Hello, I have a problem with the game, hope someone can help.

I can execute the game. But when I create the character, after writing it´s name, when I press the "confirm" button, the game just doesn´t start. The whole screen gets black except for the cursor (which can be moved) which has the same icon as the one in the game menu. If I press the "ESC" button, a message appears in the lower right part of the screen saying "press ESC to Skip". Nothing happens if I press the "ESC" button again. I quit the black screen by pressing "Alt + F4" or "CTRL + Alt + Sup" and such.

Dragonfall works perfect.

My computer is brand new, except for the graphic card, which is an Asus GeForce GT740. Win-10 and drivers updated.


I tried to execute the game both offline and through gog galaxy. Game updated through gog galaxy (3.1.2 (A)). I used the option to verify/repair the instalation. I reinstalled the game several times and I also restarted the computer several times. I tried to execute it as an administrator, and changing the compatibility options as well. When I execute the game with the Win95 and 98 compatibility options, the screen goes black and the menu style cursor appears (much like before) but the game doesn´t reach the menu screen. (I don´t know if it´s meaningfull, but it doesn´t hurt if I write it)

I checked the antivirus, because it is pretty restrictive (Kaspersky), and apparently neither the game nor gog galaxy has any kind of restriction. In fact, I tried to execute the game with the firewall deactivated and the problem isn´t solved.

To downgrade the game version to 3.1.1 or 3.0.8, etc; doesn´t work either.

I run out of ideas. Any help would be very much appreciated.

At what resolution are you trying to play the game?

All the Shadowrun game engines (and there are three) are backwards compatible with my old laptop, which has integrated graphics processing in its (primitive) Intel Celeron CPU. That said, the third engine (powering the third game, Hong Kong) was close to unplayable at any resolution above 640×480. The introductory slide show (which triggers after the character creation) was painful and I just skipped it (with escape).

Your graphics card is a half-decade old by now, and is not rated for full HD (1920×1080 pixels).
source

Apart from one section (near the end, when the team assaults the office to rescue an important NPC) which requires high quality graphics textures to be on or it will fail to finish the load screen, it is quite possible to play the game without this setting (which is found on the last page of the in-game information, the hot-button upper left on the screen). Check the Options panel on the main menu (before the game starts) to change the graphics settings for HD Textures.

Work-around
I would try turning everything off and setting a landscape of, say, 640×480 to see if the game loads. Once this is established, you can mess around with the graphics settings to find the optimum balance between performance and prettiness. The higher the graphics settings are set, to more resources are used and the longer a scene will take to load. (My old laptop takes more than two minutes to load a scene without the high definition textures selected. It took nearly half an hour with it selected —— but it still loaded.)

Caveat
It is best to restart a level after reducing a resolution. This is because the Shadowrun engine calculates all the rendered items on the screen based on the initial resolution, so if you find this too slow and adjust the resolution down it will have no effect on the speed of the game.

edit: added caveat.

Thanks for the reply.

I tried to make the game work by setting the graphics to minimum quality, and it didn´t work. The problem was not that.

Yesterday I had a similar problem with a different game and I was able to find the problem out: It was a "permissions" problem with the installation-launcher archive of the game. I made sure all the users and groups of my computer had "total control". After installating the game again, it works perfectly. Well, both games. :)

Months ago I tried to give this "total control" to the game launching archive, but it doesn´t work that way. Apparently, It must be given to the installation-launcher so that every archive of the game is installed with the same properties. (Or something like that, I guess).

EDIT: Problem solved.

(I don´t know how to mark the thread as solved)

Glad to hear you have fixed your problem. Enjoy the game! :)

(One can only mark a reply as the solution, and the reply cannot be authored by the original poster.)

Thanks.:)