[Linux] Game starts but with no video. Any suggestions?

[ckrucke]

(After I figured out the deal about selecting "Beta" from the beta tab...) I start the game, but the screen stays black. I can hear the sounds the cursor makes as you move over items on the game menu when I move the mouse around, but it's tough choosing when the screen is black. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

The box is a duo-core intel w/ 4G ram, video is nVidia 7900GS. Running LinuxMint13 and the most recent nVidia 304.117 drivers.

[Mortis Eterna. [Linux]]

Have you tried tabbing out to desktop then back in?

[ckrucke]

Thanks for the response. If you mean Alt-Tabbing between apps, then yes. And I can tell focus is shifting, because when I go back in I can hear the menu-flapping sounds again, when I move the mouse in the proper general area. But no video, just black. Can't run tests right now, unfortunately. I asked to Verify Local Files, and it failed, so I had to d/l the whoooole thing again, and it failed it's self check immediately and had to download the whoooole thing again.... Many hours at a whack for me, during which time, as you know I can't do anything else involving Steam or the internet in general. Becoming a pita. But dammit, this is portal2 for linux! I must persevere!

[ckrucke]

Well crud. Still no joy. When I start the game, the screen goes black, I see the little steam chat window prompt, and hear everything I should, but see nada. Alt tab works as expected, and the status bar will minimize, maximize or close the program as expected. Seems to be running fine except for he blackness. Argh.

The game is stored on an NFTS formated partition on a drive other than the main drive Linux boots from. Could this be the problem? I don't have that much space to spare on the main drive. For now...

[Techowl]

Do you get the Portal gun cursor and hear game sounds? If so, there is a fix for that. I couldn't find the original post, but here is a snip of the posted article I have saved to my hard drive;

<Snip Start>


Hi! I found solution of this problem. Everyone who have black screen or crash after map loading propably have not compatible graphic card. Portal 2 requires pixel shader 2.0b but i can play on my radeon 9600 xt 128 mb (only 2.0 pixel shader). I found a sollution how to "cheat" a engine and run game with only pixel shader 2.0

1.You must open in notepad file "dxsupport.cfg" (bin folder)
2.Edit the first line named "name 90" and chanche "maxdxlevel" and mindxlevel" to "90".
3.Found every entry about your graphic card (for me is "radeon 9600" and change line "setting.dxlevel" from "92" to "90"
4.Save file and run Portal 2!

<Snip Stop>

Note that if Steam "Updates" Portal 2, you need to make the mod again. That is why I have it saved to my hard drive.



- Techowl -

[ckrucke]

Thanks for the response Techowl. In my case I don't get a cursor at all, but if I reinstall the game, I will try your technique. As it is I had to uninstall it, because it kept downloading over and over again because it was failing verification. Too many if those and my I$P will start giving me grief about bandwidth usage. I guess I'll just wait until it's out of beta and try it again. Who knows, I might have a stouter box by then too...

[Nah-B No.53]

I'm pretty sure the nvidia 7*** series does not work with the source engine games.There's a guide in the Steam for Linux group forum that show how to bypass certain extentions that the game requires but it does have problems

[ckrucke]

Thanks. The same machine runs portal2 fine when I boot it into windowsXP, wouldn't that be the same source engine?

[ckrucke]

Well, 5 months have passed, and nothing has changed. Reloaded the game becuase i wanted to play the Thinking With Time Machine mod, and hoping maybe a bug fix had been made, but alas, no such luck, I can't play it either. I see a number of people seem to have solved the issue by opening the developers console and setting mat_something-or-other-I-forget to 0, and I'd try that, but how are they enabling the developers console through options when the screen is black?

[ckrucke]

And does anyone know what the minimum OpenGL version required is? the nVidia 304.117 drivers use 2.1.something, do I need 3.xxx? I'd buy a new video card if I knew that would fix the problem, but I can't afford experiments like that without confidence in a resolution.

[ckrucke]

I found a work around. A friend left a computer here that just happened to have a BFG 9600GT 512mb in it. Or it used to... hee, hee, hee..... Portal 2 is working fine.

[Terminator]

Look at minimun sys.req.

nVidia GeForce 8600/9600GT, ATI/AMD Radeon HD2600/3600 (Graphic Drivers: nVidia 310, AMD 12.11), OpenGL 2.1 

Update you drivers and all will be fine. may be try new PPA like (http://ppa.launchpad.net/xorg-edgers/ppa/ubuntu) - there is always fresh drivers

[ckrucke]

Sure enough, I don't know if the minimum sysreq changed from when I first looked at it, or if I just didn't bother to look at it before, and assumed it would work because my 7800GS ran Portal2 fine under windozeXP. Doesn't matter anyway, all's well now. Thanks for the input!