No textures / black screen on start up

[BeZ]

As per topic - all I get when starting the game is a field to put your profile name (default "Hydra"). A bit of blind clicking on the screen rewarded me with a error/denied type sound, until I probably hit the "OK/Create" button, and the screen went completely black.

It's probably not a problem with the game itself, but rather how my setup handles the unity engine; I have the exact same problem in AI wars - except there the menus are visible, the rest is just a pink background with a few white squares floating around.

Drivers should be up to date, and reinstalling either game changed nothing.
System details in the attached DXDiag file. Both games run through Steam, with a custom installation folder (in case that matters).

Would be grateful for any ideas on how to fix this, as I'd really like to try both games!

[eRe4s3r]

DXDiag does really not tell a lot. Your system is fine, your drivers are fine but that's all that dxdiag tells... what you describe sounds like you have some kind of software installed that somehow prevents file access to your HDD when Mono/Unity asks for it.

Any encryption? Any AV software? Any other software that may interfere? Where did you install the game? System partition? Protected folder?

Also what particularly do you mean with custom installation folder? As in, custom steam location ?

[BeZ]

Thanks for the reply,

not sure what could stop the games from loading textures; I've tried running as admin, taking ownership of the folder, and disabling AV - no difference.

Tried moving both Steam and games to default folders - no difference. Didn't expect it though; I understand these games don't load resources from any directories outside the one they're installed in?

Did a little research; Hearthstone, MechWarrior Tactics, War for the Overworld and Badlands 2 works fine, all using the unity engine. Probably different versions, but still.

EDIT:
Found lots of instances of an error messages in the file ArcenDebugLog.txt, see below. Replace "Logo" with whatever file it can't find.

Code: [Select]

Error loading Logo Couldn't open file /games/

   at System.Environment.get_StackTrace()
   at ArcenDebugging.ArcenDebugLog(System.String Message, DebugLogDestination Destination, Boolean IncludeStackTrace, Verbosity Verbosity)
   at ArcenDebugging.ArcenDebugLog(System.String Message, DebugLogDestination Destination, Verbosity Verbosity)
   at ArcenDebugging.ArcenDebugLog(System.String Message, Verbosity Verbosity)
   at GameImage+<LoadTextureFromFileAsyncInner>d__0.MoveNext()
No file or folder with that name as far as I can see - maybe in some sort of .bin or compressed file?
Seems all the game art is in there, but under RuntimeData\Images. I'm confused ^^

And yes, I've tried re-downloading/installing a few times.

[eRe4s3r]

Well I can't reproduce this error exactly, but I noticed that when you break loading by altering the asset files the game doesn't actually start ever again (even with original assets files) until you completely delete the files it generated in it's game folder. That is certainly odd, but not your bug ;P Or maybe it is.. but the error messages *I* get when doing this are different from yours.

Either way, That's really odd all around for me deleting logo.png causes THIS error

Code: [Select]

File Logo does not exist!
You say you did try redownloading and installing....

Here is an idea, delete the game folder entirely. Then, re-run installer and place the game in a folder you created yourself (say, C:\TwilightZone\Game  ) ;p then install game there. If you have steam, I mean literally "Copy" the  SteamApps\common\The Last Federation folder in a new location (would be even better if it weren't on C:\ ). Don't worry, it won't break anything more than already is broken ;p

If this still doesn't work, right click on the folder and check permissions. Does everything have read access? Are you running as admin?

And if THIS doesn't work then I got no clue.  Arcengames staff will surely come to your help once the week starts.

[BeZ]

Sorry for late reply - just came home from work, it's been a *really* long day (02 AM now).

Thank you again, I'll try your suggestions when I'm not completely shot. Hopefully sometime tomorrow... er, later today that is.

[x4000]

Sorry about the delay over the weekend there.  That is quite unusual indeed -- where did you download the game from?  Steam, or elsewhere?  If Steam, doing a verify of your file cache would be a good idea.

You might also check out the stickied thread here about AVAST, which also includes solutions for a variety of other woes with the unity engine being incompatible with various things (Stardock's windowblinds, for instance): http://www.arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,15352.0.html

[BeZ]

They work! Both of them!
Simply copied the whole gamefolder to some other place outside steam's standard install-directories, as per eRe4s3r's suggestion (desktop in this case), and ran both games directly from there.

There's music (really nice tunes by the way) as well now, didn't even know that didn't work either.

Thanks eRe4s3r, you're a star!

And to x4000 as well. I did run Avast at some point, maybe a year ago, but no longer due to it becoming more and more "bloatware'ish" and creating more trouble than it ever solved.

[x4000]

Awesome, glad to hear that did the trick!