Gloomrot: Black Screen on Startup

[Kiena]

I played the game 70+ hours before, closer to the original release. Now when it tries to start, there is just a brief sound, then only the version number on a black screen.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2977274370
I looked into the Player.log file for clues:

D3D shader create error for pixel shader [0x80070057]

Then a lot of these entries:

ShaderProgram is unsupported, but because jobified rendering is enabled the ShaderProgram can not be removed.

My PC meets (exceeds) the supposed requirements and the game was working before.
There is a second kind of suspicious message in the logs, too:

000001EC5D41BB00: invalid HTTP response code received. URL: https://api.epicgames.dev/telemetry/data/datarouter/api/v1/public/data?...

I actively block sending data to EOS. I do hope that those calls hanging/failing has nothing to do with the issue, as well as that they are not required for playing the game on Steam. I didn't see any mention in the EULA either.

[fatherjimbo]

I'm getting the same thing. Something is broken on their end for sure. I've tried a lot of things to correct this and nothing works.

[Handshoe]

Tried many things/options but keep getting this black screen to :-(

[obey.art]

Have same

[Kiena]

This bug report appears to cover now both the black screen after character creation and this one:
https://bugs.playvrising.com/suggestions/446681/black-screen-when-loading-in
(This one is in at least one comment.) It may be worth upvoting.

I also tried a few things but only got as far as removing the

ShaderProgram is unsupported, but because jobified rendering is enabled the ShaderProgram can not be removed.

entries by editing the

...\steamapps\common\VRising\VRising_Data\boot.config

file and setting the gfx-enable-gfx-jobs value from 1 to 0. (I found the suggestion in some other game's forum.) All it did was making the log file less noisy, though.

[niclasf]

You can try this workaround and see if it helps:
1. Right-click the game in Steam and select Manage > Browse local files
2. Navigate through the following folders: VRising_Data\StreamingAssets\Settings
3. Locate the ClientSettings.json file
4. Replace it with the ClientSettings.json file below (this will reset your settings to default and set EOSServerSearch to false)

ClientSettings.json

{
  "General": {
    "NewsURL": "https://client.vrising.net/live/v2/news.json"
  },
  "Sound": {
    "Threaded": true,
    "DisableAllSounds": false,
    "DisableMusic": false,
    "MonoSound": false,
    "SoundInBackground": true,
    "MasterVolume": 1.0,
    "MusicVolume": 1.0,
    "SoundEffectsVolume": 1.0,
    "AmbienceVolume": 1.0,
    "VoiceOverVolume": 1.0,
    "UIVolume": 1.0
  },
  "Interface": {
    "LockMinimapRotation": true
  },
  "GameClient": {
    "RecordClientReplay": false,
    "PlayLatestClientReplay": false,
    "HideFullServers": false,
    "UseEOSServerSearch": false
  },
  "HostSettings": {
    "Port": 9876,
    "QueryPort": 9877,
    "Secure": false
  }
}

[Kiena]

Originally posted by niclasf:

You can try this workaround and see if it helps:
...

Thank you! The workaround worked for me. A new solo game has been started successfully.

Note about the file location:
I edited the

%APPDATA%\..\LocalLow\Stunlock Studios\VRising\Settings\v2\ClientSettings.json

file (having a safety copy from before) and it worked right away. (I see it having been changed since the game started, so I might need to repeat the process if it won't be starting again. Editing the files in the Steam application folder caused some minor update issues when the first hotfix came out, though.)

[MKGDX]

Originally posted by niclasf:

You can try this workaround and see if it helps:
1. Right-click the game in Steam and select Manage > Browse local files
2. Navigate through the following folders: VRising_Data\StreamingAssets\Settings
3. Locate the ClientSettings.json file
4. Replace it with the ClientSettings.json file below (this will reset your settings to default and set EOSServerSearch to false)

ClientSettings.json

{
  "General": {
    "NewsURL": "https://client.vrising.net/live/v2/news.json"
  },
  "Sound": {
    "Threaded": true,
    "DisableAllSounds": false,
    "DisableMusic": false,
    "MonoSound": false,
    "SoundInBackground": true,
    "MasterVolume": 1.0,
    "MusicVolume": 1.0,
    "SoundEffectsVolume": 1.0,
    "AmbienceVolume": 1.0,
    "VoiceOverVolume": 1.0,
    "UIVolume": 1.0
  },
  "Interface": {
    "LockMinimapRotation": true
  },
  "GameClient": {
    "RecordClientReplay": false,
    "PlayLatestClientReplay": false,
    "HideFullServers": false,
    "UseEOSServerSearch": false
  },
  "HostSettings": {
    "Port": 9876,
    "QueryPort": 9877,
    "Secure": false
  }
}

I also have Epic's services blocked, and got the black screen, this fixed it for me as well