Gray Screen at New Game

**Archived** Shelim's mod for Drakan which celebrates 10 years of the game and adds new features and fixes some bugs. Note this is now rendered obsolete by the Community Patch however if you play single player only you can still use this mod.

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mage150
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Gray Screen at New Game

Post by mage150 »

I was excited when I saw this, and I went to launch a new game and I got nothing but a blank gray screen, while the starting theme music kept playing. I pressed the shader button and saw it changing, but it never loaded the map.
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Re: Gray Screen at New Game

Post by Shelim »

Could you post some screenshots? What are your hardware specs and do you play in fullscreen or window? :)
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Re: Gray Screen at New Game

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Shelim wrote:Could you post some screenshots? What are your hardware specs and do you play in fullscreen or window? :)
there literally is nothing to take a screenshot of, it's just a blank grey screen when i try to start a new game. I get no graphics.

I play in fullscreen, 1680x1050, Nvidia GeForce 275gtx, AMD Phenom II x6 1090T, 8GB ddr3
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Re: Gray Screen at New Game

Post by Shelim »

If you're using Vista or W7 try to launch with compatibility mode with XP and desktop composition disabled (latter can really help).

Also round of questions :)

1. Can you launch game via Drakan.exe (not via Mod10th/Drakan 10th Anniversary.exe, the default shortcut)? Do the problem persist there?
2. Very important - do you have more than one Drakan game files installed at once?
3. What OS do you have (and which Service Pack)?
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Re: Gray Screen at New Game

Post by mage150 »

Shelim wrote:If you're using Vista or W7 try to launch with compatibility mode with XP and desktop composition disabled (latter can really help).

Also round of questions :)

1. Can you launch game via Drakan.exe (not via Mod10th/Drakan 10th Anniversary.exe, the default shortcut)? Do the problem persist there?
2. Very important - do you have more than one Drakan game files installed at once?
3. What OS do you have (and which Service Pack)?
1. Yes, I run it with no problem, with the exception of multiplayer, I have the UDP errors which I know is networking related.
2. I have a backup copy, but I do not run drakan or modify those files. Everything I run/edit is from the same install I directed the anniversary to.
3. Windows 7 SP1
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Re: Gray Screen at New Game

Post by AXE »

I think one of the issues is "resolution" I seem to have a more stable game, higher fps etc, with shaders; when running under 800x600 windowed mode. Maybe some of the resolutions for wide screen etc are not compatable?

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Re: Gray Screen at New Game

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AXE wrote:I think one of the issues is "resolution" I seem to have a more stable game, higher fps etc, with shaders; when running under 800x600 windowed mode. Maybe some of the resolutions for wide screen etc are not compatable?
Thanks for the suggestion. Changing resolutions did not fix anything. I still see the loading bar pop up and then gray/frozen screen.
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Re: Gray Screen at New Game

Post by Shelim »

mage150 wrote:Thanks for the suggestion. Changing resolutions did not fix anything. I still see the loading bar pop up and then gray/frozen screen.
Wait a second, so you see loading bar? o.O Is rest of menu is working as well? If so, do you see intro level (that owl on branch)? When you got that blank screen, do you hear normal music, or is there 1-4 sec loop? Can you play in windowed mode? And can you post your log file (Drakan/Mod10th/Drakan10th.log)?
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Re: Gray Screen at New Game

Post by mage150 »

Ok so I did this to kinda fix the issue. I installed anniversary to a new directory, and copied all of the drakan databases over to the anniversary directories one by one except the ones the anniversary created. I started the game and started ruined village and it worked, I had the normal mapping added, and bloom and sharpen added as the shaders. Now the actual game loads but it looks worse than if I use regular drakan in developer mode with all of the visual options maxed.

One other thing I noticed, when I changed resolutions, the GUI didn't re-center to the new resolution. I went from like 640x480 to 1680x1050 and the UI was off the screen so I had to Alt+F4 to exit, but it worked when I restarted the game.
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Re: Gray Screen at New Game

Post by mage150 »

On another seeming unrelated note shelim, if you ever were able to get proficient enough to allow more customization of the engine via the level editor to create a new game/ui/installer, I would be super interested in finally being able to do what I wanted with Joaxin's Relic. I just had such big ideas for a limited editor at that time. I am sure AT can attest to that considering how much we discussed what I wanted to do, and how much of my custom content I still have archived.
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Re: Gray Screen at New Game

Post by Arokhs Twin »

Yes, I have seen the Joaxin's Relic mod and yes, I can say that given that some of the limitations of the editor can be removed or improved upon this mod will be great and it would be nice to see it finished. The work done so far looks very promising.
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Re: Gray Screen at New Game

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mage150 wrote: One other thing I noticed, when I changed resolutions, the GUI didn't re-center to the new resolution. I went from like 640x480 to 1680x1050 and the UI was off the screen so I had to Alt+F4 to exit, but it worked when I restarted the game.
That's well known bug in new renderer, solving it would result in 5% rendering speed degradation (= less FPS). I think I should mention this in readme ^^"

To be honest I don't want to dive more deeply into disassembly to add new features - that's way too much work for me. Either I'll convince Sony to give me original sources of Drakan or you'll have to convert your work into Unity or some other available engine ^^"
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Re: Gray Screen at New Game

Post by mage150 »

Shelim wrote:
mage150 wrote: One other thing I noticed, when I changed resolutions, the GUI didn't re-center to the new resolution. I went from like 640x480 to 1680x1050 and the UI was off the screen so I had to Alt+F4 to exit, but it worked when I restarted the game.
That's well known bug in new renderer, solving it would result in 5% rendering speed degradation (= less FPS). I think I should mention this in readme ^^"

To be honest I don't want to dive more deeply into disassembly to add new features - that's way too much work for me. Either I'll convince Sony to give me original sources of Drakan or you'll have to convert your work into Unity or some other available engine ^^"
If I ever worked on another game engine I would have to be a collective effort because I have no interest in programming, audio, texturing modeling, and level design are the only things I could work on now.
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Re: Gray Screen at New Game

Post by Shelim »

mage150 wrote:If I ever worked on another game engine I would have to be a collective effort because I have no interest in programming, audio, texturing modeling, and level design are the only things I could work on now.
Understood - unfortunately I am wrong person to be asked, because I am far too busy to work on so large project Drakan remake would be. But there is guy named Jannik Mewes who caught my eye, he is planning his own Drakan remake - perhaps you could talk with him :)
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Re: Gray Screen at New Game

Post by mage150 »

Shelim wrote:
mage150 wrote:If I ever worked on another game engine I would have to be a collective effort because I have no interest in programming, audio, texturing modeling, and level design are the only things I could work on now.
Understood - unfortunately I am wrong person to be asked, because I am far too busy to work on so large project Drakan remake would be. But there is guy named Jannik Mewes who caught my eye, he is planning his own Drakan remake - perhaps you could talk with him :)
I don't even know if I'd want to try to commit right now. I'm a musician in an active band and I also work. I don't have all of the free time I used to have as a teen when I was making levels for drakan :P

I remember making that Ice Duel map when I was sick last year or a couple of years ago, but the only reason I did that is because I was so sick I couldn't work and needed something to do!
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