[GzDoom 3.1.0] Black Screen sometimes

[CeSium]

Sometimes when I start up GZDoom in fullscreen, or OpenGL mode, it'll show a black screen, yet I'm able to play the game, just unable to see anything.

However, the real catch is, rarely, the game'll actually show the menu correctly and I can play the game non-blind. This shows that my computer is able to run the game properly.

Software mode runs the game okay, but most mods I play require OpenGL.

Starting in non-fullscreen fixes it, but if I switch to fullscreen, the screen freezes and I have to ctrl alt delete to exit out.

This happens with any wad, any game. It just seems like a major chance of luck to get it working.

Any way to make it work?

[CeSium]

I've seen to fix it partially by minimizing the start up console (the one that gives you crash errors, right before the game loads) and then re-opening the game and setting it to full screen, so it seems the start up console (Whatever the name for it is) seems to be at fault.

[CeSium]

Scratch that. It now freezes the screen when I set it to fullscreen. Why is this happening??

[_mental_]

Post your PC spec (graphics hardware in particular) and Windows version.

[CeSium]

Post your PC spec (graphics hardware in particular) and Windows version.

4 gb ram
Intel HD Graphics (literally the GPU name according to Dxdiag. It supports up to DX 10.2 if that helps, and if I'm assuming correctly, it's able to support 3.1 OpenGL)
Intel Core I3 M370 2.40 Ghz
Windows 7 Home Premium Service Pack 1 64 bit

all the details I could get

[_mental_]

So your notebook doesn't have discrete graphics card, right? Because integrated one is rather pathetic.
The only suggestion I can give is to check for newer drivers on Intel's website.
Also, will it make any difference if you start GZDoom with -glversion 2 command line options?

[CeSium]

So your notebook doesn't have discrete graphics card, right? Because integrated one is rather pathetic.
The only suggestion I can give is to check for newer drivers on Intel's website.
Also, will it make any difference if you start GZDoom with -glversion 2 command line options?

My graphics card despite being integrated, actually performs well in most games.

I've tried giving it that command line using Run (windows key + r) and it did nothing. My computer runs it fine rarely, it just starts up with a blank screen, then I'll come back after a while (or after trying again for the umpteenth time) and the game plays perfectly well, so my computer can handle the current openGL version well.

No updates for my driver either.

[Graf Zahl]

My graphics card despite being integrated, actually performs well in most games.

Your graphics card, despite "performing well" is still at the very bottom of the foodchain and doesn't properly support many things GZDoom uses. Try starting GZDoom with '-glversion 2'.
That will disable many advanced features which do not seem to be supported properly by it. In the next releasr this will be the default anyway because the minimum requirement for running modern OpenGL was upped to 3.3 instead of 3.0 with a handful of extensions.

[CeSium]

My graphics card despite being integrated, actually performs well in most games.

Your graphics card, despite "performing well" is still at the very bottom of the foodchain and doesn't properly support many things GZDoom uses. Try starting GZDoom with '-glversion 2'.
That will disable many advanced features which do not seem to be supported properly by it. In the next releasr this will be the default anyway because the minimum requirement for running modern OpenGL was upped to 3.3 instead of 3.0 with a handful of extensions.

My GPU can handle the game, however. It just seems to work flawlessly at random, and then not work other times. -GLversion 2 didn't seem to do anything either.

[Graf Zahl]

This sounds more like a hardware problem, then, if the GPU only works intermittently.

[CeSium]

This sounds more like a hardware problem, then, if the GPU only works intermittently.

It works completely fine in all other games, it just seems that minimizing the start up console (the loading thing before the game starts) and re-opening it when the game loads seems to fix the problem partially, so it's probably linked to the start up console.

[CeSium]

Little update: Starting the game in non-fullscreen makes it work completely fine 100% instead of having to repeatedly launch the game in fullscreen.

[DAR]

It's never too late.
There are three normal ways to solve this problem (not counting windowed mode).
1. Play with the tricolor but include the lens effect. This reduces the "blindness" by dozens of times (not one dozen). [Display Options - Hardware Renderer Postprocessing]
2in1. Change Tricolor to another option (full 3d - doesn't respect tall sprites).
You don't need to read further. I share science.
The black screen appears in precisely defined places and at precisely defined angles. It seemed to me *: this is due to the number of light sources - for example: when one effect obscures another effect (although: there is no lighting itself on the map - despite all kinds of settings).
Until I started playing Batman, this problem did not bother me. Blinding follows everywhere there - and it is problematic to play with it.
First, I turned on the lens effect in the GL render settings (post-processing) - and the curse was reduced dozens of times (not just a dozen). (as I guessed: well ... I just turned everything on there for the sake of science - and I saw a miracle).
After thinking carefully about this - I tried to turn on full 3D (somehow I didn’t think right away ...). But this greatly spoiled the look of the lanterns - after all, these are high sprites. Well, then I turned on the usual "Doom Software Renderer".

[DAR]

this helped me in the assumptions:
https://osu.ppy.sh/community/forums/topics/1172378?n=1

[wildweasel]

That's all well and good, but I'm not sure it's relevant to OP's problem (from 4 years ago).