Chaacter select screen is entirely black

xastirx

When i get past the legacy of romulus loading screen, and character select is going to appear, i hear the interface activate, and if i click in all the right places, for selecting a toon, or clicking a buton on he UI, i hear the buttons activate, but I have absoluetly NO VISUAL what so ever. Since i cant see what im doing in game to change between DX9 and DX11 im having to manually edit game files,which all that does is change the image quality of the loading screens that I can ACTUALLY see.

I have already tried completely purguing my PC of all STO related files and re downloading, and im still running into this problem.

kuznetsov101

you sir aren't alone. I too am having the same problems. Lets hope someone can help us out here.

xastirx

Nice to know i'm not alone on this one. Atleast it rules out that my video card can no longer handle STO. Though, now curiosity has me. my video card is a nVidia GeForce 8600M GS. What's yours? They say that these problems are video card related.

kuznetsov101

mine is an NVIDIA GeForce 9100. There should be no reason for it to be doing what its doing

xastirx

Indeed. Prior to this update, i was getting roughly 27 FPS in the dyson sphere. Only now my problem has escalated. now after the cryptic loading screen, the game crashes my computer tryiong to bring up the LoR loading screen, and mind you, this is after doing another uninstall, then manually removing and lingering taces of STO from my system and reinstalling.

rezking

I would get this same result if I try to run it normally.
I have visuals but no audio in compatability mode (xp sp3).

If I have to do an uninstall/reinstall, I'm going to contemplate whether or not I'll even bother with this game.

EDIT: I added "-ignorex64check" to the command line in the options menu...the audio came back but the game's fps was so bad it was unplayable.

xastirx

Is there a place where I can find a list of command lines that can be used? I want to know if there is one for setting it to use direct x 9 only. For some reason, the game tries to force using Direct X 9, Dect X 9ex, and directX 11 all simultaneously. this is causing the problem. And when i try to edit the game prefs file that has the error, it leads to a client crash, due to the fact that the game relies on each instruction being on its own line and yet all my word processors condense the text on a re-save of the file so that, for example the section that has the problem goes from looking like this:

IsDirectX9exEnabled 1
Is DirectX11Enabled 1

to this:

IsdirectX9exEnabled 1 IsDirectX11Enabled 1

Its suposed to look like the top of the two, but for somereason, even though the game allows for editing the file, it always converts to a condensed text format that consequently makes it unplayable to the game client.:(

The other thing I tried, since this always worked in the past was the equivalent of what one does when your ship has an iconian computer virus. Shut the game down, delete the affected files, and let STO restore itself from the Cryptic archives, but this only exaserbates the issue, since those setting information files seem to be stored THERE and so what I get are new copies of a bad command line.:mad:

And before anyone suggests updating my video driver, let me just say that the last time I did that, not only did STO never work on that system again, but I couldn't even run windows solitaire which proceeded to spit a message at me about an unrecognizable video card.:rolleyes:

EDIT: I also tried a reinstall using my collectors edition disc, but that install data goes all the way back to pre-season 1. guess what happened after that. the game repatched up to season 8 just as it should, but it also reupdated the game prefs file from default back to faulty.

xastirx

ok, so assuming that it is een possible to fix the glitch i got going, let me give you guys the rundown on what doesnt work.

Adjusting settings ingame to make it playable: Since everything is blacked out, including the UI I cannot see what I am clicking on.

Enabling all connected monitors since each screen might have a different resolution and one of them might support the faulty settings: My PC uses the same resolution for both my native monitor and my 32" HDTV. When I enabled all displays, it went froma blackout screen to a PC crash.

Command line in the launcher: Since the last time my launcher updated, I got a newer flashier UI that while it still has things for enabling/disabling, on demand patching or force verify, the command line text field is gone im afraid.

Reinstall STO from download or DVD: The game prefs file reasserts itself whenever STO tries to repatch to season 8.

Update video card drivers: Already tried this. Luckily I had the presence of mind to create a system restore point. After the latest nVidia driver made sto completely unlaunchable much less playable i again had the issue of not even being able to play solitaire. Yeah, nVidia's latest drivers cant even properly render an ace of spades...much less the other 51 cards in a standard poker deck.

Edit the gameprefs file: When I try that, one of two things happens. 1) The lines in the file get reformatted into one long unending line that STO can't use since each setting has to be its own line. 2) The game detects that the file that they have on record for my preferences for my PC and the file that is ON my PC don't match, thus it deletes and replaces those files so that they go back to their unuseable state.

So now that I have sufficiently conundrumed most of you guys, and stumped the rest, I leave you to attempt to solve this rather unique puzzle. I only say unique because my screen has been going black. most others are getting whited out, but still have the benefit of using the ingame GUI.

If anyone does come up with something I haven't tried yet, i'll attempt it if possible.

xastirx

kuznetsov101 wrote: »

mine is an NVIDIA GeForce 9100. There should be no reason for it to be doing what its doing

Indeed. My video cards, all of them, are about the same level of sophistication and they're all acting up. the nVidia's and the ATI's.

rezking

xastirx wrote: »

If anyone does come up with something I haven't tried yet, i'll attempt it if possible.

Wait patiently for Cryptic to find a solution?
I think we've done all we can from our end...short of a reformat with new STO accounts.

kuznetsov101

i was able to identify to problem as it was my monitor itself that was causing the problem. For some reason if my monitor is set in 1400x900 which is the normal resolution it won't work but if i set it to anything such as 1200x800 for example it works fine barring the whole diminished resolution which can be somewhat fixed by changed the ingame resolution back to 1400x900 but the video itself will be in 1200x800.

It must be the monitor cause that was my issue

rezking

xastirx wrote: »

When i get past the legacy of romulus loading screen, and character select is going to appear, i hear the interface activate, and if i click in all the right places, for selecting a toon, or clicking a buton on he UI, i hear the buttons activate, but I have absoluetly NO VISUAL what so ever.

I still have this problem.
Only by running it in compatability mode (xp sp3) do I get my graphics back, but no audio.

EDIT: I can't find the DX9 - DX11 options for some reason.

jones1652

rezking wrote: »

I still have this problem.
Only by running it in compatability mode (xp sp3) do I get my graphics back, but no audio.

EDIT: I can't find the DX9 - DX11 options for some reason.

I have the same issue and I am very displease with I see no one offering to help other then other users caring enough to help out while the people who created the issue sit in their office drinking coffee and doing nothing to help out. Oh well time to find a new game now.

kuznetsov101

well i figured out that on the game launcher if you run it safe mode you'll have a windowed version of STO. the graphics however are scaled back heavily like if you turned the resolution on your monitor down a step or 2. I currently have it at that and it works for the most part. I just can't run it without safe mode or windowed or my character screen will become black again.:cool:

gooberjones1701

kuznetsov101 wrote: »

i was able to identify to problem as it was my monitor itself that was causing the problem. For some reason if my monitor is set in 1400x900 which is the normal resolution it won't work but if i set it to anything such as 1200x800 for example it works fine barring the whole diminished resolution which can be somewhat fixed by changed the ingame resolution back to 1400x900 but the video itself will be in 1200x800.



I changed screen resolution from 1600x900 to 1280x760 - and at least I could play the game

vawlkus

Well, since the last update went in I've started having this problem as well. Game worked last week, but not since Thursday.

I do get an error message when I close my STO window though:
Fatal error: Direct 3D driver returned error code (D3DERR_INVALIDCALL) while resetting the device. Technical Details: GeForce 7150M / nForce 630M

The computer I'm getting this error on is an HP Pavilion dv9500 laptop running Windows 7 Pro. HP didn't put out drivers for Win7, so what Windows found for drivers is all I got.

Any suggestions for stuff to try?

rezking

vawlkus wrote: »

Well, since the last update went in I've started having this problem as well. Game worked last week, but not since Thursday.

I do get an error message when I close my STO window though:
Fatal error: Direct 3D driver returned error code (D3DERR_INVALIDCALL) while resetting the device. Technical Details: GeForce 7150M / nForce 630M

The computer I'm getting this error on is an HP Pavilion dv9500 laptop running Windows 7 Pro. HP didn't put out drivers for Win7, so what Windows found for drivers is all I got.

Any suggestions for stuff to try?

Make it run in compatability mode (xp sp3).
When I run mine in compat mode I have in-game video but no audio and my fps takes a hit.
I wouldn't bother to uninstall/reinstall STO.
I get this problem with my main Nvidia card but not an ATI card I borrowed.

rezking

Give this a shot:

Enter "-d3d9" in the command line.

tmnjohnny

i also get the black screen with sound at character screen. after i updated the graphics driver. i rolled back the driver to previous one, sto works again. have to roll back the driver every few days. but it works. hope that helps.

olliepotter1

My friend was having the same problem and we tried putting it into safe mode in the settings of the launcher and it seemed to work but only on accessional time so in that time you could mess around in the settings ingame to try and fix this bug

jtbungba

I don't think it is a graphics card problem, because I have it too, on a Radeon R9 270 by AMD. I think is will not go away until the next bug fix.

[Deleted User]

I've had this problem with my old video card.

Simple fix:

Open the launcher, click options and set to safe mode. Launch the game.

At the character screen (which you should now be able to see), open the options, and in the "display" tab, change the Direct 3D setting to Direct 3D 9 instead of Auto.

Exit the game and restart normally. You should have no problem getting into the game now.

Note: Using safe mode will reset all your audio & visual settings to default and you'll have to go back and adjust them.

ediblexenvy

I am having a similar problem. My character selection screen is washed out. The character is just white, the whole screen is white. This is the same for all races. The options are sometimes visible but do not display on the character. Adjusting graphics settings doesn't make any difference.

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