TDM 2.0 black menu, unplayable

[ThiefFan]

Hey guys I just installed TDM for the first time, after seeing it released as a standalone game.

I am running Win 8.1 on an older pavilion g7 hp laptop with intel hd graphics and an i3 core.

At first the game seemed to work, I was able to get to the main menu and even change the resolution settings.

However as soon as I tried restarting the game to make the changes happen, it returned to leave me with a black screen.

Just to reiterate: when I start the game now, the screen turns black, the resolution of the screen changes to 640x480 and a few seconds in I can hear the menu music and the scroll-over sounds of the buttons. I can only quit by using the Taskmanager. I tried all sorts of compatibility settings and I am running the game as administrator.

in addition, I have already deleted the .ini and cfg files to let the updater download newer versions, to no avail.

I appreciate any help I can get, because I really want to play TDM!

[nbohr1more]

Did you try running in windows 7 compatibily mode?

[Solar Prominence]

I've run into a similar problem. When the game automatically restarts after ex. installing or uninstalling a mission, the game shows only a grey screen, then hangs. I first noticed this after setting up a video driver profile with RadeonPro to control Catalyst AI and antialiasing, but removing the profile didn't affect the problem.

 

This doesn't have any serious effects on the game, but it is annoying to have to kill the application and manually restart it whenever it resets.

[Serpentine]

RadeonPro to control Catalyst AI and antialiasing, but removing the profile didn't affect the problem.

Forcing 16x can, and likely will cause trouble with AMD cards in OpenGL titles, since the maximum samples they support is 8, and above that they use a different AA method, which the GL driver is not aware of. You might have managed to get the game to save this into your config or something. Try adjusting it to something lower and quitting.

 

Same goes for the OP. I am not sure if Intel has a lower max sample or something, the game should try to avoid setting it incorrectly tho. I would appreciate a log if you can get one. If the game is running please try typing this in (you wont hear anything, at the end it should quit...)

ctrl + alt + ~

condump derp.txt

quit

 

There should now be a text file named 'derp' in your darkmod folder. Could you paste that somewhere like http://dpaste.de/ or http://pastie.org/ and leave the URL here?

 

Thanks!

[Solar Prominence]

I only set the samples to 4x (and anisotropic filtering to 4x), and the ingame config has it listed as 4x as well, so I don't think that is the problem.

 

I created the game log file like you said: http://pastie.org/8452547 . Interestingly, opening up the console brought the game out of the gray screen and back to the main menu with no problems. OP, you might try this yourself and see if it helps you.

Edited November 3, 2013 by Solar Prominence

[ThiefFan]

Hey i tried going into the console, but nothing changed the screen was still just black with the menu music in the background. When I press the windows key i can see the menu; however I cant do anything so I have to revert to the task manager to close the program. I have tried every possible compatibility. I forgot to mention this initially, but my os is 64 bit. Any other ideas?

[nbohr1more]

One thing I will have to check on myself is the graphic driver. Currently I have the Win8 driver installed because I couldn't find the Win8.1 driver.

I will try to find it again but it may do you some good to hunt down the latest Win8 driver for your integrated graphics then (again) try opening

in Win7 compatibility mode. Also, post your Darkmod.cfg file (rename it with a .txt extension).

[ThiefFan]

Alright so I tried a few things out during the last few days, but I still can't figure out how to make this game run...

I got the latest driver and I've tried running it in Win7 compatibility mode, as well as running it as admin. I finally got the game log file by blindly going to the console and typing just what you said, here's the link http://pastie.org/private/khjeat5wvdpqkdwrhtrheq

The weird part is that I got the game to run once, it just happened randomly after a restart. I proceeded to change the resolution after which it restarted fine as well. I also changed another graphic setting, I think it was the details and tried restarting it and now it doesn't work anymore. Its back to the black screen with the menu music in the background.

In conclusion, I still haven't played a single minute

[Serpentine]

The graphics driver doesn't seem to be providing all of the required extensions. Which is very odd, however it might be that the Win 8+ drivers do not allow the vendor extensions or something, I know Intel are very keen to only support the official ARB list...

 

Other than wild guesswork, we just haven't really had this on a Windows box before. At best all I can say is that make sure you're running the latest Intel driver, directly from Intel (not from Windows update).

[nbohr1more]

I tried making a thumb-drive upgrade to 1.08 to 2.00 for a friend this evening and encountered this problem again too.

Going to Win 7 compatibility did not help.

 

I was able to start the mod using the following steps:

 

1) Delete Darkmod.cfg

2) Delete gamex86.dll

3) Double click TheDarkMod.exe

4) Black screen is shown

5) hit Alt + Enter to go into Windows mode

 

Now I had a nice little 640x480 TDM which I could scale to higher resolutions.

 

You can shortcut this process by changing:

 

seta r_fullscreen "1"

 

to

 

seta r_fullscreen "0"

 

in Darkmod.cfg

 

and see if it renders.

[ThiefFan]

I can now finally plat TDM! It works if I go into the windowed mode, via alt + enter. There are no problems, besides maybe the slightly reduced atmosphere due to seeing the taskbar etc.

Thank you all for your suggestions/solutions

[nbohr1more]

Alright, Intel has updated their drivers for Windows 8.1 again.

 

Looks like it's solved now.

 

Try the latest drivers in the matrix towards the bottom of this page:

 

http://www.intel.com/support/graphics/sb/CS-034493.htm