The Black Screen of BI on Mac

[SoapyBoat]

I recently got Bioshock Infinite for my Macbook, but the moment I started it up and got to the loading screen it shows a black screen. I figure it's a visual thing because I can still hear the game sounds and at the bottom of the screen there are the button hints. I've read up a few posts that the proble started up after the DLCs came out, but I've only seen manual fixes for the PC. Pls help!!

[TheDubyaBee]

Same here! I load it (from Steam), it shows the developer & publisher logos okay, it shows the TakeTwo small print okay, and then goes to what appears to be the title screen, but it's an entirely black screen except for the in-game cursor and the button hints at the bottom. I initially could see everything on first opening the game, but it blacked out after changing some video settings, so perhaps that's my issue? I tried starting in window mode, saw the title screen, tried to change the video setting, and everything blacked out AGAIN. I should hope that changing video settings to the high end of my computer's capacity would slow the game down at worst, not make it entirely invisible!

[SoapyBoat]

Okay, I found a way to... sort of get around the black screen (which will happen in game when you play it if you get the visuals to work), so this is what I do:

1. Press Enter on your keyboard. Don't touch your mouse at all until you're able to see something, alright?

2. You'll hear the wooshing to the main menu, and here's where guesswork comes in; using the arrow keys, go down ONCE and press Enter. You should hear a wooshing to a different area of the menu where the bg song sounds more "tinny". You're now in the Options menu hooray!

3. Don't move the selection, just press Enter again. This will lead you into the "Graphics" settings.

4. Don't miss a beat on this now; go down four times to get to the Quality settings, then right once to change the settings and press Enter. Hopefully you'll be able to see something on the first try, but if not, play a little Roulette with the quality settings. With luck you'll be able to get things working!

(Play on low Trust me, finer detail is just second to the lag you will get with the higher settings)

This really isn't a sure way of getting rid of the black boxes, because any "light flare" on your screen will prompt the black box to appear ingame, DURING A BATTLE EVEN. But, you can easily fix that by fiddling with the Quality settings again, only this time the ingame menu is visible. You'll be able to see the changes behind the menu itself so don't sweat it.

You could use your mouse for the ingame menu selections, but just go for the arrow keys on your keyboard; a lot quicker than dragging your laggy mouse around and you'll get the pattern of the key buttons in your head very quickly, so it's much faster to get you back into the game anyway. Hope this helps!

[TheDubyaBee]

I went the guesswork route as well (with some help from YouTube videos of the startup sequence) and got the game to start without (another) problem. However, changing video settings of any kind (aspect ratio, window vs. fullscreen, resolution, etc.) within the game changes the colors (all red, all blue, all yellow, total blackout [except for the health bar!], full color) in seemingly arbitary order. This kind of issue seems to date back to at least September on these boards-- why hasn't this been addressed by any of the developers?

[SoapyBoat]

I'd suggest NOT to mess around with any other setting others than the Quality setting, only reason being that it's easier to have the "Presets" keep your other options stable when you're doing the Roulette on them.

As for the visual issue, I think it occured right after the DLC came up, because I've never heard of this blackout problem before until the DLC was available. Unfortunately for me, I got it AFTER the DLC was released. Anywho, hopefully the developers are fixing the patch, if not I guess it's a matter of having enough Mac users playing BI to report the problem...

[MrFancy]

Didn't work for me. The first sound abruptly cuts off after half a second. Tells me I have more problems. Brand new top of the line Haswell MBP and no go. Very frustrating.

[aMotorizedCarrot]

As you're running on a brand new machine, I'd suggest opening a support ticket at Aspyr's (the porting team's) site. I'll try to look for something (maybe temporary) in the meanwhile.

I haven't ever been in contact with Aspyr's support, but I've heard some nasty stories years back. Still worth a shot, though!

[SoapyBoat]

I've tried it myself, but the Aspyr support (for some reason) redirected me somewhere else. The game's started to become more buggier and this method simply stopped working for me too :/ talk about frustrating.

[MLG SHAMWOW]

when im in bi infinite every once and a while when fighting ect the screen looks like its shrinking backward so expanding from the middle untill the hole screen is black (this take about
0.30 secands) :C

[MLG SHAMWOW]

sa

[DovahkiinBear]

Most of the time the black screen happens it doesn't.

[MLG SHAMWOW]

?

[SoapyBoat]

I'm just waiting for a patch to fix this, otherwise I'll be forced to get a pc to just play the dang game problem free :c

[MLG SHAMWOW]

;c

[MLG SHAMWOW]

i have same kinda prob with metro last light all the people are all streched out and broken and on mac my entire screen is fricking white

[SoapyBoat]

The problem is that when they convert pc games to mac, it never seems to convert into the right format completely... Ultimately, a PC is the ultimate gaming platform since most developers don't solely cater to the Mac community.