Main menu dissappears in OA, it appears as a black, empty window

[Jacob Collstrup]

Heya,

I'm new to these forums and I thought I'd give OpenArena a try. I run it on an IBM Thinkpad R51 in Ubuntu 8.04 (Hardy Heron)
I'm new to ubuntu too. Been using it for 4 months now. I also run Compiz. I fear that might have something to do with it though I hope not.
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These are my system specs:
Intel Pentium M 1.5GhZ
1.5GB physical memory
ATi Radeon 7500 Mobility w. 32mb Video ram (Not shared)
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I guess those were the relevant specs.
Here is what I experience, as detailed as I can describe. When I first ran OpenArena everything seemed fine. As per habit I went to take a look at the graphic settings and immediately adjusted the resolution to 1024*768. Then the game menu went black and the screen colours got twice as bright. I thought the game engine had a fit when I adjusted the resolution and then went on to reboot the computer. Had to do that by pressing the power button, since I couldn't figure how to reboot otherwise. I started the game again and the game window appears, but is all black. By pressing the middle mouse button and continously hitting [ALT]+[TAB] or [ALT]+[CTRL] in some wierd order I could make the game menu appear again, but only for less than a second. When I press the up and down keys and [ESC] I can hear the game, so it seems to be running. I just don't get a picture.


Jacob Collstrup

[Cacatoes]

Wow

Hi,

Can you edit your q3config.txt file (in your ~/.openarena/baseoa), and adjust height and width back to something which worked (i.e. 800x600 ?).

Or better, rename that file (to q3config.txt.bak), and start OA again, if the game worked the first time you started it, then it should reset the config.

Hard to tell why it is buggy with a high resolution.

[Jacob Collstrup]

Heya,

I took a look at that config file. I remember I set the screen resolution to 1024*768 in the game menu, but the config said 1600*1024!! I edited that to 1024*768 and it didn't help a bit. I deleted the config file after that and ran the game. That worked...for a while. I was plying for like 10 minutes and then suddenly the game windowed. A smaller window than before, but the colours on my desktop was still waayyy brighter than usual. While windowed the computer didn't react to keyboard input, neither did moving the mouse on the mousepad yield any result. Only the mouse wheel worked. After a 20 second delay the computer responded to my [CTRL]+[ALT]+[DEL] command and I could reboot. I could hear in my headphones and see in the window that the game was still running.

Jacob

[Cacatoes]

Here are a few tips :

Rather than rebooting, switch to a console CTRL+ALT+F1 (or F2...), then log in, then :

Code:

ps aux

Then kill openarena process

Code:

kill [pid_number]

Or, rather than rebooting with CTRL+ALT+del, only shut down your X server, using CTRL+ALT+Backspace.

For your problem with window minimized, so that it doesn't happen anymore, disable compiz before running OA ... and maybe disable your screensaver too (!)
IIRC,

Code:

metacity --replace

(check other forum threads for other informations).

If it goes windowed, maybe you can take control of it again if you make appear the "in-game console", with Shift+Esc key. This helps in bringing back mouse+keyboard working with your desktop environment.

[pulchr]

I also run Compiz.

cause of problem?
tried without it?

[Jacob Collstrup]

I tried to turn of compiz and then run the game. That works. So it just conflicted with compiz. It runs perfectly now...

Jacob