An ancient evil returns: Black Screen with Blue Cursor

Post here if you need help getting started with Daggerfall Unity or just want to clarify a potential bug. Questions about playing or modding classic Daggerfall should be posted to Community.
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slurpypig
Posts: 3
Joined: Sat Apr 14, 2018 1:34 am

An ancient evil returns: Black Screen with Blue Cursor

Post by slurpypig »

Howdy y'all, and wassup? I've been a huge follower of Daggerfall Unity for a few years now, and I've played it off and on with its many updates and mods, typically never having any issues.

However, today on this Friday the 13th, I installed Daggerfall Unity. Excitedly I set up the resolution and all that to my liking (1920x1080) and enabled a few mods.

BUT...

Upon pressing play, I was greeted with a CPU-chugging black screen sporting the typical Daggerfall cursor.

I read in the manual that this had to do with not being able to connect to the folder, so I followed all the steps and checked the settings file in LocalLow. Well, it was all correct, but the game STILL gave me a black screen. With the blue cursor.

So I thought, maybe my installation of daggerfall is messed up, so I deleted it, redownloaded it through DaggerfallSetup, and tried again.

Black screen with a blue cursor.

Finally I assumed it had to do with the version of DFUnity that I downloaded, that being the most recent, so I installed an older version.

BLACK SCREEN. WITH THE BLUE CURSOR!

Basically out of options, I deleted every daggerfall related file I had on my computer, including the Daggerfall Workshop file in LocalLow, reinstalled the game AND re-downloaded DFUnity.

...Well, guess how it went? Black screen. Blue Cursor. A very frustrating night, and a sad Daggerfall fan. :(

Can any of you radical 8-) dudes help me out here?

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Interkarma
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Joined: Sun Mar 22, 2015 1:51 am

Re: An ancient evil returns: Black Screen with Blue Cursor

Post by Interkarma »

Welcome to the forums. :)

Would you be able to email me your output log? This will tell me what's happening when the game tries to run and isn't able to get started.

Cheers!

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slurpypig
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Joined: Sat Apr 14, 2018 1:34 am

Re: An ancient evil returns: Black Screen with Blue Cursor

Post by slurpypig »

Done! :)

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Interkarma
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Joined: Sun Mar 22, 2015 1:51 am

Re: An ancient evil returns: Black Screen with Blue Cursor

Post by Interkarma »

Cheers mate! :)

The core problem is this, for some reason the game can't find your Quests-GlobalVars table (which like most of the tables is essential for the game to operate).

Code: Select all

Table filename path .../Desktop/Daggerfall Unity/DaggerfallUnity_Data/StreamingAssets\Tables\Quests-GlobalVars.txt not found.
From there, the game just kind of freaks out because it can't initialise the player objects due to missing local game data.

I just double-checked and that file is definitely in the latest #105 distribution for 32-bit zip and #22 for 64-bit zip. I'm able to download both of these and run without any problems.

All I can suggest is maybe deleting the "Daggerfall Unity" folder on your desktop and unzip a fresh new download. If you can, take a look into the "DaggerfallUnity_Data/StreamingAssets/Tables" folder and make sure "Quests-GlobalVars.txt" is present.

There's also a chance it could be permission related (you might need to "unblock" the zip before extracting). In which case right-clicking the .exe and selecting "run as administrator" might help as well.

Let me know how you go!

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slurpypig
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Joined: Sat Apr 14, 2018 1:34 am

Re: An ancient evil returns: Black Screen with Blue Cursor

Post by slurpypig »

Holy snot!! You saved my life!

So as it turns out, something is fucky and screwed up in my copy of WinRAR, and it REFUSES to extract .txt files. So none of the essential files were even extracted in the streaming assets folder! I had to open it using Windows Explorer, which for some reason worked.

Interkarma, you're a magic man. Just like the song!! :lol:

You can lock this thread or whatevs now. Cheers!! :mrgreen: :mrgreen:

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Interkarma
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Joined: Sun Mar 22, 2015 1:51 am

Re: An ancient evil returns: Black Screen with Blue Cursor

Post by Interkarma »

Phew, happy I could help. :)

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