Hello.

I was following the development of Stellar Tactics for a long time and finally decided to buy it. Unfortunately, from the very beginning, I started to encounter quite a strange bug that makes the game quite unplayable for me.

I'm multitasking almost all the time. Very rarely I can focus solely on the game for more than 30min. It means a lot of alt-tabbing. And the result of alt-tabbing (or rather calling another window, like web browser - I'm playing in the windowed mode) was the blackened Stellar Tactics screen, with visible HUD. I could see the menus after pressing [Esc] key. That issue triggered after some (short) time - when I was just switching back and forth between, everything worked as expected.

The strange thing is, when I was trying to replicate this issue today, I couldn't trigger it. I didn't make any changes in my system in the meantime.

Btw, I think that I was able to fix the game by loading saved state, yet it isn't really optimal solution.

Even if right now everything seems to work fine, I would like to ask: did you encounter such an issue? There is a solution? How can I prevent triggering this issue (besides keeping the game window active all the time)

Best regards
Vrakt

edit: I forgot to add my specs.
Intel i5 3.2GHz,
16GB RAM,
AMD Radeon R380X 4GB,
Windows 10 64-bit
Installed game version is 64-bit too.

Also, new incarnation of the same (I believe) issue. Now, I can see the galaxy in the background. Image attached.

edit2: Somehow, I fail to attach the image. I can't upload it to the external hosting, too - probably network issues. I'll edit this post as soon as I get it sorted.

One thing, you say you see the hud fine but the rest is black?

Does this happen in space or in ground missions, or both?

One long shot! Next time this happens during a ground mission, try pressing Q (have you maybe tried that? or is it not valid in your case?), alt tabbing might be causing the mouse pointer to go to a random corner and side scrolling the main view far away, so if you are trying to side scroll to see anything when you get back your might be to far away, pressing Q will set the view on your characters!

Hello, thanks for the replies.

@StellarTactics

I lag behind one minor version behind official releases (Radeon Software Adrenalin 2020 Edition 20.2.1 is my version, and the latest is 20.2.2). I'll upgrade and let you know if it solved my issue. I'm not really sure how long it's gonna take as I didn't manage to trigger this specific issue (black screen with HUD) again (even if one day before it hit me several times - every time when I switched to another app to do something else. But, as I said, I managed to trigger similar issue - yesterday, I had galaxy texture on the screen, and HUD elements (I hope I managed to attach the image today!).

I'm not running streaming apps in the background, but there is always a lot of different software running at the same time. Web browser, markdown editor, audio player, Discord, What's Up, email client, text editor...

I manually configured windowed mode in the ini file. I don't think I broke something here...

@halldojo

Yes, I was thinking about the same, but that's not the case, unfortunately. I was trying pressing "Q", I was trying to move the map manually - without visible effect.

I'm on the very beginning of the game - I'm doing the tutorial and recently had my first fight.

edit: Nope, somehow I can't attach the images using Firefox. Strange thing... I can't put a link here either due to my "insufficient forum reputation". Maybe that's the reason why attachements are not working for me, too?

Well it was worth the shot :)

One more thing, in your Windows Display Settings is your Scale and layout anything else than 100%? I have seen weird behaviour with that setting.

If you haven´t then read the "UI Scaling issues on 4k displays and other displays" part here :
https://www.gog.com/forum/stellar_tactics/troubleshooting_guide/post1

Definitely, every idea is worth a shot :) I don't have 4k monitor, and my scaling is set to 100%.

Ah, one more thing: the game isn't launched via GOG Galaxy. I installed Stellar Tactics from the backup installers - it's preferred way for me :)

I need to try disabling vsync for ST in the GPU settings...

Ah. I found the instructions pinned at the steam forums. edit: Instructions about switching from fullscreen to windowed mode.

I'll try to disable the back buffer and I'll let you know.

Thanks for help :)

Hello :)

I'm a rather irregular player, I tested your @StellarTactics BUFFER-related advice just now, and it seems to fix my issue. Thank you very much! :)

Similar situation here. I have multiple windows going on. I gave those options above a try and the game engine is still paying havoc with the refresh of the other windows on the second monitor. It's not a game breaker, but it does force me to change the way I want to play. Are there any plans to look into improving windowed video/game mode?