Black screen on the 2nd level of my keep

[Maquabra]

Hi,

 

the game is reported to have plenty of extremely harmful bugs. So far I've been free of them (at least I thinks so). Until now.

When I try to climb the stairs to the 2nd level of my keep where my team can rest, the screen goes dark right after loading screen. I still hear voices, I can apparently call up game menu, mouse cursor is visible, however everything else is simply pitch black. There's no screencap attached because it would simply be a black screen with mouse pointer on it. As I said before, it's reactive so it changes depending on where I move it. 

 

I need to alt-tab the game and turn it off using standard windows' tools like clicking the "x" on the miniature in the taskbar or by right-clicking -> close it. There is no apparent crash.

 

In the save provided, just try to rest in the keep and the issue will appear.

 

I'm running the GOG version of the game.

 

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/18184780/PoE.7z

(save file, log file and dxdiag)

 

 

I haven't experienced other issues with the game other than it's impossible to launch it when Torbrowser is running. An inconvenience of completely negligible significance because I use Torbrowser only to bypass things like regional limitations for youtube videos. Focus on the black screen, please!

[cranydin]

Running on Opensuse 13.2, I have the same issue.

 

If I try to travel to my keep, I get a blackscreen. Never happend before, but this happend 3 times in a row now (from the same savegame, doing the same things -> able to break it again).

 

1. Savegame: www.cranydin.de/Cranload/PoE/289162cc-e56d-4a0f-9f6e-eb528a57a8c1 quicksave.savegame
2. Log-File: www.cranydin.de/Cranload/PoE/Player.log
3. System specs:

• CPU: Intel I5-3570k
• DDR: Corsair Vengeance 16GB (4x4GB)
• MOBO: MSI P8Z77 V-LX
• GFX: Gainward Geforce GTX 760 (4GB)
• OS: Opensuse 13.2 (KDE, since Gnome kills PoE Performance)

PS: While testing around, I will add the results down here.

 

• Also not able to travel to another location than keep.
• Tryed to camp and walk around before traveling -> same result
• Tryed another Exit -> same result

Edited April 1, 2015 by cranydin

[Maquabra]

It's said that the bug is caused by removing the bard from your team. If you do so, sooner or later you'll experience black screens, even if you accept him back. 

Before purchasing this game, I completely forgot that Obsidian is the buggiest game developer ever, even worse than Paradox Interactive. Well, it's too late now

[cranydin]

I haven't switched a team member out ever. Just added the ones I found.

 

Really looking forward to the patch this week =)

[Maquabra]

Then the issue is even worse than it seems to be.

 

After some testing I must say that my party roster management is totally broken. I seem to be able to access all regions but my party roster in party choice menu says something else than my actual list of attendance. The game is officially broken and I'm officially cranky. 

 

If the patch fixes it, we're good. If not, I want my money back.

[Sking]

Hey Maquabra,

 

This issue might be related to the out of memory issue people have been getting in Raedrics Hold. Here is the link to that thread of you want some more info http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/72016-raedrics-hold-game-crash/page-5?hl=raedric&do=findComment&comment=1604193

 

I haven't been able to reproduce this issue with either yours or cranydin save. That being said I'm still going to send your guys information off to a programmer and see if those guys can see what's up.

 

Try not to lose heart, we got this

[jgouveia]

Same problem for me. Actually with the added issue that after this happened, other places trigger the same black screen, for example the inn at Guilded Vale, so I can't really just ignore the keep and carry on. Here is a link for my log, dxdiag and savegame in Guilded Vale. I am somewhere in he middle of Act 2 as far as I understand.

 

https://www.dropbox.com/s/kkcflt5qnkp69w5/files.zip?dl=0

 

I am running the GOG version on Windows 7

[BMac]

@Maquabra - The black screen problem will be fixed in the next patch.  Could you upload a save after seeing the broken party roster?  It's probably linked but I'd like to verify that.

[fluent]

I think it is linked, BMac, because I have the same 2 issues as well. Black screen on 2nd floor of Brighthollow and completely broken party management. 

[Maquabra]

Thanks for your replies, Sking and BMac, but my problem does not concern Raedric's Hold, the issue described in the linked thread. I can move around the map freely and I believe that if I chose to stick to the team I've got now, I would be able to continue. At least for some time and not about Kana's storyline. I'm not stuck anywhere and don't need Scotty to beam me up. As long as I don't try to sleep at my private stronghold or edit my team, the game continues but I don't want to risk spoiling myself any more of the plot just to have it crash completely in an hour or so. 

 

The party roster is already broken in the save I provided. Just try to leave the area and you'll notice that whatever team you pick, you will always be stuck with the one you've got now, minus the chanter, Kana, if I recall his name correctly.

 

Here's a save made earlier before I decided to go to my stronghold. I loaded it with hope that it's bug-free. It's not...

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/18184780/1.rar

There doesn't seem to be anything wrong with it and when it was made, I was not aware that there are any problems. The initial save I provided was made right after this one. I went straight to my stronghold.

 

Here's a save after I decided NOT to go to the stronghold, jumped a little around the map and went to Slaver's Bay. Notice that Kana is standing idle in the inn and you can talk to him while it's impossible to have a conversation with an off team character I found in barracks in my stronghold. Everything in the save seems to be ok until I try to include Kana in my team (in "bartender's menu").

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/18184780/2.rar

 

This save was made moments after the save above, right after I decided to include Kana in my team. First, I removed everyone, then decided to create a team with Kana and nothing happened, and then I made one more team without Kana. As you should be able to see, I'm standing alone, even though my team roster (in "bartender's menu") says that there's 6 people in my team.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/18184780/3.rar

When I leave the inn, I'm still alone. I'm stuck with whatever team I had before choosing to compose a team with Kana in it. The save below is an autosave made when I left the inn.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/18184780/4.rar 

 

Please note that the 4 saves are fresh, i.e. I loaded my old saves and saved again in order to be able to provide you with the right save. The save files are not exactly named in any user-friendly way I also didn't want to rename them and that's why they are packed.

 

 

I'll try to reinstall the game. It will take forever to download from Slow Old Games, though. Should have bought a Steam copy...

Edited April 1, 2015 by Maquabra

[Maquabra]

Reinstalled the game, loaded the save in my stronghold, tried to rest and when I entered the 2nd floor of the keep, black screen struck again. 

 

On a side note, I was able to edit my team before moving to the bedroom, however when I tried to include Kana, it became broken again. Black screen showed up both with and without making any changes in my team prior to the gamebreaking bug.

[jgouveia]

@Maquabra - The black screen problem will be fixed in the next patch.  Could you upload a save after seeing the broken party roster?  It's probably linked but I'd like to verify that.

 

The blackscreen problem does not seem to be included in the preliminary notes of the 1.3 patch.

Am I missing something or will I really have to wait for the 1.4 to play the game?

[fluent]

Sad. I have these same issues and they are gamebreakers for me. They need to patch this!

[Katarack21]

Why waste time.

Edited April 2, 2015 by Katarack21

[Maquabra]

When a game has so many obvious gamebreaking bugs as, according to the forum, this one has, one should not let his hope soar too high. I guess that in 2015 it's pretty naive to expect a fully working game, or even a game without a dozen of gamebreaking bugs, especially grom a Kickstarter campaign. Internet has spoiled game developers. It's too easy to launch thousands of patches these days.

 

Paradox Interactive has a great approach to such issues. Their games are like Swiss cheese and they keep releasing tiny patches that address 1 in 20 of gamebreaking bugs each, claiming that it's an anti-piracy measure because paying customers have automatic patching system and pirates don't. Europa Universalis has several gamebreaking bugs that have been around for months and in Europa Universalis III, after a dozen of failed fixes, they just removed like ~15% of the release-day functionality of the title. Their crowning achievement, Conquest of Paradise DLC for EU4, brought random New World and the random New World kept reseting to the standard map in save games effectively breaking them. It's been a year and they haven't found a solution yet.

 

Why do I mention Captain Sweden and his merry developer studio? Because when they refused to reimburse me, I promised them years of free advertising