Black Screen followed by Assertion failed

Age of Empires II: DE Ask for Help
1

Game Version:

  • Build: 101.101.36202.0 4819260
  • Platform: Steam
  • Operating System: Windows 10
  • Gamertag: acbraith

Issue:

Playing 8 player diplo Pilgrims. Game goes to black screen with only health bars. Can’t access menus or anything. Window mode with Alt-Enter, then back to fullscreen and I can at least see units/buildings, but no terrain or menus etc. “Play” like this for a minute or two, then get the assertion error.

I also get this black screen bug in other game modes, single player too. Usually I just quit the game when this happens, this is the first time I’ve actually played on. Steam also crashed when this happened.

I have followed the step in https://www.ageofempires.com/support/aoe2/#runtime-error (update visual c++ and my graphics drivers), and this still happens. Black screen when watching replay too (just a bit later than the initial black screen happened in the actual game)

Reproduction Steps:

Here’s how to reproduce the problem:

  1. Get my PC
  2. Play a few games
  3. Crash

ATTACHMENTS:

DxDiag.txt (188.4 KB)

Apologies for photos rather than screenshots, but here goes…
Initial blackness with only health bars and a few other things:

IMG-20200413-WA0000
IMG-20200413-WA00003840×2160 2.65 MB

After window mode I can see some sprites
IMG-20200413-WA0002
IMG-20200413-WA00023840×2160 2.17 MB

Back to full screen mode, no terrain and most UI mising
IMG-20200413-WA0004
IMG-20200413-WA00043840×2160 2.58 MB

Menu’s are all unusable
IMG-20200413-WA0006
IMG-20200413-WA00062160×3840 2.45 MB

Assertion error finally comes in
IMG-20200413-WA0008
IMG-20200413-WA00082160×3840 2.81 MB

2

Hi @acbraith, Your DxDiag shows that the GPU is DisplayLink USB Device. Are you able to switch your GPU to Intel® HD Graphics 4600 on your i7-4790K CPU?

3

Hey @anon63664082, I’ve got AoE2DE set up to use system default graphics specifications, and just checked in task manager to see AoE2DE is using my NVIDIA GeForce GTX 750 Ti (rather than my Intel® HD Graphics 4600).

I’m not sure why you’re getting my GPU as DisplayLink USB Device, it might be because I’m connecting my monitors to my PC via a DisplayLink hub.

4

@acbraith Try connecting one of your monitors directly to your PC without the DisplayLink hub and see if you still have issues.