Black screen upon level start

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Agentbromsnor
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Black screen upon level start

Post by Agentbromsnor »

I know that this is a relatively common "issue" in GZDoom, judging from the Google results I got, but I figured I post this because I couldn't find any topic on ZDoom or here to line up with how the black screen manifests for me.

The black screen started occurring two days ago, and there was nothing technical / code changes leading up to it. It started happening seemingly out of the blue. I "solved" it by changing the resolution to a lower one, which would sometimes result in the level showing up really glitchy with black gaps and other anomalies showing up in random spots. After switching the resolution a couple of times, it thankfully did go back to the "normal" view of the level.

It's important to note that I could still view my SBARINFO icons (using DrawImage weaponicon) and also my ACS print-messages whenever the black screen occurred, which I thought was even more strange.

After it happened the first time, I tried to debug it by switching to the latest version of GZDoom, but it didn't change much for some reason, which makes me think this is an issue with my GPU, but all of the drivers are up to date.
Today it happened again, and I "solved" it in the same manner as I did previously. I provided my partner with a copy of my game and GZDoom to run on his computer, and he hasn't had this issue (yet). This does make me suspicious if there's something wrong with my GPU...

My system is an i7 5775C, 16 GB RAM, using the on-board Intel Iris Pro 6200 GPU.

I apologize if this has been discussed in the past. I'm not posting it in the bugs section, since I think there's a good chance that this is related to my system in particular, since I couldn't replicate it on my partner's PC.
Agentbromsnor
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Re: Black screen upon level start

Post by Agentbromsnor »

I'm still getting the same strange rendering issue. I made this screenshot to demonstrate what happens when I switch resolutions after I get the black screen: http://i.imgur.com/5sVXvJ2.png

Note the strange side-ways triangle shapes that are not part of my map. The fire-sprite is on the ground for some reason, and the left skeleton-sprite looks warped.
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Graf Zahl
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Re: Black screen upon level start

Post by Graf Zahl »

If it happened "out of the blue" it may be a botched driver update. This is really something I cannot remote-analyze.
Agentbromsnor
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Re: Black screen upon level start

Post by Agentbromsnor »

Hmm, I'm afraid you're right. Strangely enough, the black screen nor these weird glitches haven't appeared whenever I ran my game with GZDoom Builder (using Doom 2 as the iWAD). I'm not sure if this is just a coincidence or not, since I usually run my game from its directory.

Today the black screen hasn't happened to me yet, but when it does I'm probably going to look into my GPUs drivers and see if that will fix anything. I will report back in this thread if it does, so I can hopefully document it for anyone else who might have the same issue at some point.
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Rachael
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Re: Black screen upon level start

Post by Rachael »

It sounds like you are using a custom OpenGL driver.

Have you installed anything, like that special library that was supposed to add bloom and tonemaps and stuff before GZDoom got it, itself? If so, try renaming or moving OpenGL32.dll out of your GZDoom folder.
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Re: Black screen upon level start

Post by Agentbromsnor »

I'm mostly using the latest GZDoom-GPL to run my game, but I also test it with the latest regular main-line GZDoom as well. I didn't add anything else to it. Thanks for the help though.
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Enjay
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Re: Black screen upon level start

Post by Enjay »

Oooh, I think I might be having the same problem. If I load the current test build of Paranoiac (which I think Graf has access to), after a few seconds of play, all textures go black (except the sky). This means if I'm in a room with no sky present, everything is black.

Image

If I switch to windowed mode, the textures come back.

I tried as many display options as I could and found one that makes a difference: Fog mode. The problem happens with "Standard" and "Radial" fog but if fog is "off", I don't seem to be able to get the blackness effect.

GTX1080 with current drivers on Win10 64bit


[edit] I apologize, I should have said that this is with the official 2.3.2 release. For some reason I'm getting a bunch of startup errors with the Git build when I load Paranoiac so I can't test with that. It definitely happens reliably with Paranoiac but I'm not sure how easy it is to make happen in other mods (so far I've failed to get it elsewhere - but I haven't tried that hard yet.[/edit]

[edit2] Also worth pointing out that HUD elements (weapons, status bar/HUD and crosshair are still visible) [/edit2]
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Enjay
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Re: Black screen upon level start

Post by Enjay »

I've been testing out OBS for video recording so I thought I might as well record this problem...
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Rachael
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Re: Black screen upon level start

Post by Rachael »

If it's relevant I tried disabling fog in Paranoic by setting FogAmount to a negative value. I don't know if it has a direct effect on this issue or not, but it wouldn't surprise me.
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Re: Black screen upon level start

Post by Enjay »

Given that this does seem to be a problem for a few people, is it OK to leave it here or should I raise an issue on the bug tracker? Thing is, I'm not really sure what to report other than "sometimes all the textures go black when fog is enabled".
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Rex Claussen
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Re: Black screen upon level start

Post by Rex Claussen »

I believe I've figured out what the problem may be. It turns out that GZDooM eliminates all light levels; essentially, the light level is zero. I discovered this when I started Map 11 od Paranoiac, encountered utter blackness, and turned on IDBEHOLD. Et voila! I get the green-tint nigh-vision goggles view.
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Enjay
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Re: Black screen upon level start

Post by Enjay »

That was an obvious thing to try... so why didn't I? :?

That does indeed allow me to see the map when this happens and the fact that if you are outside you can still see the sky maybe helps confirm that the game is just setting everything to absolute zero light (rather than the very dim, not really 0 of light level 0 in game normally). I think that the sky is always fullbright? However, this may just work because (perhaps) the night vision effect basically nullifies fog :?:


Interesting that you've also seen the effect now though. What's your graphics card again?
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Re: Black screen upon level start

Post by Enjay »

One of the things that I find interesting about this is that I have hardly seen it anywhere - and I've done quite a bit of playing recently - yet if I load up Paranoiac and warp to map 21, it usually happens within seconds.

I don't think there is anything wrong with the map per se or Paranoic itself but something is triggering the effect very quickly for me on that map. :dunno:
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Rex Claussen
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Re: Black screen upon level start

Post by Rex Claussen »

I have an nVidia GE Force something or the other. Also, it happened on my 32-bit version of GZDooM (but I don't remember which version, and no easy way for me to check). It *never* happens on my 64-bit version GZDooM v1.89 with no dedicated graphics card (laptop & desktop machines).
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Re: Black screen upon level start

Post by Enjay »

nVidia here too. It happens with the 64 bit version on my machine; both with the current official build and with a build that I made from the repo last night.
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