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Neverwinter Nights seriesBlack Screen after Character Creation, can hear audio(20 posts)(20 posts)
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This is my favourite topic
Posted October 16, 2014
So I recently got Neverwinter Nights Diamond off Gog, and I'm having some issues.

Everything seemed to run smoothly, until I finished creating my character. As soon as the intro cutscene started, the screen goes black and all I get is the audio. When I skip the cutscene, the screen continues to be black, except I can see my cursor.

Now the really interesting thing is, if I alt-tab out, then go back to the game, I suddenly get my visuals back and things seem to work fine. Still, I'd like to play the game normally without having to go through a process every time I cutscene plays.

My GPU is a Radeon R9 280X and my CPU is an intel i5-4690k. Anybody have a similar problem or any advice?
Forgot to add, I've already tried the SafeMovie=1 thing.
Post edited October 16, 2014 by Daedalus023
Posted October 19, 2014
I'm running the NWN Diamond ed. on a Radeon HD7950 on Windows 8.1 and did manage to get it to work eventually, but it took some trial and error.

One thing I discovered is that there is considerable benefit in running the game in something close to the original resolution, this game does not handle widescreen formats well and high resolution (like 1440p) is way more than the game engine was ever designed to handle.

Run the game at 1024x768 resolution is my recommendation.

I also had the problem of intro videos not playing, just audio. If you want to try what helped me, use these two files:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/rxz2qe1rbrue1ik/binkw32.dll?dl=0
https://www.dropbox.com/s/7n207fymxcjkqg5/nwn.ini?dl=0

One is a more compatible Bink library file and the other is the NWN ini file, set so it will run on AMD cards.

Put these files in your Neverwinter Nights Diamond edition folder, replace the ones that are there.

Run NWN in Windows XP SP3 compatibilty mode.

It should work. It did for me at least, and we share a similar setup.
Post edited November 12, 2014 by Atlantico
Posted October 19, 2014
avatar
Daedalus023: So I recently got Neverwinter Nights Diamond off Gog, and I'm having some issues.

Everything seemed to run smoothly, until I finished creating my character. As soon as the intro cutscene started, the screen goes black and all I get is the audio. When I skip the cutscene, the screen continues to be black, except I can see my cursor.

Now the really interesting thing is, if I alt-tab out, then go back to the game, I suddenly get my visuals back and things seem to work fine. Still, I'd like to play the game normally without having to go through a process every time I cutscene plays.

My GPU is a Radeon R9 280X and my CPU is an intel i5-4690k. Anybody have a similar problem or any advice?
Forgot to add, I've already tried the SafeMovie=1 thing.
One final thing: NWN is a strange thing, it sometimes crashes when I launch it, but then runs fine when I launch it again.

It seems to contain some very dubious code, optimizations for older hardware and software, nonstandard things that make it way more painful to run today than it has any right to be.
Posted November 07, 2014
I seems like I'm hitting the same problem. At first it crashed on startup, but setting compatibility to XP SP3 fixed that.

Now there is no video when movies play, only audio.

Also after loading into an area the screen frequently goes black except for the cursor. I can work around this by alt-tabbing in and out of the game, which usually fixes the problem for that area.

I'll try the fixes Atlantico suggested next time I play and get back with whether it worked or not.
--------------
Update: The binkw32.dll did not fix the videos. Where before I would get a black screen while the audio played without problems, the new dll causes the display to remain on the loading screen, while I get stuttering issues with the audio. On the plus side, it did fix the issue with the black screen remaining during gameplay.

The nwconfig.ini file only has paths to the game folder and the game version in it, redownloaded it just to be sure. Seemed pretty useless, but I tried it anyway (I did change the paths to match my installation directory). As expected, nothing different. Also tried running the nwconfig program, which filled out the ini file but still made no difference during runtime.

I'd like to get the videos to work properly, but it seems like I'll be able to play the game without real issues so this is still a win.
Post edited November 08, 2014 by Nobake
Posted November 12, 2014
Yeah sorry, I posted the wrong .ini file.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/7n207fymxcjkqg5/nwn.ini?dl=0

is the one I wanted to post.

nwn.ini is not nwnconfig.ini

too bad the binkw32.dll didn't work for you, it did for me, but well such is this game.
Post edited November 12, 2014 by Atlantico
Posted November 14, 2014
avatar
Daedalus023: Everything seemed to run smoothly, until I finished creating my character. As soon as the intro cutscene started, the screen goes black and all I get is the audio. When I skip the cutscene, the screen continues to be black, except I can see my cursor.
Now the really interesting thing is, if I alt-tab out, then go back to the game, I suddenly get my visuals back and things seem to work fine. Still, I'd like to play the game normally without having to go through a process every time I cutscene plays.

My GPU is a Radeon R9 280X and my CPU is an intel i5-4690k. Anybody have a similar problem or any advice?
Forgot to add, I've already tried the SafeMovie=1 thing.
I had exactly the same issues with my AMD R9 270X.

Using the 1.69 Critical Rebuilt Patch ( http://neverwintervault.org/patch/nwn1/english/nwn-sou-hotu ) fixed that.
From the release notes:

[i]General Fixes:
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
- Fixed issue with videos not displaying under Windows Vista.[/i]

I guess this is still true for W7 x86_64 (I'm using W7 Ultimate x86_64, Game set to compatibility with XP SP3, running as administrator, game NOT installed in %ProgramFiles% or %ProgramFiles(x86)% )
/Edit: Running the game @1920x1200 resolution.

Sound in cut scenes is still stuttering some time.
Post edited November 14, 2014 by Jejerod
Posted November 14, 2014
avatar
Daedalus023: Everything seemed to run smoothly, until I finished creating my character. As soon as the intro cutscene started, the screen goes black and all I get is the audio. When I skip the cutscene, the screen continues to be black, except I can see my cursor.
Now the really interesting thing is, if I alt-tab out, then go back to the game, I suddenly get my visuals back and things seem to work fine. Still, I'd like to play the game normally without having to go through a process every time I cutscene plays.

My GPU is a Radeon R9 280X and my CPU is an intel i5-4690k. Anybody have a similar problem or any advice?
Forgot to add, I've already tried the SafeMovie=1 thing.
avatar
Jejerod: I had exactly the same issues with my AMD R9 270X.

Using the 1.69 Critical Rebuilt Patch ( http://neverwintervault.org/patch/nwn1/english/nwn-sou-hotu ) fixed that.
From the release notes:

[i]General Fixes:
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
- Fixed issue with videos not displaying under Windows Vista.[/i]

I guess this is still true for W7 x86_64 (I'm using W7 Ultimate x86_64, Game set to compatibility with XP SP3, running as administrator, game NOT installed in %ProgramFiles% or %ProgramFiles(x86)% )
/Edit: Running the game @1920x1200 resolution.

Sound in cut scenes is still stuttering some time.
OK, is this a fan made patch? Why doesn't gog.com include this patch?
Posted November 14, 2014
The 1.69 critical rebuild patch is an official patch that was released after NWN Diamond hit stores and just before Bioware ended support for the game. Since Bioware never released a version that included the 1.69 patch, I am guessing that is the reason it's not included with the GOG version.
Posted November 14, 2014
The GOG version is 1.69 & comes with a NWNv169.txt file
Posted November 14, 2014
Nothing seems to be working for me. Tried every combination of base install / 1.69 update / 1.71 community patch (with and without installing 1.69 first) + original binkw32.dll / Atlantico's binkw32.dll + 800x600 / 1024x768 / 1280x768 resolutions.

Somewhere along the line I tried enabling SafeMovie which did nothing and disabling fullscreen which didn't even work. Tried using both versions binkw32.dll as binkw32_ati.dll which did nothing, and the reverse which caused the game to crash. Then I got the crazy idea to try the binkw32.dll from Sacred 2, which unsurprisingly also caused the game to crash.

At this point I'm definitely giving up. I did at least discover that the videos will play in MPC, so if I really want to watch them I can just do that.
Posted November 14, 2014
avatar
Atlantico: Yeah sorry, I posted the wrong .ini file.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/7n207fymxcjkqg5/nwn.ini?dl=0

is the one I wanted to post.

nwn.ini is not nwnconfig.ini

too bad the binkw32.dll didn't work for you, it did for me, but well such is this game.
Omfg, this got mine working, AND it even runs the movies in 1920x1200. Bless you kind sir, those files FINALLY GOT THIS WORKING!!!! :D
Posted December 07, 2014
Atlantico, thank you very much for the ini file. I finally got my cutscenes working.

I even have found what in particular one should check in case he didn't want to replace the ini file. You should find the "SaveMovie=0" string over in the nwn.ini file, it is at the end of the [display options] subgroup, and make it "SafeMovie=1". That will help.
Post edited December 07, 2014 by VertasNostalgie
Posted December 15, 2014
avatar
Daedalus023: So I recently got Neverwinter Nights Diamond off Gog, and I'm having some issues.

Everything seemed to run smoothly, until I finished creating my character. As soon as the intro cutscene started, the screen goes black and all I get is the audio. When I skip the cutscene, the screen continues to be black, except I can see my cursor.

Now the really interesting thing is, if I alt-tab out, then go back to the game, I suddenly get my visuals back and things seem to work fine. Still, I'd like to play the game normally without having to go through a process every time I cutscene plays.

My GPU is a Radeon R9 280X and my CPU is an intel i5-4690k. Anybody have a similar problem or any advice?
Forgot to add, I've already tried the SafeMovie=1 thing.
Go to your game directory right click nwnmain.exe go to properties -> compatibility then tick Disable desktop composition. your movies/cutscene's should work now.
Posted January 04, 2015
This game's movies seem to work whenever they feel like it, or or are affected by installation of other games, in my experience. The best thing you can do is fix it in the configuration files. In nwn you need to set Safe Movies to "1". But the real problem is CPU cores, and requires a switch in the nwnplayer file. Set Client CPU Affinity to "-2". This solved the issue of both the black screen with audio and the choppy skipping that took place when they did play. I would also highly recommend putting a copy of DirectX9 from June 2010 on your computer.
Post edited January 04, 2015 by jjstraka34
Posted February 23, 2015
The initi replacement and bink replacement provided by Atlantico worked for me. The 1.69 critical rebuilt patch was inaccessible to me. The link to the site worked fine, but I could not download the file. Still, my copy is working, so I'll take it as is. Thanks for the help guys.
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Neverwinter Nights seriesBlack Screen after Character Creation, can hear audio(20 posts)(20 posts)
(20 posts)