CG's no Longer Playing

[wolfstar29]

I stopped playing the game for a few months and came back during the previous patch. Everything was working fine before, but since I started playing again, when CG's play, a black screen flickers for a frame or two and then ends. The only exception to this is that I could find are some of the APHO skill/tutorial videos still play but most of them don't.

I've deleted all the CG's and re-installed them many times and I've uninstalled and re-installed the game a couple of times to no avail. After searching online, the only solution that I found that may work is to install codecs, so I installed every K-Lite codec for Windows Media Player as I've heard that's what the game uses to play CG's. This still didn't work so I looked into the streamingasset folder for the game and found that WMP can't open most of the CG's but other players like VLC can. I also checked to see if WMP can open other MP4 files and it can, so the problem seems to be that WMP can't specifically open most of the game CG files.

I've contacted customer support and they weren't able to help so I was wondering if anybody else here has had this problem and knows a solution.

If it helps I'm using an AMD 6800 XT.

[Meowish]

I am gonna assume by CG you meant video here and not the actual Computer Graphic Artwork CG as a single picture, because CG is picture file and it doesn't require codec to decode and read, but video on the other hand require that.

Although Outdated Codec can be the main problem that videos doesn't play in games, i really doubt any game will be using windows media player, since they mostly uses Bink or Quicktime. And K-Lite is actually more supportive for MPC and not WMP. Though it doesn't matter what player they use as long as the codec is up to date, the videos should play fine. But since part of the videos are still working on your side from within the game, it means there's nothing wrong with your codec. My guess is the resource download problem.

What did you choose when the game prompt you for resource download? Minimum or Full? Try pick full and let it fully download, then try if those problems are still there?

I remember there's a similar problem with that back at 4.7 and here's the official solution to that: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1d27eEurTu9N-zkIGXZO-xKsrHYfOQAsv7ppWK40Ljxs/edit#gid=830736711

Since the game is already on 5.7 i doubt that problem from the past still exist, but you may give it a try, it might works.

[wolfstar29]

Thanks Meowish. Yes, I'm referring to videos within the game / anything under the CG selection tab.

I've downloaded all assets in full and even double checked in the downloads tab that there isn't anything left to download.

I just tried using the 4.7 method fix but it didn't change anything. I even used the newest CG downloads from the Discord as well.

Maybe I'll be stuck finding the files manually and playing them from the folder until an update randomly decides to fix this.

[Meowish]

Originally posted by wolfstar29:

Thanks Meowish. Yes, I'm referring to videos within the game / anything under the CG selection tab.

I've downloaded all assets in full and even double checked in the downloads tab that there isn't anything left to download.

I just tried using the 4.7 method fix but it didn't change anything. I even used the newest CG downloads from the Discord as well.

Maybe I'll be stuck finding the files manually and playing them from the folder until an update randomly decides to fix this.

Hmm, in that case, try do this, Start Steam with Administrator privilege. And start HI3 game with admin too. And see if that works.

Also, you might have already seen this, but instead of Codec, the guy found the problem to be the 2nd GPU driver that's causing the CG not loading, and he fixed it by disabling the GPU. He's using AMD chipset graphic card as well...
https://www.reddit.com/r/houkai3rd/comments/gkqjry/does_anyone_have_a_fix_for_this_blank_cg_problem/

[wolfstar29]

I never thought of running the game with administrator privilege but it still didn't work.

I did see that thread but I don't have an integrated GPU, only a discreet one.

[Meowish]

Originally posted by wolfstar29:

I never thought of running the game with administrator privilege but it still didn't work.

I did see that thread but I don't have an integrated GPU, only a discreet one.

Have you tried updating the graphic driver? As far as i can tell from googling, those with that problem are mostly AMD user and having dual GPU, so it could be the driver somehow. Though there's also a few showcase of how good it looks on AMD graphic cards in some youtube video so i guess it's just a driver problem?

There's also a few people claiming to put the laptop on power saving mode will fix that. Not sure if it's true. But you can try if you are on a laptop.
There's even a youtube video about it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cP-usU7vq2U

I am using NVidia here and don't have that problem and can't seemed to reproduce that problem so it's kinda hard for me to check.

[wolfstar29]

Thanks again.

My single GPU is up to date which may be the problem. Since I stopped playing for a few months, I've had many GPU, Windows, game updates, etc. so it's hard to pin down which one is at fault.

I'm using a desktop so I don't have those options in my power settings. I did try using various power plans but none of them made a difference.

[Meowish]

Originally posted by wolfstar29:

Thanks again.

My single GPU is up to date which may be the problem. Since I stopped playing for a few months, I've had many GPU, Windows, game updates, etc. so it's hard to pin down which one is at fault.

I'm using a desktop so I don't have those options in my power settings. I did try using various power plans but none of them made a difference.

Could be, reverting to earlier version might work. But if that's the case, you probably should just wait till the game catches up with the new driver. Cognosphere's office has been split in two, partly in Shanghai and partly in Singapore. That's what caused the recent update and bug problems we have in all their games. They are still dealing with the mess of HQ change from MiHoYo to Cognosphere.

Another possibility when it comes to faulty driver can be hardware malfunctioning too, over heating, wear and tear etc can cause that to happen sometimes. Experienced that on some of my Old cards and the driver will just go like... off, on strike, or something like "I need a break!"... And the newer windows o/s will even tell you "Your driver is on heat"... err.. something like that...

On the occasion of faulty hardware, actually reverting to windows default driver works on them (which prolong their usefulness before fully dead), simply delete the driver and quickly turn on the game/before it tried to recover and reinstall the driver will work, for some games. But let's hope that's not the case here.

The only and final possibility I can think of is probably the harddisk you are installing the game has insufficient space and the game installer/downloader put that into calculation and didn't download everything. At least when it comes to CG not playing in HI3 community, there's only 2 category I've seen so far, [1] download problem - which can be a lot of cause from internet to storage space to admin permission, [2] dual core GPU driver conflict problem which can be fixed by either disable the driver or put one core into hibernation via power saving mode.

Wish i can help more on that part but I've always been a Nvidia user since Voodoo retired so i am really not sure how AMD ones work, at least if you are using Nvidia there's a control panel we can customize how we want the card to work for each game and from there we can do wonders, very flexible. Anyway, hope you find the reason soon!

[wolfstar29]

If I rolled back my drivers, I'd have performance issues with newer games. Overheating happened on my old card as well but everything in my new computer is only 8 months old and the temperature never rises above 40 - 50C when gaming.

It's not a storage problem. I tried installing the game on an HDD, SSD, and M.2, but the problem persisted. I have over a TB left in each of the drives.

I've only owned Nvidia laptops but I do have AMD software for my desktop that does fine tune games. I messed around a bit to see if I could solve the problem but nothing fixed it (granted, there are a lot of different options so I may just not have found the correct setting yet).

Thanks for all the suggestions Meowish. It seems like I'll be waiting until it naturally fixes itself (if it does).

[Meowish]

Originally posted by wolfstar29:

Thanks for all the suggestions Meowish. It seems like I'll be waiting until it naturally fixes itself (if it does).

You're welcome! Though i couldn't be of much help sorry. Hope it straightens itself out soon!

[wolfstar29]

Update: The 5.8 version release fixed my CG problems.

[Meowish]

Glad to hear it's fixed!