0.8.8 demo playable, black screen on 0.7.5 and 0.8.8 alpha

[JohnTS]

Hey. Just wanted to say I love this game, played the first alpha version almost a year ago. Unfortunately once coming back to this game after many many moons away from it, I encounter issues.

I have tried both the 0.8.8 and 0.7.5 alpha versions and once I load a mission I just get a black screen, nothing else. I can hear sound effects ingame and the music, but nothing onscreen. Thought I should mention that the initial "loading bar" when you first click the game shortcut takes forever and is very slow to fill up to even get to the main menu . Also I had to use the zip version of both these alpha versions. The Install version for both 0.8.8 and 0.7.5 alpha versions won't even get past the initial loading bar, it immediately crashes. The zip version at least lets me get to the main menu.

HOWEVER, the DEMO is completely playable. It boots up fast, and loads up ingame no problem. I was making factories on the demo mission like a boss. So in regards to all this I am at a loss as to what to do. Am I missing a essential file needed on my computer or something? A microsoft file or something along those lines? I thought I should also mention I am running the 64bit versions of the demo and the alpha releases.

[JohnTS]

Found this one thread:

https://forums.factorio.com/forum/vie ... f=7&t=1754

It shows exactly the problem that I have. We seem to have the same graphics card type as well, Radeon HD Graphics (crappy laptop card). Mine is a Radeon HD 6300, his a 6320. I'll see if a graphics driver update will sort my issue. Will report back.

Edit: Lol. Theres no graphics drivers for my laptop. *sigh*

Getting a new laptop soon so I figure this will become a non issue then. Just find it strange that the demo runs perfectly yet the alpha won't even load properly.

[SilverWarior]

Which laptop do you have?

[JohnTS]

Which laptop do you have?

Toshiba Satellite C855D-S5202

[greaterix]

where are you looking for your drivers?

http://support.amd.com/en-us/download

enter the HD6300M into there and it brings up latest driver released 18/12/2013 for both win7 32bit/64bit.

[JohnTS]

where are you looking for your drivers?

http://support.amd.com/en-us/download

enter the HD6300M into there and it brings up latest driver released 18/12/2013 for both win7 32bit/64bit.

Awesome. I was on there earlier and when I put in my graphics card, it said that they are not compatible with my laptop. So I put "auto detect" instead of choosing the card myself and downloaded the file. It detected drivers for my PC and it installed the AMD Catalyst Control Center. Along with that it came with .NET 4.5 and the latest Microsoft C++ files. Those all installed on my system.

Anyways so I go and tried the game now and BOOM, it loaded instantly, the main menu popped up and everything was there. Game was running great. Now in retrospect I probably shouldn't of done this, but I then went and deleted everything I had for the game (demo folder, alpha 0.8.8 folder). I went and downloaded the 0.8.8 INSTALLER (zip version of 0.8.8 worked fine) because I wanted the fancy Factorio shortcut on my desktop. Little did I know upon installation and clicking the shortcut, the game had the same issues, except this time the game crashes once the loading bar is finished (takes forever) and it says something along the lines of "background.img" could not be loaded.

So I went and downloaded the zip file versions of both the 0.8.8 demo and the 0.8.8 alpha. Demo once again is perfect, however the 0.8.8 alpha reaches the main menu and same black screen problems, wtf... It was working 5 minutes earlier, now it doesn't again. I don't know..

[SilverWarior]

Here is the latest graphic driver for your laptop: http://support.toshiba.com/support/mode ... xt=3436387

Before installing these I recomend you remove your existing ones through "Add Remove Programs" functionality of Windows:
- if you have Windows XP you can do this by going to Controll panel -> Add Remove Programs. There you should look for ATI or AMD Display driver, or AMD Catalyst Install Manager.
- if you have Windows Vista or Windows 7 you can do this by opening My Computer and then click Add Remove Programs on My Computers quick bar. Again you would wanna serch for ATI/AMD Display driver or AMD Catalyst Install Manager.

Removing your existing display drivers might make your windows look wierd (low screen resolution, stretched display). Don't wory this is only becouse Windows doesn't have suitable drivers for your graphics card and therefore uses Falback drivers which don't have full capability.
Once you install the newest drivers your screen should be OK again.
There is nothing wrong if the newest drivers doesn't come with Catalyst Controll Center. AMD Catalyst Controll Center is only used for changing of certain settings of your graphic driver and is commonly not included with Mobile drivers for various laptops. The reason for this is that by changing these settings in certain way you could cause system instability and most laptop vendors don't like this.


As for Factorio working and than later not working again:
Where do you have your Factorio installed.
Installing Factorio in Program Files or on your desktop could lead to Factorio not working correctly. This happens becouse any application which is run from these folders are constantly being checked by Windows DEP (Data Execution Prevention) system and Windows UAC (User Account Controll).
So I recomend creating a new Folder (C:\Games or maybe D:\Games if you have multiple partitions) and then installing Factorio into that folder instead.

Some Anti Virus softwares were also reported to interfere with corect execution of Factorio becouse of registering Factorio as false positive. So which Anti Virus software do you use?

EDIT: Checked your Laptop specs and I see that your laptop has AMD APU which has graphic core integrated into CPU. It is posible that when factorio is run CPU doesen't enable full GPU capabilites but only basic capabilites. This mode is used to reduce power consumption when not using any graphics demmanding application. I'm not usre if Allegro (graphic engine that is used by Factorio) fully supports these kind of Graphic cards since this is quite new technology.
Try starting some other graphic demmanding game (one that you know works perfectly) and then ALT Tab out of it and then start factorio while that game is still running in bacground. If now Factorio runs corectly than the above reason might be the cause for it not working properly othervise.

[JohnTS]

Thank you for your post Silverwarrior, it was very informative.

I tried every method you listed, installed the drivers you linked me to, placed the game folder into C:\Games, etc. Still having issues.

I guess I'll just wait till the next alpha release and hopefully it will be fine then, if not then Factorio just hates my laptop xD.

[SilverWarior]

I tried every method you listed, installed the drivers you linked me to, placed the game folder into C:\Games, etc. Still having issues.

Did you uninstall previous drivers first as I recomended? Installing wrong drivers once can prevent computer for corectly recognizing hardware after that.

Another thing you might wanna try is uninstall and reinstall all of C++ redistributable packages.
NOTE: Instaling latest C++ redistributable package is not good enough as they don't support much backwards compatibility. The main reason why I hate these.

Also I recomend using Windows Update to check to see if there are some system fixes for Windows which fix comatibility isues with some sotware and most importanlty latest fixes for Microsoft NET Framework. After installing latest NET framework you might wanna left your computer to idle for a few hours. Why?
When ever NET framework is updated some parts of it are being compiled on your computer so NET framework should be able to use all of your hardware capabilities. While it is not likely it is posible that some parts of NET framework haven't been properly compiled (old compiled parts are being used with latest NET framework). Acording to Microsoft this shouldn't happen but I don't trust everything Microsoft claims.
And since these components are being compiled when your computer is idlying so that compiling of them doesn't cuses noticable slowdowns of your compueter leaving your computer on through the night is a good choice.

Other than that I don't have any further ideas of what to try next. I wish I had direct access to your computer to run some more tests.

[JohnTS]

I tried every method you listed, installed the drivers you linked me to, placed the game folder into C:\Games, etc. Still having issues.

Did you uninstall previous drivers first as I recomended? Installing wrong drivers once can prevent computer for corectly recognizing hardware after that.

Another thing you might wanna try is uninstall and reinstall all of C++ redistributable packages.
NOTE: Instaling latest C++ redistributable package is not good enough as they don't support much backwards compatibility. The main reason why I hate these.

Also I recomend using Windows Update to check to see if there are some system fixes for Windows which fix comatibility isues with some sotware and most importanlty latest fixes for Microsoft NET Framework. After installing latest NET framework you might wanna left your computer to idle for a few hours. Why?
When ever NET framework is updated some parts of it are being compiled on your computer so NET framework should be able to use all of your hardware capabilities. While it is not likely it is posible that some parts of NET framework haven't been properly compiled (old compiled parts are being used with latest NET framework). Acording to Microsoft this shouldn't happen but I don't trust everything Microsoft claims.
And since these components are being compiled when your computer is idlying so that compiling of them doesn't cuses noticable slowdowns of your compueter leaving your computer on through the night is a good choice.

Other than that I don't have any further ideas of what to try next. I wish I had direct access to your computer to run some more tests.

Honestly I'm pretty burned out by all of this at this point, but I'll give the C++ thing a shot though. And that's really interesting about the NET Framework, didn't think it worked that way.

[ssilk]

Note: I brought the notebook of my grilfriend to run like that. Imagine a 10 years old thoshiba notebook. WinXP. Nothing was working anymore. It didn't do more than 2 internet connections. Nearly impossible to work. I was so frustrated, that I made backup and wanted to reinstall everything. The backup on the USB-Stick tooks the whole night. At the next morning I saw, that it had rebooted. And I rebootet again and it installed more. After that, this piece of sh*** worked fine again.

Hm. I try installing factorio on it.

[SilverWarior]

And that's really interesting about the NET Framework, didn't think it worked that way.

Well Microsoft doesn't actually advertise that since it could posibly be exploited for malicious purposes.
The reason why I know about this is that once I noticed that my laptop fan is running at high speed but I wasn't ding anything on it at that time. So when I checked it out I saw that one process is using about 50% of my CPU (fully utilization of a single core from Dual Core processor). So I went on the internet googling about the process name and what it is used for. And since I updated my computer earlier that day (also updating NET Framework) I belived what I read on internet. I noticed such behavior to take place every time after NET Framewrk has been updated (helps if you are updating your computer manually).