Black Screen

[JudgeDredd]

When I first bought and installed this game, I started it and I got a black screen...nothing else.

I had to CTRL-ALT-DEL to end the Commander.exe process, but when I tried again (I don't remember if I rebooted or not), it worked and has done ever since...every day since last Friday.

However, I've just went to load the game and I've got the exact same problem....just a black screen. This is afetr I get the Matrix Menu system and click play....

[IainMcNeil]

Sorry you're having problems. Could it just be taking a long time to load? What happens if you reboot and try again. Do you see any of the in game splash screens?

[JudgeDredd]

Hi Iain...np

I do not see any in-game flash screens, however, after the second time of getting this, I posted here. I then left the forums and went back and tried again and it worked....no reboot required.

I don't think it's to do with load times....I would expect them to be fairly similar each time...and I did leave it on the black screen for well over a couple of minutes.

[IainMcNeil]

Its really odd that it would work once and not another time... Let us know if anyone else spots it and if you can see any pattern.

[Howard7x]

I also had exactly the same problem when i first installed the game. I restarted it and have never had a problem since.

[Twotribes]

I have had once , a black screen while playing, it ran about halfway through the Mediterain and all area below that line across the entire map. The ocean was totally black, the land was very dark but you could see it and units, no hex lines and very hard to do much with units.

I saved and quit out, reloaded and it went away.

The only other problem is most likely not on your end. I downloaded adobe 8.1 and can no longer open manuals from the load screen. I have to open adobe and open the file through that program. The reason I say it is not your end is because when I click on the manual command on the load screen it DOES start an adobe process, each and every time i click. I found this by using control alt del and finding all the run commands. Also it wont open manual in at least one other game.

[Dave Ferguson]

I had the black screen problem but it went away when i changed my PC spec from high to low, no high zoom level but no real loss there. I don't use windowed mode either, screen redraws are glacial, even in full screen mode turn other programs off, you need every byte of RAM, the windows key is available to get at the desktop.
 
Dave

[Pokke]

Black screen problem here as well.

I installed and am on windows XP. Patched first to version 1.2.  Set computer spec to high. Played tutorial, all went well.
Did an exit of the game, due to other stuff outside computer-land. When I tried to start the game up later I got this black screen.
Not seen the splash screens. I managed to get out of this by pressing CTRL-AL-DEL and closing the JAVA icon in the taskbar below. That icon/program was apparently 'not responding'.

Tried it again after coming here to read the help messages, same problem. Black screen again.

I have no idea how to adjust the computer spec (as the message above seems to imply that that might fix it) so I tried it a 3th time and now it suddenly works again.

Not sure what tomorrow will bring though. (As now it's too late to stay awake and try again).[:)]

[Pokke]

Well, this morning I tried to fire the game up again. Black screen problem!
It's not a Java icon, it's the Commander.exe program that appears to be not responding when I want to close it on the taskbar.

Can someone help me out? Or point me to some FAQ or help file to solve this? Thanks.

[IainMcNeil]

Hmm strange - maybe you are on the edge of the memory requirements. Sometimes when the screen fails to update it can fix itself if you Alt Tab out and back. If not, running in a window can also help. If that doesn't work try running at low spec by editing your settings.txt and changing the LOW RAM option from 0 to 1.

[Pokke]

Thanks for the fast reply.

I tried running in a window but when I restarted later on it was back to full and black screen.
Is there a way to keep this "play in a window" setting saved or as default for starting up?

The end of memory requirements would surprise me, as I have 2gb of ram.

I can run the game but I have to try a lot of times (Alt-Tab and close the commander.exe file) before it goes past the reset of screen resolutions which is where the black screen event occurs. I can't say that other software gives me this kind of problem and as I'm an avid gamer there's a lot 'demanding' games that I played so far which forced me to update video and DirectX drivers. So I doubt that it's a driver problem?

Am I the only one with this problem?

[PDiFolco]

I've played the game for 1 week without problem (with 1.02+fix right from the start), but just yesterday I had the same Black Screen problem - had to kill the process then it worked again.
Only change was that the last time I played before I switched to windowed mode.
 

[IainMcNeil]

There is a bug at the moment where windowed mode does not get saved. This will be fixed in the patch. We're not seeing that problem here so I'm a bit stumped. Possibly it's a setting on your graphcis card related to the V synch?
 
Hopefuly the patch will sort you out, but its a few weeks away from being ready.

[Pokke]

OK, thanks Iain.

I like the game enough, so I deal with it as it is. And yes, hopefully this patch might do the trick.

[in case you're interested, or if this can help: my graphics card is an NVidia GeForce 7900 GT]