Campaign will not start

[bosbrian]

Haven't played this game for a couple of months, but trying to start it today it just goes around in a loop. From the main start screen I select Campaign and am taken to a screen where I choose Mission 1. The next screen is Mission One, I select first option, Mining Miracle, and that takes me back to the main screen. I waited 5 min or so in case the the program was bit slow to load, but nothing.

Interestingly, the Free Game option loads with no problem, albeit very slowly. Never had this problem before, and my hardware has not been changed. My disks are virus free, and the game files were validated on checking.

Intel core i7-4770K CPU @3.50GHz
Memory 16326MB
Windows 10 Home
Video card NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER
SSD 500GB HDD 5TB

[larry_roberts]

https://www.transportfever2.com/support/help-desk/

https://www.transportfever2.com/wiki/doku.php?id=gamemanual:troubleshooting

[bosbrian]

Neither of those sites can be reached.

[larry_roberts]

The Game Manual is back up and working fine, so both of those can be reached now. Correction, just tried it again and I'am getting error messages with the first one but the manual can be found here:

https://www.transportfever2.com/wiki/doku.php?id=gamemanual

Troubleshooting can be found here:

https://www.transportfever2.com/wiki/doku.php?id=gamemanual:troubleshooting

transportfever2.com still seems to be a bit glitchy at the moment.

[bosbrian]

None of those work either. I've tried a search on Google, and ANY URL containing Transport Fever 2 can not be reached. It's almost as if they've gone out of business.

[Tsubame ⭐]

CPU is over 10 years old at this point, that could be part of the problem.

How is performance in the Free Game, or in a Free Game save, once you load it up?

Is the game installed in the SSD?

[bosbrian]

Another interesting happening, is that when I am returned to the main menu, and the program appears to stall, there is still activity shown on the Task Manager (CPU and Memory) I've waited 20 minutes but no progress into the campaign.
One question, How do I re download this game on steam? Do I have to uninstall first?

[larry_roberts]

I wrote to Urban Games and this is what they said:

Cleopatra Lang (Urban Games)

Feb 3, 2025, 12:08 GMT+1
Dear Larry,

Thanks for your message. We updated the website and there was an error shortly, but it should be fixed already. Please let me know if the Game Manual is still not showing.

Wish you a nice day,
Cleopatra

---
Cleopatra Lang
Management Assistant

I've tried all the above sites again, and they are all working for me, maybe it's a problem in different parts of the world, or, as I said, it's still not working perfectly.

[Tsubame ⭐]

Originally posted by bosbrian:

Another interesting happening, is that when I am returned to the main menu, and the program appears to stall, there is still activity shown on the Task Manager (CPU and Memory) I've waited 20 minutes but no progress into the campaign.
One question, How do I re download this game on steam? Do I have to uninstall first?

Yes.

[larry_roberts]

Got this from the 'manual' website:

Troubleshooting

Sometimes users have problems with starting the game, occuring crashes or broken game settings. Depending on what the cause for the problem is, it might be possible that a reset of game files, texture cache or settings might solve it.

In other cases or if further advice is needed, you might get in touch with other users or Urban Games to find a solution. If the problem is mod related, please read the section about mod usage.
Common problems
Black screen

You changed something in the game settings and the screen is black.

Hit Alt+Enter to toggle Window Mode. Then you should be able to enter the game settings and select the correct resolution for your monitor.
Game does not start

The game doesn't start or crash during game load without using mods.

Please compare your hardware to the minimum system requirements Game Overview. If your system is below these requirements, the game may not start.

Have you got multiple displays connected? Maybe the game is running but on the wrong screen.
Game does not start on Linux

You want to play TF2 on a linux machine.

Some player have trouble with missing libraries especially on older operating system version. If you are affected the game fails to start, please try to copy the libstdc++ files from <installdirectory>/Transport Fever 2/extra to <installdirectory>/Transport Fever 2/.
No mouse pointer

You cannot see your mouse pointer.

Hit Alt+Enter to toggle Window Mode. Then you should be able to enter the game settings and disable the hardware mouse cursor.
Slow gameplay

Your framerate is too low, even when the game is paused.

Your GPU may be the bottleneck. Games like Transport Fever 2 show many more objects than usual shooter games, where you only see a close neighborhood. Try to lower your graphics settings or play in Full-HD instead of UHD.

When increasing game speed to 2x or 4x, the gameplay doesn't speed up or vehicles start to jump.

The CPU may be the bottleneck. Transport Fever 2 doesn't limit city sizes or number of towns that you can place in your map, but the game has to simulate every inhabitant and calculate its way from home to work and shopping venues. This may sooner or later exceed the power of your processor. Laptops usually have CPUs that are rather optimized for low energy consumption than for higher speed. Generally we can say that placing many towns close to each other requires more CPU power than fewer towns with less connections.

My CPU and GPU are above the minimum specs but I still get very low framerates.

There may be various reasons for low performance. Common ones are other processes running in the background and a bottleneck in your hardware. A typical bottleneck can be RAM throughput if you got slower RAM modules, an older mainboard with a slower PCIe slot or a graphic card with few VRAM. In such a case, lowering texture quality and disabling mods using high resolution textures without lods can massivly increase your fps.
Campaign progress is lost

Your progress of the campaign is lost and you can only access the first mission.

Under certain circumstances, the profile containing all campaign progress gets reset. Unfortunately it is not possible to restore the progress automatically. To manually restore the progress, you can use one of the profiles below and replace the profile.lua in the userdata directory.

Files to download:

Profile with unlocked missions and no medals
Profile with unlocked missions and unlocked medals
Profile with unlocked missions and earned medals
Profile with all missions locked

To unlock only certain missions or medals, edit the profile.lua with a text editor like Notepad++ according to the comments in the file. Please be aware that the files differ a bit for the GOG/Epic version of the game. Both versions are included in the downloads too.
Steam Deck

You cannot interact with the game.

In this case the game is started in controller mode, but the controller layout configuration does not work properly.

Follow these steps to configure the correct profile:

Go to Transport Fever 2 in your Steam library
Use the controller button on the right
Inspect the current layout
Select the official layout

Maintenance

See below to find out how to backup, reset or restore the game or user files related to Transport Fever 2.
Backup and Restore
Steam

Steam provides a backup and restore function via the main menu, which allows for backup up the static data.

Alternatively, the static game files can be downloaded anytime while logged into the Steam client.

Note, that the userdata folder with settings and save games are not included in the Steam backup and restore function. To backup these files, make a copy of the according folder (location).
GOG, Epic Games and App Store

To backup static game files, simply make a copy of the games installation folder.

Note, that the userdata folder with settings and save games are not included in the installation folder. To backup these files, make a copy of the according folder (location).
GOG Galaxy

To restore the files with GOG Galaxy, select “Scan & Import Folder” from the main menu and point to the game folder.

Alternatively, the game files can be downloaded with GOG galaxy or reinstalled with the installer downloaded from the GOG library.
Verifying the game file integrity
Steam

To verify the integrity in the Steam version

Restart your computer and launch Steam
From the Library section, right-click on the game and select Properties from the menu.
Select the Local files tab and click the Verify integrity of game files… button.
Steam will verify the game's files - this process may take several minutes.

For more information and a video guide please refer to: https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=2037-QEUH-3335
GOG

Download the installer from your GOG library and run it. It will automatically detect an existing installation and reinstall all game files, while keeping your save games and settings intact.

Refer to GOG Faq and solutions for known issues if you face problems with the manual installer.

When using GOG galaxy

right-click Transport Fever 2 in the library or select “More” next to the “Play” button,
then click “Manage Installation → Verify / Repair”.

Epic Games

To verify the integrity of your game files:

open the Epic Games launcher
go to the game library
press the three dots next to the entry of Transport Fever 2
select 'Verify'

Reset game settings

User specific setting like screen resolution or key bindings are saved in the settings.lua file (location). To completely reset the game´s settings, delete the file while the game is not running.

Please note, that reinstalling or uninstalling the game will not reset the settings.
Delete the texture cache

If you are facing problems with black or broken textures, you can try to delete the texture cache folder (location).
Delete the shader cache

If you are facing problems with shaders (either broken rendering or crashes on startup), you can try to delete the shader cache folder (location).
Get Help

If you struggle to solve the problem yourself, you may ask somebody else for assistance. Usually it is helpful to provide as many details as possible. These details may be:

Screenshots which show the problem
The stdout.txt logfile (can be found in userdata/.../crash_dump) and the settings.lua configuration file.
Any error message that was displayed by the game
Your hardware specs (CPU model, Graphic card model and RAM size)
Actions you did before the problem occured (provide the last savegame before the problem, if available)
Steps you have taken so far to solve the problem

Beside the stdout.txt file that is overwritten after each game start, there are individual stdout.txt files for each crash that happened.
Where to get help?

There are several locations where you may get help.

The public forums are a good place to share experience, so it's likely that some other user may have an advice for you. Use the search functions (or some external search engine like Google) to find discussions that may suite your problem, as many problems were already discussed before.

Discussions on Steam (english)
transportfever.net (german, english and french)
transport-games.ru (russian and english)
Reddit (english)

Additionally, these communities sometimes offer Discord or Teamspeak servers, if you prefer written or voice chat to solve your problem.

If you did not find a solution for your problem, you might consider to contact Urban Games to ask for help. Currently, the contact form at the bottom right corner of transportfever2.com/about/contact is the convenient way to get in touch with us. We'd appreciate if you can provide us with the details above as well as the most recent dump file in case of a crash so that we can speed up the problem solving.

[larry_roberts]

Good Luck.

[bosbrian]

@larry_roberts
You're lucky. The game manual link is still not working for me. In addition, I've reinstalled the game from steam, and it's just the same. Free Game working OK. Campaign just sending me back to the menu screen. As I said previously, this game was working perfectly a few months ago, and I haven't changed any hardware, so my system is up to spec. I can't find any setting which could cause this problem, and just in case, I've tried changing them all one at a time with no result.

[bosbrian]

I have fixed my problem. Seeing as I can't access any site with the names Transport Fever, and Urban games, I have uninstalled this game and junked it. Problem solved.

[Tsubame ⭐]

Sorry you could not play the game. If you have less than 2 hours recorded, and within 14 days purchase, do not forget to refund the game.

[larry_roberts]

Very Sorry, you are unable to enjoy this game. Can't understand how you are unable to access above sites.