Game won't start up

[Mouseferatu]

Recently got this game. Every time I try to play it the screen turns black as if it's loading, but nothing happens, my computer freezes, can't ctrl+alt+delete, and I have to forcibly restart my laptop. Any ideas what could fix this? I haven't been able to load it even once.

[Fireinthelol]

Possibly doesn't like your laptop specs. Best advice I can give is update your graphics drivers if possible

[dig]

Mine too. I click to play and the screen goes black than the computer freezes everything(even numlock led). I needed to reboot my computer too.
There is some bug in this game. I own/play a lot of games and this is the first game that froze my computer with a simple black screen.

I have all my drivers updated and don't believe its a driver/hardware problem.

--
My computer:

Proc: AMD X6 1100T
Vga: Radeon6790
Mem: 16GB Corsair memory
Mobo: MSI 890GXM-G65
Storage: Corsair ForceGT SSD
PSU: Corsar AX750

(all stock, never overclocked)

[mr. piss]

Same with me, but when I start the game, the screen goes white, and then exits the game. Thats it. Why ?

[DKega]

Same problem with me, but in my case I can play normally, the screen goes black when I use the "power up" number 2...

[Caydus]

this has happened to me once or twice too, but most of the time the game runs fine. Hope you can figure it out, it is a fun game

[DeathClaw]

I was able to get it to work when I first got it but now when I try to play it doesn't work. I'm sure I'll figure out how to get it to work.

[goneroar]

Same as the OP, no *** idea whats going on.

[mishtr0n]

Game was working fine months ago, don't undestand why it's doing this now.

[Snow_Cat]

I've never managed to 'launch' this game without it immeadately crashing to a black screen.

Num and Caps lock keys do not react, Ctrl-Alt-Del and Alt-Tab do not react; opening/closing my laptop cover/screen results in the desktop rendering without change.

Restarting and launching from "\\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Critical Mass" has the same result.

Updating my drivers the latest reccommened Catalyst 14.4 has no effect.

Restarting and trying again witht he latest drivers has no effect.

Falling asleap during the freeze state and waking up hours later has no effect.

Compatibility mode: XP SP3, no effect.

Comodo "Sandbox mode", sandbox crashes immeadately but system remains usable.

Comodo sandbox + compatibility mode, sandbox crashes immeadately but system remains usable.

There is no "HKEY_CURRENT_USER/software/manic" key in my registry for me to play with.

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Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri requires ATI/AMD graphic card drivers version 13.4 or older. Unfortunately my other games reccommend 13.7 or later.

edit の投稿を引用：

I tired to downgrade, and failed. I would need to scrub/uninstall the current drivers, and this whole tact feels too unnecessary already.

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My "\Critical Mass\console.log" contains the following:

Version 1.0.1199.0

Creating window

Resolution 1366x768

Basic system informaiton is as follows, (I can provide deleted details privately if necessary):

System:

• Manufacturer: Lenovo
  
• Model: Z575

Processor Information:

• AMD A8-3520M a/ Radeon HD Graphics

Memory:

• RAM: 7654 Mb usable (8 GB total)

Operating System Version:

• Windows 7 (64 bit)

Video Card:

• Driver: AMD Radeon HD 6620G
  
• DirectX Driver Name: aticfx32.dll
  
• Driver Version: 14.100.0.0
  
• DirectX Driver Version: 8.17.10.1280
  
• Driver Date: 17 Apr 2014
  
• OpenGL Version: 4.4
  
• Primary Display Resolution: 1366 x 768
  
• Desktop Resolution: 1366 x 768
  
• Primary VRAM: 512 MB

Sound card:

• Audio device: Speakers (Realtek High Definition Audio)

edit:
Can I have a sample of what the registry entries should look like, that I can preconfigure the game to launch in a window manually. Steam fullscreen mode, and DDwrapped window mode seems to consistently freeze my computer in this manner.

[Snow_Cat]

This worked only once inside my virtual machine. It consistently screws up my theme, and has not continued to run, even after scrubbing the virtual machine.

http://imgur.com/a/1h2pd

Consistently this is the console.log produced:

Initializing

OS: Windows 7 Service Pack 1

CPU: AMD A8-3520M APU with Radeon(tm) HD Graphics

RAM: 7654

OpenGL: 4.4.12874 Compatibility Profile Context 14.100.0.0

Video Card: AMD Radeon HD 6620G

Manufacturer: ATI Technologies Inc.

And the (virtual machine) registry contained a User\\[virtual user]\\Software\Manic key with no values set after I tried to change the display settings to windowed and the virtual machine crashed w/ a C++ runtime error, when the virtual machine stopped it from relaunching. I did not save the console log from the apparently successful launch.

Subsequently scrubbing the virtual machine results in the above log file and no registry keys. Scratch that.

edit:
Nuking the virtual machine entirely revealed some spurrious system .dat files inthe windows directory. Subsequently relaunched; greyscreen, white screen, black screen, "Manic Games" splash screen, black screen. program hung again (as it did on the last successful attempt), task manager. New crash.

Problem signature:
  Problem Event Name:	APPCRASH
  Application Name:	CriticalMass.exe
  Application Version:	1.0.1199.0
  Application Timestamp:	4f900540
  Fault Module Name:	StackHash_66e6
  Fault Module Version:	6.1.7601.18229
  Fault Module Timestamp:	51fb1072
  Exception Code:	c0000374
  Exception Offset:	000ce753
  OS Version:	6.1.7601.2.1.0.768.3
  Locale ID:	4105
  Additional Information 1:	66e6
  Additional Information 2:	66e6ebe753781dc1c4620b10c3b9dda3
  Additional Information 3:	413e
  Additional Information 4:	413e4b789123b788bb46a6bdf6102b27

New console.log, here http://pastebin.com/Rgwuiju6

New empty registry key \\user\{virtual user}\Software\Manic\

edit2: and now it is crashing to main desktop (from virtual machine) when it should be opening AssPack.

edit3: I must have been mistaken about the scaling setting. Scaling must be enabled for the game to launch on a clean VM in (its default) fullscreen mode. Subsequent launches all crash on AssPack though.

Game is stable and otherwise playable, provided I make a clean VM every launch.

[yield: seventy-one]

Hate to necro, but I'm getting the same bug as OP and others. All drivers are up to date and my hardware is average/supported.

[dig]

As you can see, my post here is from 2013. They never tried to fix this bug.
So, ask for a refund.

[mishtr0n]

I doubt we can get a refund for this now, since it's now 4 years old.