Black Screen Launching Error

[Pain.Peko]

I just bought Dragonfall and I have a problem regarding every time I try to launch the game. Whenever I try to launch the game, this black screen appears and the game won't start at all. The game just freezes at this black screen.

All that's written is "Version: XX" at the top center, and then the game just freezes. I tried everything in the sticky, verified local content, turned off sync, and disabled overlay. Nothing works.

This is a screenshot of my problem: http://i.imgur.com/lMge48l.png

I run Windows 7, and I can post my specs later if it'd help.

I just want to play the game. Can anyone help me out?

[lucas]

Same thing happens to me, and happened with Shadowrun Returns too. I have more than an hour of "play" time in that game but I never even got to the menu.

I emailed the devs with my specs and the error logs and they couldn't do anything, and said that it was a common error but they couldn't reproduce it in-house.

I must have read more than 50 topics on this issue in their forums, and none of the proposed solutions worked. The devs would usually link to the troubleshoot page, but every single solution there failed too.

I've come to terms with the fact that I'll never get a refund and if I ever get to play the game it'll be when I get a new PC, and even then who knows. A shame, really, because I love Shadowrun and I've heard very good things about Returns and Dragonfall.

[Amras]

Yeah, I have this too. Never had an issue at all with 'vanilla' SRR.

Would like to find out if the devs have some sort of fix that doesn't involve buying a new PC. That ain't particularly cost effective for me.

[Dan_Runner]

I posted the same problem here just two days before you under the thread "Crash on Startup" but received no response. One difference may be that the original Dragonfall still works, just the Director's Cut hangs at launch with a black shell window. Also, my OS is Linux (Kubuntu 13.04). I am giving up hope...

[Harebrained Schemes]

This is an issue that we are actively investigating and would love to fix. As we continue to try to pin down what is causing this issue please send us an email at [e-mail] with as much information about your computer as you can. We may have a few more questions to ask you and we will do everything we can to resolve this issue.

[wintermute]

I've seen this a couple of times. What I've found is if I log off (i.e. restart GDM/Xorg) then log back in again, then immediately start up Steam and run the game, then everything works.

So I would guess some other process is doing something which interferes with Shadowrun grabbing the graphics hardware. Since all I had running in the 40 mins before I attempted to play the game the first was Firefox, Thunderbird and Chrome I would be suspecting the flashplayer plugin or some sort of WebGL thing.

[Harebrained Schemes]

Thank you for this information we will pass this information along to other users who are reporting this or a similar issue as a potential work around.

[Rittr]

I had the same problem.
My Firewall on Windows blocked Dragonfall.exe . After unblocking the game worked!

[steve220]

Win7 64-bit.
8 GB RAM
Radeon 6850 graphix card

Dragonfall won't run for me (Shadowrun Returns plays fine). I initially got a steam error saying it failed to start (unknown reason). I tried launching the dragonfall.exe directly as Administrator and got a black screen that eventually says "Not Responding"

I've uninstalled Avast, turned my UAC off, and now I get the black screen from launching dragonfall directly from Steam.

I've tried adding to the list of allowed programs through Windows Firewall, and it says it's already there.

I turned off Windows firewall, It said "preparing to launch", but then game me the inital "failed to start (unknown reason)" error.

I tried disabling the Steam overlay. Still nothing.

Steam synchronization is checked.

I sent an email to harebraned schemes, and will be submitting a Steam ticket as well.

[Go Fish]

Still happens with all games of series. Launching outside of Steam, once as admin, then normally fixes it. Still not possible to launch from Steam, compatibility mode or not, overlay or not, just launch .exe directly.

Seems something very non-standard was done in start-up code of game.