Black Screen of Death

[BrandonBuchanan]

Does anyone have a solution to what I'm calling "The Black Screen of Death"? For the past few days, I cannot get the game to start. When it launches, the game freezes up immediately.

Usually it will say "initializing game" on the upper left corner. Sometimes it's just black screen, and sometimes there is a piece of the game's artwork. Every now and again, it will have a black screen but I can tell the game is going (my clicking on my mouse sounds like it's initiating action with a game I cannot see). Most of the time, the game is just froze and it will play its - admittedly epic - loading music ad infinitum.

I have gone into my paradox documents file and deleted the CK3 folder. I've deleted all mods. I've even uninstalled and reinstalled the game a half a dozen times. All to no avail. I'm on a Mac. If anyone can offer help or suggestions, that would be greatly appreciated.

[jpcerutti]

I have always gotten just a black screen at first after firing the launcher - I just wait and it will within a minute or two it give me a loading picture and the initialization circle. Whole loading cycle takes about 5 min on an Intel i9 (but I do have mods). Music does kick in for me first (sometimes before the placeholding art), then the game cursor, then eventually the game.

If you remove all your old saves (especially ones that are just hiding in the save file that cannot be used in the current game version) you can speed your loading process up considerably.

Mac had some specific issues, I don't remember what they are, but if you search Community Support you can probably find the threads.

When all else fails (and it is not a bad idea to ask there first) the game manufacturer has a tech support subforum on their pages. That is:

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/forums/crusader-kings-iii-tech-support.1078/

Paradox Forums - Crusader Kings III - Tech Support

[BrandonBuchanan]

Thank you Jpcerutti. I just posted my question to the Paradox forums tech support. Didn't think to go there. I know the game unfortunately has very long load times, but this problem persists even when I now have zero save files, since I have both deleted my CK3 folder and have done numerous reinstalls. I have let the game sit for 15 min multiple times and still not received anything beyond either a blank screen or sometimes an initial artwork page. Hopefully we'll be able to get this figured out. Thank you again.