I get the same thing. The game is running, though. If you mash the spacebar and/or Enter, you'll hear it responding; there's just nothing on the screen. I think it probably has something to do with nglide, but I haven't had much time to dig into it yet. I'm on Windows 7 with an Nvidia GT 650M.

Try running sin.exe directly, rather than using the shortcut the installer created. If that works, go to the Controls menu and set everything up as you like. Once that's done, exit the game, go to the game's "base" folder, copy the "player" folder from there into "2015" and overwrite files, so that Wages will be configured the same as the base game.

This might fix it for you. Go grab the latest version of nGlide here, then just install it and try running Sin again. Worked for me. Here's the link: http://www.zeus-software.com/downloads/nglide

Installing nGlide 1.02 instantly fixed the problem for me.

On another note, the intro videos do not play when I launch the game with the autoexec.cfg. Launching the game-executable directly does play the videos, though very awkwardly by changing screen resolution and minimizing the game a few times.

Thanks! Worked like a charm. Only problem now is that I don't seem to be able to change and save graphic settings

What version of nGlide does it come with and why isn't it the latest version (being as the solution here is to install nGlide 1.02)?

I got the same issue and solved it by changing the gamma option in the nGlide configurator from the game directory - the field was initially blank, so maybe the main menu was just, well, black like gamma=0. Anyway, nGlide seems to be the 0.99 version, not the 1.02 one, strangely.

Worked for me as well, thanks.

Very interesting. I wonder if GOG support know about this? Could be worth telling them both about the outdated nGlide version and about the 0 gamma setting so that they can fix it. I'd do it myself but I've not yet bought the game (I always wait to hear about any issues and fixes before I buy). If you provide details of the fix then they are likely to implement it with a new installer version, as they did so when I pointed out to them an issue with the MDK executable.

Worked for me also.
I was getting the black screen, installed the new nglide 1.02, and now can play (well, mostly)
Now to fix all the stuttering.

Hey all, as I answered this post:
http://www.gog.com/forum/sin_gold/too_dark_any_gamma_controls
I had a thought as to something that could explain the black screen problem. I've sent the details to GOG support anyway, so hopefully they'll update the game to use nglide 1.02.

But anyway, yes, the included version of nglide, 0.99, uses a configurator which writes the settings to the registry. The OP of the thread I've linked to says that the gamma settings in 0.99 go from 0.8 to 1.2, so that's 5 options in jumps of 0.1. The setting in the registry stores the values 0 to 4 for these, so the default for gamma 1.0 is value 2.

Now version 1.02 (the latest) on the other hand, has 11 options for gamma, from 0.5 to 1.5 (in jumps of 0.1). The default for gamma 1.0 is therefore the value 5. This value is out of the range of the earlier version.

Now as GOG have released some games with nglide 1.02, and as both 0.99 and 1.02 write to the same registry entries, this could be the root cause of the problem. A later nglide version writing a value of 5 for default gamma, then this game not being able to understand that value as it is out of range. Also why updating it to use the latest nglide fixes it.

I've attached a screenshot showing the two configurators for nglide. 1.02 has saved the value of gamma = 1.0 (value 5) in the registry, and version 0.99 then shows a blank as it doesn't understand what value 5 corresponds to.

So, mixing up nglide versions in different GOG games has probably caused this issue.

I wondered about this too, an incompatibility between two versions of nGlide, and have sent an email to support a week ago (I completely forgot to mention this here ><). This is likely to explain the bug, indeed!!

They replied very quickly that they are looking into it, you explanation should help them if need be!

We're out of luck. Response from GOG support as follows:


"Hello, our Product team tested all possible configurations of this game and the conclusion is that the newest version damaged the gameplay on AMD graphic cards. That is why we used an outdated version, because it worked best out of all of them on our testbeds and didn't give any problems.
Looks like the only way would be to individually exchange the nGlide version if needed, as we won't be updating it in the installer after all."


So, no update and there will be some users with both versions of nglide from different GOG games. Only way to be sure to fix the gamma value would be for affected users to change the settings every time they use a game using nglide.

I for one will be repacking this game myself to use nglide 1.02. Being a Quake 2 engine game means that the game will play with the extracted files alone, no registry entries needed. At least not for single player anyway. So extracting the contents and replacing the nglide version is easy enough.

But still, how many other games will become affected by the different settings between different versions of nglide?

I was able to fix the black screen problem by changing the nGlide Gamma to 1.0 or higher. I used the version of nGlide that Sin Gold has installed by default.