now what's going on

 

I checked my doomconfig.cfg (in the darkmod folder), and it appears that the settings are saved correctly.. Do I need to make some resolution changes in Doom 3's base folder or something?

Edited by lukeman3000
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I checked my doomconfig.cfg (in the darkmod folder), and it appears that the settings are saved correctly.. Do I need to make some resolution changes in Doom 3's base folder or something?

 

That is some weird stuff going on.

 

Make sure image_downsize, image_downsizebump, and image_downsizespecular are all set to 0.

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That is some weird stuff going on.

 

Make sure image_downsize, image_downsizebump, and image_downsizespecular are all set to 0.

 

I will check that as soon as I get home (at work now lol).

 

I gotta be honest, this is pretty frustrating lol. Even after a complete re-install (of doom 3 itself no less), I'm still having issues. I downloaded doom 3 again, put the darkmod folder in the doom 3 directory, ran tdmupdate, downloaded the darkmod, ran tdmlauncher.exe (or whatever it's called), and it worked, but it wasn't 1920x1080. Although it was set to that when I checked the settings. So yeah. : /

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I will check that as soon as I get home (at work now lol).

 

I gotta be honest, this is pretty frustrating lol. Even after a complete re-install (of doom 3 itself no less), I'm still having issues. I downloaded doom 3 again, put the darkmod folder in the doom 3 directory, ran tdmupdate, downloaded the darkmod, ran tdmlauncher.exe (or whatever it's called), and it worked, but it wasn't 1920x1080. Although it was set to that when I checked the settings. So yeah. : /

 

To me it sounds like those settings I mentioned are set to 1...as that's the only reason I can think of that the resolution would look blurry.

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