Myth 2 halts at black screen

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obblinox1
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Myth 2 halts at black screen

Post by obblinox1 »

greetings! so i recently have been trying to get the newest patch of 1.8.3 for myth 2 to run which so far has only happened successfully twice mostly ending in the starting up the application but never fully loading past the black screen. Both times that were successful were after installing 1.8.3 patch again. version 1.7.2 i can run no problems loads and operates without fail.

I did have one crash log generate after running 1.8.3 and these were the last entries of the log:

Myth Crashed: EXCEPTION_NO_MEMORY
Attempting Stack Trace...
0 0x77e5d620 ? + 0x0000 (?:0)
1 0x77dc6eb8 ? + 0x0000 (?:0)
2 0x77dc5dce ? + 0x0000 (?:0)
3 0x636e827a ? + 0x0000 (?:0)
4 0x636a3b0d ? + 0x0000 (?:0)
5 0x007b0033 ? + 0x0000 (?:0)
Stack Trace Complete

i have 64gb of available ram memory so i don't see how that was the issue.
any suggestions would be greatly appreciated as i would like to run the latest if possible. I am operating on a windows 10 OS.
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Melekor
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Re: Myth 2 halts at black screen

Post by Melekor »

That is a very unusual type of crash, I've actually never seen it before. Can you post your entire log instead of just the last few lines?

My first thought is that you should do a data integrity check as described here: viewtopic.php?f=4&t=6618

If your game files are corrupted it can cause weird issues like trying to allocate too much memory when reading in the game data.
obblinox1
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Re: Myth 2 halts at black screen

Post by obblinox1 »

(edited by Melekor)
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obblinox1
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Re: Myth 2 halts at black screen

Post by obblinox1 »

i also did try the integrity recently as well and it matches my region. Maybe i may just have to try a clean install and keep my save files if those aren't corrupted.
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Melekor
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Re: Myth 2 halts at black screen

Post by Melekor »

In that log, it looks like you were able to play successfully quite a few times before it crashed. But in your OP it sounds like it usually crashes right away when you start the game?

Can you post a log from a crash where it happens right away?

Since the integrity check passed, I'm fairly clueless to what the issue might be, especially if 1.7.2 works well. Unfortunately that stack trace is completely useless.

Generic advice for mysterious crashes includes
-integrity check (already done)
-upgrade video card drivers
-try deleting your "preferences" folder to reset to default (this is similar to clean install when combined with integrity check)
-try a different 3D renderer (in your log it shows you use DirectX 11, so maybe try OpenGL)
obblinox1
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Re: Myth 2 halts at black screen

Post by obblinox1 »

well the only other log generated i will attach now. Otherwise when i started 1.8.3 or attempted to it halts at the black screen and generated no other logs. I will attempt the deleting of preferences and let you know how it goes.
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Melekor
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Re: Myth 2 halts at black screen

Post by Melekor »

The point where your log stops is around where the game would go fullscreen if fullscreen was enabled. I think maybe it tries to go fullscreen and that doesn't work somehow which is how you end up with the screen being all black.

I am curious if the game is truly "halted". Are you able to use alt-F11 to switch to windowed mode? or ESC to quit?

Or is it really halted meaning you need to force kill the myth process with task manager in order to exit?
obblinox1
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Re: Myth 2 halts at black screen

Post by obblinox1 »

i have to either close it with the X or task manager shutdown to close it. alt f11 has unfortunately has done nothing for me even if i try before the program goes into the unresponsive stage. also wiped preferences to no avail either. even wiped plugins just to make sure i had no conflictions.
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Melekor
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Re: Myth 2 halts at black screen

Post by Melekor »

OK, so that gives me a pretty good idea when the issue happens in terms of the startup sequence, but it's still extremely mysterious to me why it happens.

For the window to show "not responding" that means the UI thread is actually stuck in an infinite loop somehow, which is a previously never seen before issue. Extremely surprising as this code has been stable for many years.

A few questions come to mind:
-We checked your game data for corruption but I wonder if the .exe itself might be ? Did you get the installer from here? https://projectmagma.net/downloads/myth2_updates/
-Have you messed with any of the compatibility settings in the properties on Myth II.exe
-What is your precise windows version (press win+R and type "winver" in the box) . See my pic for comparison, it says "Version 20H2 (OS Build 19042.1110)"
-How vanilla is your windows setup. Have you got any kind of UI extensions installed to modify window appearance, manage window positions on multiple monitors, etc - otherwise extending operating type stuff?
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obblinox1
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Re: Myth 2 halts at black screen

Post by obblinox1 »

To answer your questions:
1, i have downloaded directly from your site
2. i have tried several different compatibility settings from running in admin mode to running through versions win 95, 98, xp service packs 2 and 3 to no avail thus far. currently they are set to admin only and for windows 10.
3. i have not installed anything out of the ordinary for any scaling or multiple monitors ( i only have one) nor any customizations for appearance.

would a creation of a dump file be of any assistance?
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Melekor
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Re: Myth 2 halts at black screen

Post by Melekor »

excellent idea! I've uploaded a special build here that will allow the dump to be more useful for me:
http://www.projectmagma.net/~melekor/tm ... uild462.7z

(we create the releases in a special, different way in order to keep compatibility back to win95, and this makes it difficult to use a dump from those builds)
obblinox1
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Re: Myth 2 halts at black screen

Post by obblinox1 »

Sent a message to your inbox for the link
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Melekor
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Re: Myth 2 halts at black screen

Post by Melekor »

Interesting. The UI thread seems to be stuck inside GetDeviceGammaRamp()

these are the most relevant results in google for a similar issue:

https://sourceforge.net/p/dxwnd/discuss ... 8e0058834/

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/ins ... deb?auth=1

I'm upgrading my machine to 21H1 now to see if I can reproduce it locally.
BTW are your Nvidia drivers all up to date? We have similar hardware so I think there could be a good chance of reproduction if we have same OS and same gfx driver.
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Melekor
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Re: Myth 2 halts at black screen

Post by Melekor »

Melekor wrote: Mon Aug 16, 2021 7:37 pmI'm upgrading my machine to 21H1 now to see if I can reproduce it locally.
BTW are your Nvidia drivers all up to date? We have similar hardware so I think there could be a good chance of reproduction if we have same OS and same gfx driver.
That looks like it might take a while. In the meantime here's a build with gamma disabled, this should allow you to launch the game:
http://www.projectmagma.net/~melekor/tm ... NoGamma.7z
obblinox1
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Re: Myth 2 halts at black screen

Post by obblinox1 »

all my nvidia drivers were updated about a week ago and thank you for your time!! I will look into these topics.
Last edited by obblinox1 on Mon Aug 16, 2021 8:43 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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