Black screen on launch, then drops to minimized

Bumping, but I guess I might be the only one with this problem.

Whenever I first turn on my compyter, I turn on the game, then it is an indefinitly long black screen. I turn on the task manager and it minimizes. Thin I turn off the task manager and restore it, then it starts with the stardock logo. How strange.

And then it works very nice by the way.

Pill7, there is a bit of a pause before the SD logo, have you tried just waiting?

Davy, have you tried turning off the intro movies?

(user.setting file -> ShowIntroMovies FALSE)

Could not having sound drivers cause it to have that indef black screen? I wouldn't think it would but being its a brand new game wasnt to sure i formatted last night and forgot to install them. just trying to get ideas on how to fix mine when I go home so ill be able to play again.

Could not having sound drivers cause it to have that indef black screen? I wouldn't think it would but being its a brand new game wasnt to sure i formatted last night and forgot to install them. just trying to get ideas on how to fix mine when I go home so ill be able to play again.

I have installed and reinstalled the program, but I do not seem to have a user.setting file. I have done two windows searches of my drive looking for it.

The game has never launched successfully - is the file created on launch?

Same issue for me, the black screen thing at any rate with a runtime error. I tried the suggestion of turning off the movies, no go. Same deal, same error.

You'll find the settings under:

C:\Documents and Settings\Username\Local Settings\Application Data\Ironclad Games\

Ah - thanks I found it. It was a hidden file. I set both intro movies and cinematic to false. No change.

you guys tried starting the game in windowed mode?

Aha! I just did try starting it in windowed mode and it started up. I'm guessing it won't run well but I'll try it and see.

Setting it to windowed only gave me the C++ runtime error a ton faster  (:( 

This sucks, havn't been able to play it since yesterday!

My specs are exactly the same as the OP's (7950gt etc), and I've had an issue like this once or twice before too. I've had a black screen a couple times now, once while loading a map, with seemingly no way to get past it. I was about to hard reset my system when I was finally able to minimise it.

Edit: Suggested running in windowed mode, but someone beat me to it

worst case scenario, install a wallpaper of sins on your desktop, and pretend you are playing...

i cant seem to find my mini dump files no matter where i look any help finding them would be nice. I have tried everything people suggest and i still haven't got my stuff to run. I think this is the first time ever ive had a problem installing a game.

I'll have to see if I crash more windowed. Already has 2 crashes on my Vista box. This is the first RTS I've seen where the 'save early, save often' rule applies, but I still love it.

They will get those crashes fixed in time. GalCiv proved to me these people really care.

the thing is i dont get whys its crashing before i formatted it worked fine. The only thing i did was install the most updated drivers for my video card once i formatted. Also having some sound card issue stuff but im pretty sure its not the cause of why the game wont even launch.

For those of you still getting this - I just started getting it recently and went to try and figure out why by retracing my steps.

I found out for me it was a custom galaxy file that I created and put in the galaxy folder but the specific line item (in my case) that was causing the error was a string I added that I thought would change local militia settings to false. I had seen this earlier on the boards but it may have been from a beta version or not verified so the line item in particular was:

hasStartingPlanetPirates FALSE

After removing that I was able to load up the game just fine. The IC/SD reps or moderators have been coming on to say the issue sounds like a corrupt file and in this case it was, so although yours may not be the same exact issue go back and double check all the galaxy files you may have edited outside of the Galaxy Forge (i.e. in Notepad). If there was anything custom you did it may be incorrect syntax and is causing the problem. Furthermore, if you downloaded other user's custom content you may have to try just removing them 1 at a time or all to get it to work again.

Again, this exact scenario may not be the same for you, but I bet most of the "black screen" issues are from corrupt user modified .galaxy files. Maybe a compilier or error checker upon save of some sort will help prevent this in the future (because user content can easily be pushed (posted) with issues.

Thanks,
~JO

PS: Sorry for the repeat post, those of you having the issue, but I'm going to post this warning separately as well.

Thanks for clearing that up JOCool...

Just wanted to toss this in there for anybody else having a similar problem.

1) Not having a sound card/driver as Rezor mentions will cause badness.

2) Disabling intro movies seems to have helped some people with this kind of problem

Yes I waited 5 min once + it works fine after turning it on the first time. Then whenever I shut down the comp and turn it back on, I doesnt start again.