Black screen on launch [SOLVED]

[ekele]

Hi,

 

When I launch the game, an empty black window appears and then nothing. The cursor is there though.

 

Some additional info:

• Using a Lenovo Yoga Slim 7 Pro 16ACH6 with Ryzen 7 5800H CPU and Nvidia RTX 3050 dGPU
• Nvidia card selected for Pyrogenisis.exe in Nvidia Control Panel
• Tried deleting Nvidia driver from Device Manager and reinstalling from Lenovo website

userreport_hwdetect.txt system_info.txt mainlog.html interestinglog.html

Edited May 24, 2022 by ekele
Resolved the issue by backing up and deleting all files in the "C:\Users\JohnDoe\Documents\My Games\0ad\mods\user" folder.

[Gurken Khan]

Hi @ekele,

welcome to the forums. Nice to see someone actually attached the relevant files!

I didn't look at them yet, but the first thing you probably want to do is to check that 0AD is using your dedicated GPU.

Should you be unsure how to check that, here is a recent thread that should contain all the relevant info:

HTH

[vladislavbelov]

Hi! Another possible solution: could you add `preferglsl = "true"` line into your user.cfg file? You can find path to it on our wiki page.

[dave_k]

Here is another possible explanation and solution.

If you used a development version of 0ad between alpha 0.0.24 and alpha 0.0.25 then you could be affected by a bug explained here that causes a black screen on startup of the game.

The resolution of that bug is to ensure that you're using the latest stable version of the game (0.0.25b) and then backup and delete all files in the "C:\Users\JohnDoe\Documents\My Games\0ad\mods\user" folder, where "JohnDoe" is your Windows username.

If that doesn't work then try backing up and erasing all user config files and cache data, at the paths listed here.

 

[ekele]

Thanks for the quick replies!  

12 hours ago, Gurken Khan said:

I didn't look at them yet, but the first thing you probably want to do is to check that 0AD is using your dedicated GPU.

I have already selected the RTX 3050 dGPU for Pyrogenisis.exe in Nvidia settings. I can see that the dGPU becomes active in task manager when I try to open the game.

Also as a side note, if 0AD is not set to use the dGPU in Nvidia control panel (i.e., the Ryzen iGPU is used instead), I get the following error message:

Much to our regret we must report the program has encountered an error.

Please let us know at http://trac.wildfiregames.com/ and attach the crashlog.txt and crashlog.dmp files.
You may find paths to these files at https://trac.wildfiregames.com/wiki/GameDataPaths 

Details: unhandled exception (Access violation reading 0x00000024)

Location: unknown:0 (?)

Call stack:

(error while dumping stack: No stack frames found)
errno = 0 (No error reported here)
OS error = 0 (no error code was set)

 

11 hours ago, vladislavbelov said:

Hi! Another possible solution: could you add `preferglsl = "true"` line into your user.cfg file? You can find path to it on our wiki page.

Did not find the user.cfg file. Tried searching for it in "C:\Users\my_user_name\AppData\Local" and it does not exist. I did however create a local.cfg file in "C:\Users\my_user_name\AppData\Local\0 A.D. alpha\binaries\data\config" and added 'preferglsl = true' there. I can see from the mainlog.html that the string is read from local.cfg. However, I can also see that two strings are read from user.cfg even though I could not find that file.

...

Loading config file "config/local.cfg"

Loaded config string "windowed" = "true"

Loaded config string "preferglsl" = "true"

Loading config file "config/user.cfg"

Loaded config string "userreport.enabledversion" = "0"

Loaded config string "userreport.id"

...

 

6 hours ago, dave_k said:

Here is another possible explanation and solution.

If you used a development version of 0ad between alpha 0.0.24 and alpha 0.0.25 then you could be affected by a bug explained here that causes a black screen on startup of the game.

The resolution of that bug is to ensure that you're using the latest stable version of the game (0.0.25b) and then backup and delete all files in the "C:\Users\JohnDoe\Documents\My Games\0ad\mods\user" folder, where "JohnDoe" is your Windows username.

If that doesn't work then try backing up and erasing all user config files and cache data, at the paths listed here.

 

This is the first time I have installed 0AD, and the only version I have tried to install is 0.025b from the file 0ad-0.0.25b-alpha-win32.exe downloaded from the 0AD webiste. However, deleting the contents of "C:\Users\my_user_name\Documents\My Games\0ad\mods\user" (which was a folder called gui) seems to have solved the problem. This is the contents of that folder:

user
  |- gui
  | |- common
  | | |- modern
  | | | |- setup.xml.cached.xmb
  | | | |- sprites.xml.cached.xmb
  | | | |- styles.xml.cached.xmb
  | | |- global.xml.cached.xmb
  | | |- setup.xml.cached.xmb
  | | |- sprites.xml.cached.xmb
  | | |- styles.xml.cached.xmb
  | |- pregame
  | | |- backgrounds
  | | | |- carthage.xml.cached.xmb
  | | | |- hellenes.xml.cached.xmb
  | | | |- kush.xml.cached.xmb
  | | | |- seleucid.xml.cached.xmb
  | | |- userreport
  | | | |- userreport.xml.cached.xmb
  | | |- backgrounds.xml.cached.xmb
  | | |- mainmenu.xml.cached.xmb
  | | |- menupanel.xml.cached.xmb
  | | |- ProjectInformation.xml.cached.xmb
  | | |- sprites.xml.cached.xmb
  | | |- styles.xml.cached.xmb
  | |- page_pregame.xml.cached.xmb

So, after deleting the contents of "C:\Users\JohnDoe\Documents\My Games\0ad\mods\user" the game now seems to work. I have yet to play, so I'll report back after a couple of games. 

 

As a side note, it seems I'm currently unable to attach files in forum posts. There is no option to attach in the files panel, and dragging and dropping images results in the following message: "You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL". This worked yesterday.

Thank you all for your help so far!

[Gurken Khan]

I found the user.cfg in c:\Users\your_name\AppData\Roaming\0ad\config\

Attaching seems to work normally for me:

 

[ekele]

Thanks, found it in the same location! 

Attachements still does not work for me. Maybe because this is a new account?

The game now works and everything seems to be in order. Looks great!  

[Gurken Khan]

40 minutes ago, ekele said:

Attachements still does not work for me. Maybe because this is a new account?

I only know about the number of posts being limited. @Stan`?

41 minutes ago, ekele said:

The game now works and everything seems to be in order. Looks great!  

gl hf!

[dave_k]

6 hours ago, ekele said:

So, after deleting the contents of "C:\Users\JohnDoe\Documents\My Games\0ad\mods\user" the game now seems to work. I have yet to play, so I'll report back after a couple of games. 

Okay, glad that fixed it. Thanks for trying the instructions even though you haven't used a development version of the game.

From the video, it looks like the installation path for the game that you chose, where JohnDoe is your Windows username, is "C:\Users\JohnDoe\AppData\Local\0 A.D. alpha", correct? And, you didn't install any mods that were not compatible with 0ad version alpha 0.0.25b?

Hey, @wraitii, could this installation path interfere with the bug fix of #6320?

Edited May 22, 2022 by dave_k

[ekele]

Correct. This was probably the default path specified by the installer - I did not change anything as far as I know.

Did not install any mods. Only the base game downloaded directly from the official website.

[Stan`]

16 hours ago, dave_k said:

Okay, glad that fixed it. Thanks for trying the instructions even though you haven't used a development version of the game.

From the video, it looks like the installation path for the game that you chose, where JohnDoe is your Windows username, is "C:\Users\JohnDoe\AppData\Local\0 A.D. alpha", correct? And, you didn't install any mods that were not compatible with 0ad version alpha 0.0.25b?

Hey, @wraitii, could this installation path interfere with the bug fix of #6320?

That's the default path. It won't work correctly in program fikes iirc.

[Stan`]

@ekele do you happen to have the crashlog.dmp file?

[ekele]

Unfortunately I cannot find the crashlog.dmp. I checked in "C:\Users\my_user_name\AppData\Local\0ad\logs" and "C:\Users\my_user_bame\AppData\Local\0 A.D. alpha\binaries\logs\logs".

However, the game did not crash for me. Only a back screen, which I had to close down myself.

[Stan`]

8 minutes ago, ekele said:

Unfortunately I cannot find the crashlog.dmp. I checked in "C:\Users\my_user_name\AppData\Local\0ad\logs" and "C:\Users\my_user_bame\AppData\Local\0 A.D. alpha\binaries\logs\logs".

However, the game did not crash for me. Only a back screen, which I had to close down myself.

Can you reproduce the black screen by restoring the folder and upload it here if that works ? I'd like to reproduce the bug locally then.

Also can you download this DebugView - Windows Sysinternals | Microsoft Docs

And launch it before launching the  game does and copy paste the logs here ?

That would be awesome