Black screen upon loading the game, can still bring up Steam overlay, no coherent ui in task manager

Having the same problem here. A black screen when I start the game. When I use the Windows-button, the game shows itself in the background. But when I click Single Player for example, the screen freezes. When I use the Windows-button again, I can click something again and then it freezes again. But ofcourse that's unplayable.....

I could play with no problems with Windows 8.1, but after I installed Windows 10 I keep seeing that black screen. 64 bit versions btw.

I tried everything I can think off:
- no mods
- reinstall
- using the launcher as suggested above

Nothing works, whenever I start the game it still stays black.

I enclosed the dxdiag.txt and a log file from AppData\Local\Uber Entertainment\Planetary Annihilation . Hope it will help you in solving the problem....

Could you try with a fresh configuration? To so so, just rename the "Planetary Annihilation" folder in "AppData\Local\Uber Entertainment\" to "Planetary Annihilation.bak" (while PA is closed of course). If that doesn't help, you can delete the newly created "Planetery Annihilation" folder and just rename the old one back.

Also, do you have any software from the following list?
http://steamcommunity.com/app/233250/discussions/2/558751813508748383/

I placed (cut) that map on another drive and started the game (which created a completely new PA-map): still a black screen.

I don't use any of the mentioned applications.....

Thanks for the help though

Well, that rules out any odd configurations (or left-over mods). Did you do a clean install of Win10 or was it an upgrade from Win8.1?

You may also want to scan your system files using the sfc tool that comes with Windows. See https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/929833 (especially if it was an upgrade). It scans for broken system files.

I did an upgrade to Win10.

I hoped to get some errors...but no: no errors...

Well, that's indeed annoying...
Does it make a difference if you play in windowed mode or full screen?
Does running PA with --software-ui do anything for you?

I'm back from my travels and I still can't play PA or PA:Titans.

Can you upload a new PA log? They've added some more logging in the mean time. Maybe there is finally a clue as to what is going on for you...
The logs live in "%LOCALAPPDATA%\Uber Entertainment\Planetary Annihilation\log" and you can just copy-paste that in the address bar of Explorer.

Here you go:

Ok, this part is really odd:

Code:

[01:19:59.865] INFO [COUI] Key validation failed! The context will shut down
[01:19:59.865] ERROR [COUI/ContextError] InvalidKey: Key validation failed! The context will shut down
[01:19:59.865] INFO [COUI] PID: 4904 | 6116 00:19:59.471369 Unable to perform license key verification

It seems you are getting a black screen because somehow PA isn't able to sent the licence key to the Coherent UI, which is a third party library.

Have you every tried verifying the integrity of the game cache in Steam? Instructions are here: https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=2037-QEUH-3335

If that doesn't help, can you try using the UberLauncher instead of Steam, which you can get here: https://store.uberent.com/download/pa

And finally, if that doesn't work either, can post another PA log from the session with the UberLauncher? (Using --nomods to keep the log as clean as possible.)

Still no success I'm afraid:

@johncoh : Since you are from Coherent Labs, have you ever seen this one before or have any idea what could be causing it? I checked the Coherent forums, but didn't find anything related. It's also the first time I've ever seen a PA user experience this.

Also, the "verify integrity of game cache" option in Steam did nothing too.

So, this is going a bit far and I hope you are comfortable with it, but I am wondering if all of the parameters are passed properly from PA.exe to CoherentUI_Host.exe. So I wrote this program that sits in between and intercepts the parameters that are given by PA.exe. You can download it from https://www.dropbox.com/s/9l6nyk4jziv3p5d/coherent.zip?dl=1

To use it, unzip it somewhere. It will contain CoherentUI_Host.exe. There are also some dlls and a subdirectory that go with it.

Then go to "<PA Install Dir>/bin_x64/host". You'll find a program called CoherentUI_Host.exe there. Rename that to CoherentUI_Host.bak.exe. Then copy-paste all of the file from the .zip there. If you start PA now like you normally would, you'll still get the black screen but there will also be an extra window saying what the start up parameters were. You should be able to copy-paste from there.

To undo, just delete the CoherentUI_Host.exe and rename CoherentUI_Host.bak.exe back to CoherentUI_Host.exe. You can also delete the extra dlls that came with the .zip.

(By the way, I also opened a thread at CoherentLabs about this. Hopefully I can get a solution there.)

I installed the files but there wasn't an extra window when I opened up PA, in Steam or from the launcher.

Thanks for putting so much effort into solving this issue by the way. I really appreciate it.

Oh, odd. I may have been hidden. What happens when you just double-click the new CoherentUI_Host.exe program? Does it open a window?

No problem. I like problem solving and I like people being able to play PA, so thank you for your enormous amount of patience!

No window pops up. I get the loading icon next to my cursor for about five seconds but that's it.

Well that's what I get for trying to make Windows programs on Linux...

It worked in the virtual machine with Windows 10 provided by Microsoft for testing their Edge browser though. Strange. What happens when you just unzip the coherent.zip file I sent and run CoherentUI_Host.exe from there?

Same thing.