Black Screen

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Hey everyone -

Today, my Baldur's Gate II: Throne Of Bhaal and Shadows of Amn inexplicably stopped working - once I start the game, the screen is entirely black. The normal sounds (from the loading screens and from the black isle icons etc. still have sounds, but there is no game). I don't know what happened, except:

I was starting ToB - but I clicked the SoA. It asked for my CD2, and I simply Alt+F4'd out of the screen. Now whenever I try to play it gives me the black screen effect I described above.

I'm not completely sure if this is the right place to ask, so if it's not, then I'm sorry, and please redirect me.

Thanks

 

Have you tried restarting your computer?

 

Yeah, but the same thing happened... I even tried using CD 2 and directly starting SoA instead of ToB, but no luck.

Will I have to reinstall?

Edit: I figured out that if I move down a resolution, then the game works...

But, how come I can no longer play at my original resolution? Everything being big seriously annoys me.

[ April 07, 2006, 12:00: Message edited by: RootOfAllSquares ]

 

thats ahppened to me . wat i recommend is reinstalling bg2.

To save your games just keep your, which is in save folder in your main folder drive for bg2 were ever you my keep it. gl (try downloading the patch as well it fixed alot of my crashing problems)

 

I recommend you do this before reinstalling: Go to your desktop and right click on your BG1 / 2 shortcut (if you don't have a shortcut go to Start > All Programs > Black Isle and right click on Baldur's Gate 1 / 2) and select "Properties". Click on "Compatibility" tag, then select the box called "Run this program in compatibility mode for:", and then select Windows 95 or Windows 98/Me.

Tends to help with alot of problems related to BG 1/2 since their supposed to run on Windows 95/98 (if you're using Windows XP).

 

Well, I did reinstall, but my resolution problem is still there. Is there any explanation for suddenly NOT being able to play at the higher resolution?

Thanks for the help so far.

 

What resolution do you want to play at? I don't think the game supports (plays without probs) above 800x600.

 

I want to play at 800x600 . I had to move down one (to the lowest, I don't recall at the moment) for the game to function right - but it always functioned before this weird episode at 800x600...

 

Root -

Don't know if you're still interested, but I had the same problem.

When the game bombed, it left behind some &$#%*$ in the cache and tempsave directories. Empty those out before the next time you run the game, and that may help fix the black screen.

Thrasher

 

Higher resolutions may not be supported, but I've used them without issue for years.

[ May 10, 2006, 22:25: Message edited by: Drew ]

 

Um, what? If you mean to say that you've "never had trouble with them" or "used them without issue", that makes sense in context, but otherwise...

Anyway, to lay it out plain and simple. The unsupported resolutions are just that: unsupported, not unusuable. For some it may not work, hence being unsupported. For most it will work, which is why they even bothered to include them with the game. If you want to, try them out. If they work, great; if they don't, oh well.

If you can't make it work at 800x600, then you've got a problem. Installing the patches is a good idea, and you never know what mod might cause a problem.

 

The actual verbiage is that they aren't "officially supported", but they are offered.....in other words, the devs never tested it. I've played on 1024x768 for 3 years......using an 833 mhz machine and just the onboard video. It has never given me trouble.

@Fel: Oops. Edited my post.

 

Just Installed BG-ToB on my new XP Laptop. It was MUCH harder to get working than on my 3 year old Win2K laptop. New hardware and/or drivers and/or OS makes this 'older' game harder and harder to run properly.

This time I had to turn off all 3-d functions to make it work, and I still have to run at 800x600 to avoid glitches (graphics anomalies, crashes, stuttering).

Still need to try some other combinations (like turning off direct draw, character shadowing, ambient sound) to see if I can bump up the resolution (sure would be nice with my new widescreen).

The point being is that this game required entirely too much fiddling around to get to work right. Who wants to spend hours trying to get the max out of the game? By the time Vista arrives, it may be really be impossible! If only someone could update the game to work with modern hardware and software....

One can almost see why people gravitate towards consoles.... Oh well...

 

Update: Turned off directdraw and that fixed the stuttering at 1024x768. Couldn't enable hardware 3d acceleration though because of square black graphics artifacts. But at least I can take advantage of my widescreen now!