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[PC, Win10] AOW: Planetfall black screen on startup

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lotusreaver

Recruit
May 30, 2020
5
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[EDITED TO FOLLOW TEMPLATE]

One line summary of your issue
AOW: Planetfall hangs on black screen on startup; music can be heard, but no progress

What platform are you running the game on?
PC

What operating system do you use?
Windows 10, 64-bit.

Which version of the game are you running?
Purchased from GOG.

What expansions do you have installed?
Pre-order DLC + Revelations

Please explain your issue is in as much detail as possible.
I was advised by customer support to post directly to the forum as they were not able to solve my problem directly. So here goes.

I purchased AOW: P from GOG yesterday and have not been able to play it. Upon startup (after clicking PLAY in Paradox launcher), I see a black screen and the AOW cursor. After about 15 seconds, the music kicks in, but the black screen stays indefinitely until I alt+enter to trigger window mode and click X to close. See screenshot below:

screenshot.jpg


On this black screen, I am able to click (and I heard audio feedback when doing so). This lead me to believe the issue is with the graphics not loading for some reason, rather than the game hanging or freezing.

I've tried a variety of solutions, from repairing and reinstalling, to running with different graphics processor, to using admin mode, or whitelisting files in antivirus and nothing has worked. The Paradox launcher itself works fine. I'm using it for Stellaris and it works fine there too. AOW: P is the only one giving me trouble. I've tried looking in the forums for this exact issue. But the responses are all things that were either patched in the beta or related to the Xbox version, which is not my version.

I have an Acer Aspire VX5-591G with Intel Core i5-7300HQ CPU @ 2.50 GHz.
16GB RAM. Windows 10 64-bit.
Graphics processor is Geforce GTX 1050 Ti; driver version: 446.14

Have you tried verifying your files?
Yes. Verified. Also reinstalled multiple times.

Steps to reproduce the issue
1. Start Paradox launcher (from GOG)
2. Click PLAY
3. Wait
4. Black screen.

(Same thing happens if directly launching from AowPF.exe)

Below, I've attached by dxdiag readout as well as the two logs from debug mode. As I run the debug mode, I do see multiple lines of 'red' text regarding errors. I thought maybe the installer on GOG is corrupted somehow, but nobody seems to be having this probelm. Hoping there's some way to make this game work and happy to help troubleshoot.

Thanks!
 

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Last edited:
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Sorry @Jordi Engel I simply could not see what is wrong here!
 
Hey Lotusreaver, thanks for reaching out. We are looking into your issue but in the meantime we want you to try something. Can you open the games settings file found in \Paradox Interactive\Age of Wonders Planetfall\Config and set Video.WindowMode=0? This forces the game to launch in Windowed mode.
 
Hi Jordi. Yes, I've done that and it doesn't resolve the issue.


Here is a list of other things I have also tried, so we can eliminate them from the list:
1. verified/repaired install, especially after whitelisting game files in antivirus (Avast)
2. tried to run game on both integrated graphics card, as well as NVIDIA geforce, forcing both options globally as well as game-specific
3. reinstalled DirectX 9.0C
4. updated all drivers
5. reinstalled C++ runtime
6. ran game in compatibility mode
 
Last edited:
An update on my end.

I was able to further isolate the issue. It seems to involve the game not respecting the use of the NVIDIA card overrides for some reason. It seems that the game was still attempting to run on the Intel adapter even though I explicitly set the GeForce adapter to the default.

If I disable Intel altogether in Device Manager, this forces the game to actually run on GeForce and everything works properly. However, if I do that, two problems occur: (1) I can no longer use larger monitor and must use small laptop monitor. (2) Huge battery drain.

This is the only game in my library that seems to have this issue where it still prioritizes the Intel card even though I'm trying to force GeForce adapter. Any thoughts here on what might be wrong?
 
Hi there. I solved the issue and the black screen issue went away.

tl;dr: There was some kind of incompatibility between my Intel and GeForce card that for some reason created a perfect storm that affected Planetfall but none of my other games. My solution was to actually revert to older versions of the drivers from last year, and this resolved the issue. I guess updating to the newest versions of drivers is not always the best solution in all cases.
 
Ah I'm happy to hear that you managed to resolve the issue, interesting that you had to downgrade your driver version though. Normally we do advise to always update drivers to the newest version.
 
lotusreaver said:
It seems to involve the game not respecting the use of the NVIDIA card overrides for some reason. It seems that the game was still attempting to run on the Intel adapter even though I explicitly set the GeForce adapter to the default.
Click to expand...
Can I ask how you were determining that? because I checked for that and the log definitely shows the game selected the nVidia:
[14:52:12]Selected display adapter: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 Ti
Click to expand...
 
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