When I load/ save a game I have noticed that the screen stays black for quite a while (even though it often seems like the game has already finished saving/ loading and is already back in-game as I can even move but not see anything until I wait a few seconds).

Also, while playing the main game I have noticed that at the end of each level, when a cutscene starts playing, my screen stays black for a few seconds before the video is displayed - that means that I always miss out on a few seconds of the cutscene and have to watch them on YT etc. if I want to it in its entirety.

The former is incredibly annoying but not as bad as missing out on a few seconds on each cutscene - is there any fix to this?

I've not heard of that issue before, but I'd mess with the display settings to try to solve it. Is 3Dfx Glide mode enabled in olcfg.exe? If not, switch to that. If it is already enabled, then download and install nGlide from http://www.zeus-software.com/downloads/nglide and then delete the glide*.dll files (which are an old version of nGlide that GOG includes with Outlaws) in your Outlaws folder.

If that doesn't solve it, perhaps playing with the settings on the Compatibility tab of olwin.exe would make a difference.

I'm having the same issue as the OP, except my black screen only lasts about a second. More annoying is that I can't take screenshots of cutscenes, only playable sections. I tried installing DXGL as per your instructions, and it let me take screenshots of the cutscenes, but the game crashed when trying to load a playable level. Also I was no longer able to access the key rebinding menu from the options screen.

Any idea what that could be? I'd love to get this working properly. Thanks!

Run DXGL configuration program and add olwin.exe, under options for that you need "Video mode" set to "Aspect corrected stretch".

Run nGlide configuration program (should be in Outlaws directory), set screen resolution to your native screen resolution, aspect ratio to 4:3 and refresh rate to your screen's native refresh rate. If that fails try setting nGlide's refresh rate to 60.

Repeating myself. If the game crashes it's due to a resolution mismatch between DXGL and nGlide. Setting DXGL to aspect corrected stretch is important (it will run at desktop resolution and refresh rate) and setting nGlide to desktop resolution and refresh rate is important.

I thought I'd done all of that but I'll double-check the refresh rate. I set the nGlide settings earlier, before installing DXGL, and I know I have it set to my native resolution and 4:3, but can't remember if I changed refresh rate or not. I'll check it and report back.

Thanks for replying by the way, I appreciate it! Apologies in advance if it was just me not following your earlier instructions properly.

OK, I've got everything set up as per your instructions. DXGL has olwin.exe added, and it's set to Aspect Corrected Stretch. nGlide is set to my native 1920x1080 with aspect ratio 4:3 and refresh rate 60 (before, the refresh rate was set to By App (default), which was presumably the problem).

The first time I ran the game with these new settings, it worked. I still couldn't access the key rebinding options screen (trying just gave me a windows cursor on top of the game, hitting ESC brought me back to the main options screen), but I could take screenshots of cutscenes AND load up a save from the first mission, and play it.

But then I was shot to death. I tried loading the same save as before, but this time it crashed. Now the game crashes every time I try to load a playable section. I have double-checked that all the DXGL and nGlide settings are the same as listed above. No idea why it suddenly stopped working again.

The only thing I can think of is if my problems are related to nGlide 1.4 versus nGlide 1.5. Some other posts in these forums suggested upgrading to version 1.5 so I had downloaded and installed that but I'm not sure if it worked... there was no option to choose where to install it and it seems the game is still using version 1.4, as that's what's listed when running the nGlide configuration tool.

[EDIT: I meant 1.04 and 1.05, not 1.4 and 1.5]

Thanks again for taking the time to help me out, I really appreciate it!

1.4 is included in the game install. You need to manually remove the files:

I did that at some point but I might have restored them while I was troubleshooting. I remember it made no difference when I originally tried it, but that was before I'd installed DXGL. I'll check again.

I still need to run the nGlide configuration tool from inside the Outlaws folder, correct? In order to set resolution and refresh rate? Is there a different configuration tool to use once I have nGlide 1.5 installed? WHERE does 1.5 install itself? There was basically no information provided when I installed it, it just popped up a message saying it was ready. I don't know how to tweak nGlide 1.5 at all.

EDIT: Sorry I meant 1.05 and 1.04.

Need to, well no. Believe it's C:\Windows\System32.

Oh, and this very well may not solve your main problem.

You are right. I found the nGlide 1.05 configurator, but it already had all the correct settings, and clearing out the old .dlls from the game folder didn't help. I'm going to try a full uninstall / reinstall to see if I can get it working with DXGL and nGlide 1.05. I'm worried I messed stuff up with all my fiddling. I'll report back on how that goes.

OK, finally got it working. I uninstalled and reinstalled Outlaws, DXGL, and nGlide 1.05. For settings I did this:

1) Deleted the three glide.dll files from the Outlaws directory, as well as the nglide_config.exe that came with the game.

2) Copied over nGlide_config.exe from nGlide v1.05, which is installed in C:\Windows\SysWOW64 on my Windows 7 64-bit machine.

3) Ran nglide_config.exe and set resolution to 1920x1080 (my screen resolution), aspect ratio to "Preserve original", and refresh rate to 60 Hz (my screen's refresh rate).

4) Ran DXGL Config and added olwin.exe to the list. Set it's video mode to "Aspect corrected stretch" and screen aspect ratio to "4:3".

It didn't work until I had all those set as listed above. I think it needs both the "4:3" setting in DXGL and the "Preserve original" setting in nGlide before it will work.


LAST THING: With this configuration, I cannot change options like keybindings or mouse sensitivity. To do that I have to remove the game from the DXGL list, run it under nGlide only (which still has the blackscreen for a few seconds on cutscenes), enter the options menu and set new keybindings and mouse settings, then exit the game, re-add it to DXGL with the settings described above, and run the game again.

Since I don't need to touch the settings after tweaking them the first time, I'm satisfied with this solution. Hopefully it's helpful to others too.

Thanks again to ZellSF, Gydion, and jnisbet for helping me figure this out!

I actually started another question thread about this before I found this one. If you want to post over there, I can mark your post as solution to give you a deserved rep boost.

Well, these settings worked for a long time, but now suddenly DXGL is crapping out on me. Outlaws stopped launching at all when using it (blackscreen with mouse cursor, had to kill the process), and no manner of uninstalling/reinstalling or tweaking settings seemed to have fixed it. I don't know what happened, it was working fine yesterday. Anyone ever encountered this issue?

I uninstalled and reinstalled everything (the game, nGlide, DXGL) and tweaked the settings, but no matter what I set, with DXGL I just get a black screen when loading levels. Cutscenes are fixed, I just can't play the game. Running without DXGL brings back the black screen for the first few seconds of every cutscene.

Are there any other solutions to this, besides DXGL? Any reason it would suddenly stop working?

EDIT: And now, the next day, it's working again. I re-set things in DXGL and it suddenly started working.

I'm very confused, but have a guess as to what it may have been. It might be that I had to set DXGL while I had MSI Afterburner (which I use for screenshots) open. Otherwise, running Afterburner after setting it up would cause problems. But it wouldn't run before even without Afterburner, so I'm not sure that makes any sense.

Anyway, whatever it was is resolved again now. Onwards!

EDIT 2: Then it stopped working again. But I think I finally figured it out. Setting some compatibility modes on the shortcut to the game seemed to do the trick. Windows XP compatibility got it to run, but it wouldn't capture screenshots during the playable sections anymore, just for cutscenes. Setting Windows 7 compatibility, however, did the trick. Even though I'm already running WIndows 7. Go figure.