Black screen or main menu not loading properly on startup

[apsyse]

(Edit: Locked 8 January 2015. This thread is outdated. Please refer to the Bugs/Solutions thread stickied at the top of the forum instead, thanks.)



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There have some reported cases of Steam Marines booting to a black screen or the main menu not loading properly (music plays, ship icon shows, but no buttons or some other display issues).

Usually this is because the graphics card supports a particular resolution which Steam Marines attempts to boot in but the driver fails for a variety of reasons.

If this is happening hopefully one of the solutions below will work.

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Windows 8.1 with older Radeon HD series graphics cards (e.g. 4000)

Please refer to this thread on Guru3D.com.[forums.guru3d.com] This is a specific, more advanced solution for some issues with older hardware. Please do not attempt if you do not know what you are doing.

WINDOWS

1) Force boot into a specific resolution

With Steam Marines not running, open the file "\AppData\Roaming\Steam Marines\commonConfig.xml" in any text editor. Inside you will find tags for resolution and full screen. Change to windowed mode and a low resolution, e.g.

<Resolution>800 600</Resolution>
<FullScreen>0</FullScreen>

Run Steam Marines and it should boot into the specified resolution and windowed mode. You should then be able to enter Setup and change the resolution to something more appropriate.

2) Update your graphics card driver

This has fixed most incidents of this issue with Nvidia cards. Most ATI cards seem to be fixed with the forced resolution above.

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MAC

1) Full screen toggle

With Steam Marines running, press Command + Enter to toggle full screen.

2) Upgrade to Mavericks

Mavericks is a free upgrade for Mac.[www.apple.com] You can upgrade to OS X Mavericks from Snow Leopard (10.6.8), Lion (10.7) or Mountain Lion (10.8). You may not wish to do this for various reasons, but it has apparently solved quite a few black screen issues on Mac.

3) Reboot your Mac.

Seriously[i.imgur.com], but only applies if you haven't rebooted for a month or more and you can't get to the main menu (i.e. just black screen.)



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I tried all relevant solutions and none of them worked!

Please send your console.log file located in the Steam Marines directory to [e-mail] and I'll take a closer look.

[SkulleryDullery]

I have this issue on mac

[cory.herc]

I have this issue on a Mac too.
After struggling with it for more or less an entire day, I think I found a fix (for me at least).

When I open the game and get a black screen, pressing Command+Enter (or whatever your fullscreen hotkey is, you can find it in the game's commonConfig.xml file) seems to launch the game and as far as I can tell it runs normally. I still have to do it every time I launch, but it works so far.

[zratchet (Raquet)]

Win7 32-bit on Intel w AMD GPU here...

Black screen - however when I went to the indicated folder the XML file didn't exist and creating it doesn't seem to help. After creating it and trying again it doesn't appear to have modified the XML on its own either.

Also my game refuses any key inputs (Alt-Enter, Alt-Tab, Alt-F4, Ctrl Alt Delete) - I basically am forced into a hard reset despite the system still responding (I hear music but can't *do* anything).

[apsyse]

@zeus1227 & cory.herc
Thanks for reporting in, guys! Zeus, If you wouldn't mind sending me your console.log file so I could take a look at it I'd really appreciate it. Cory, I got your log and will take a look at it, thanks.

@zratchet
I'll respond directly via email.


(Edit: Cory, zratchet, you got mail!)

[apsyse]

Post has been edited with Mac-specific solutions.

[Victory]

I'm having the same issue as Zratch although I am on Windows 7 64 bit w/ Nvidia 770 GTX

I have to hard reset my computer to actually be able to use my computer again kinda really dissapointed

As such I'll post a log - http://pastebin.com/A9PNFjC8

[apsyse]

@Victory
Have you tried the D3D option? IIRC that was the issue Zratch was having - his display driver/GPU had OpenGL issues with the game.

[Victory]

I'll try it now, I edited the file but just wanted to post it before having to hard-reset my computer,


Edit : It works. Thanks alot!|

Edit 2 : It crashed shortly after :(

[apsyse]

There may be a texture leak, although I suspect it may be the console.log file. If you look at the file size it may be very large (i.e. greater than 30mb).

If this is the case, press "ctrl ~" to open the console and type in "trace(0);" without double quotes and hit enter. This should turn off verbose logging.

[forest ouppy]

I'm also having this issue. Though changing it to D3D stopped it from forcing a hard reset, it now crashes almost immediately. My log file is only about 25~kb, so I don't think that's the issue. I'm on W8-64b.

[c_double_u]

Tried to play on a Mac - black screen, followed all of the fix instructions: nothing worked.

No console.log to be found anywhere.. any ideas how to fix this?

[Daller]

I have this issue also. Win8.1 64bit, GTX 670, 1920x1200. Had to hard reset. How did you *break* Windows? ;)

[Shedding]

I tried all of the above and still get a black screen. Would you like me to send you the console.log file?

[Flaw]

Just chiming in, GTX670/Win8/16:10 monitor here as well and getting the black screen on start-up.
It's actually rather amazing that the game somehow manages to break all video output, even if I kill the game with alt+f4 (sounds stop, etc) my screen is still black.
Luckily my other display is connected with display port so turning it off actually makes Windows think I've unplugged the display, causing it to do some sort of a re-init, and I get picture back.

E: Tested setting main display to 1080p, same problem. Also I guess worth mentioning is that I have 3 displays connected, #1 (16:10) and #2 (16:9) are extended, and #3 is a mirror of #2, in case that gives you any insight. I can try disabling the extra displays tomorrow and report back.

[RedberryKitsune]

Can D3D be officially supported so I can play the game? I just get a Black Screen of Death which is nearly impossible to fix without a reboot. D3D works but then it like. Completely freezes at times the graphics do, which makes it unplayable as graphics glitches start piling up. I tried playing the tutorial but I had to stop because I couldn't even read the text as over things were overlayed on top of it.