Black screen within dungeons

[Luthelis]

When playing in just about any dungeon, I encounter black screens. I can walk past them then the dungeon reappears but only from that point on. I can walk back and forth across blackness but it greatly hinders gameplay and dungeon completion. Any suggestions?

[Kaytis]

When playing in just about any dungeon, I encounter black screens. I can walk past them then the dungeon reappears but only from that point on. I can walk back and forth across blackness but it greatly hinders gameplay and dungeon completion. Any suggestions?

This is an unfortunate bug in the Mac client. It has been doing it since the very first version. It generally only happens after a reasonably long period of time playing the game. There are three ways to fix it that I know of:

1) If you are in a group, quit the client and log back in.

2) If you are not in a group, disconnect the network, quit the game, reconnect the network and log back in (if you don't disconnect the network, you will be outside the dungeon when you return).

3) You can also leave the dungeon and reenter. You will lose XP if you do this, but some people prefer it because it takes less time when playing on a hard drive vs. an SSD.

In all cases you will need to redo temporary buffs, but not guild buffs.

This is the number one problem with the Mac client. The only other major problem is that you can only see the most significant digit of your damage numbers.

If they could get these two problems fixed, and possibly a new occasional crashing bug in Max OS 10.9, they could take the beta off of it as far as I am concerned.

[atlantiandreams]

I have been having this same issue i was wondering if something was up with my new mac. Also thanks for the info on the damage numbers i was wondering why it was saying i was doing so low of numbers when i was sure it was more. I do have one question when in dark places like the underdark i can barely make anything out it is very hard to move around because it is so dark. is this related to said issues or is there something i can actually do about it?
thanks

[Kaytis]

I have been having this same issue i was wondering if something was up with my new mac. Also thanks for the info on the damage numbers i was wondering why it was saying i was doing so low of numbers when i was sure it was more. I do have one question when in dark places like the underdark i can barely make anything out it is very hard to move around because it is so dark. is this related to said issues or is there something i can actually do about it?
thanks

This is another, not very critical, bug in the Mac version. You can't adjust the gamma in the options section. The slider is there but it doesn't do anything. Last time I looked, most of the graphics options do nothing.

Here are some things that can help:

1) pump the screen brightness to the maximum setting. This only helps a little unfortunately

2) Play a favored soul ;-) The archon completely lights everything up.

3) Follow someone that is holding something shiny. Garos Malice lights up no matter where you are.

4) Steer by the mini-map. As long as there aren't a bunch of wall protrusions, and things to fall into, this works fine until you can get to a better lit area.

5) Reduce external glare on the screen. The glossy displays are spectacular, but reflections play havoc on low detail, darkened dungeons.

You can use the UI settings to change the damage display to n+n+n format and see full damage numbers. You won't see the damage types or whether you got the kill though.

[Myranna]

It helps some to go into Color Settings (under Displays) and hit Calibrate. The default gamma setting is fairly dark (the 2.2 one), change it to the other one (1.8). Keep everything else the same unless you feel like messing with it. 1.8 was the setting used before 10.7 I think.

[Heritage_Fleet]

I have been having this same issue i was wondering if something was up with my new mac. Also thanks for the info on the damage numbers i was wondering why it was saying i was doing so low of numbers when i was sure it was more. I do have one question when in dark places like the underdark i can barely make anything out it is very hard to move around because it is so dark. is this related to said issues or is there something i can actually do about it?
thanks

Same here I have the blue screen as well, and I also noted it happened when I had been playing for a prolonged period or my MAC had been left on. Thanks for this as I was almost about to buy some more RAM and get the better graphics cars and send the MAC back to Apple to be upgraded. Despit this issue I won't be going back to the PC.

[boonielshay]

When playing in just about any dungeon, I encounter black screens. I can walk past them then the dungeon reappears but only from that point on. I can walk back and forth across blackness but it greatly hinders gameplay and dungeon completion. Any suggestions?

I have experienced this as well. It usually occurs after an hour or so of playing, when my Mac Mini gets a little hot from DDO (no other programs I use cause the computer to get very warm to the touch). I cannot target through the black walls, so I have to log out which solves the problem temporarily. However, after another hour it starts happening again.

Here is the set of circumstances that causes this to occur for me:

1) Using a Mac to play DDO (never happens on PC)
2) Playing for more than an hour, which makes my comp very warm to the touch and also causes mouse glitches (unmovable/unclickable mouse)
3) Running indoor dungeons (sewers, caves, etc.) causes this to happen more than outside adventures outside. Where there is an open entranceway indoors causes the black wall to appear after playing for a bit.

Here is what has worked to temporarily solve my problem.
1) Lowering graphic settings has had a little affect, lowering the FPS from INFINITE to around 40 helped a bit but did not stop it.
2) Logging completely out of the game helped, but sometimes only for 45 minutes to an hour.

As an aside, I had the same problem playing WoW on this same Mac Mini. However, once I lowered the FPS from INFINITE to around 40, the problem was solved on WoW. It appears that another thread is constantly running in the background of this game that is causing my Mac Mini to get hot and have these issues. Obviously, the best solution is to buy a PC to play it, but I'm hoping someone smarter than myself can figure out a workaround.

ANY and ALL suggestions are greatly appreciated. Thanks for your time and Happy New Year to everyone.

Thanks

Boone

[Keithx23]

I've recently purchased a new Macbook Pro 15" rentina laptop and I must say I am very disappointed with the quality of the game, and the support Mac users seem to get.
I have experienced most of the issues posters have on these forums, but see very few posts from Turbine staff and or any real fixes coming from them.
The main issue I still have is the black screen and the brightness level. It really makes the game unplayable on one of the best laptop screens ever made. As a DDO VIP member for many years, I am very disappointed and would like to hear some kind of plan from Turbine on when they will be resolving these issues. For them to continue to allow so many simple and yet game play crippling bugs and issues to persist is unacceptable.

[jwelch]

I've recently purchased a new Macbook Pro 15" rentina laptop and I must say I am very disappointed with the quality of the game, and the support Mac users seem to get.
I have experienced most of the issues posters have on these forums, but see very few posts from Turbine staff and or any real fixes coming from them.
The main issue I still have is the black screen and the brightness level. It really makes the game unplayable on one of the best laptop screens ever made. As a DDO VIP member for many years, I am very disappointed and would like to hear some kind of plan from Turbine on when they will be resolving these issues. For them to continue to allow so many simple and yet game play crippling bugs and issues to persist is unacceptable.

To be fair, the quality of the Mac client has been slowly improving. The first releases were dreadful. As in trees with "kinks" in them.

The black/blue screen stuff is annoying as hell, but has slowly been getting better. It seems to take a lot longer to occur now. There's a few other things missing, but it's kind of inaccurate to imply Turbine's done NOTHING.

[lyrecono]

this might be a silly question but i noticed this a few times on a friends laptop (non mac) too
When he loads in, the camara is behind the starting wall, everything is black untill he walks away.
when he moves the camara (usualy semitop down looking at his toon) it somethimes clips into the wall and he gets stuck (as in: he and the camara are physical objects, linked to each other), causing him to get stuck and the screen apears to be black

[Shadow_Flayer]

I've recently purchased a new Macbook Pro 15" rentina laptop and I must say I am very disappointed with the quality of the game, and the support Mac users seem to get.
I have experienced most of the issues posters have on these forums, but see very few posts from Turbine staff and or any real fixes coming from them.
The main issue I still have is the black screen and the brightness level. It really makes the game unplayable on one of the best laptop screens ever made. As a DDO VIP member for many years, I am very disappointed and would like to hear some kind of plan from Turbine on when they will be resolving these issues. For them to continue to allow so many simple and yet game play crippling bugs and issues to persist is unacceptable.

The OS X client was clearly an afterthought (I mean, it's only been around less than a year and the game has been out since like 2006). With all it's issues through, I still rather use it than a Windows client on my Mac. Using the Windows client on a Mac under Parallels actually works very well if you happen to already have that installed (I do for some work I do from time to time).

Here's hoping they keep working on the OS X client ... at least get the gamma slider and the floaty damage to work properly (or default the n+n+n+n damage to on for us if it's never going to work; such a pain going into options on each character to set it). At this phase of the game though, I'd say Mac users are lucky to have a client at all, sadly.

[Soulnan]

I was just going to ask about this, good thing i searched. I just got back into DDO recently after a 3 year hiatus and am playing on a mac mini. (55 inch DDO is....kinda awesome) Only problem I am encountering are the damage not being accurately shown and the black/blue/green screens happening. First time was in Servant of the Overlord right at the end of the quest. Incredibly annoying to not see where you can step and be unable to target anything.

Has there been any progress made on these fronts?

[jwelch]

I was just going to ask about this, good thing i searched. I just got back into DDO recently after a 3 year hiatus and am playing on a mac mini. (55 inch DDO is....kinda awesome) Only problem I am encountering are the damage not being accurately shown and the black/blue/green screens happening. First time was in Servant of the Overlord right at the end of the quest. Incredibly annoying to not see where you can step and be unable to target anything.

Has there been any progress made on these fronts?

There are some quests it happens a lot on, some I never see it on. I've yet to hit it on say, Augulorassa's lair, or Haunted halls. Other quests it used to happen on, like VON5, but now, I almost never see it on that one.

Used to happen on every quest every time.

[Kaytis]

I've yet to hit it on say, Augulorassa's lair

I've had it in Red light / Green light. What a nightmare. I had to get people to call out to me what the colors were since I couldn't see the lights. I had to pretty much run through blind including the ladder and jumps at the end. Now that was a challenge!

I can't say there is a quest it hasn't happened to me in. Actually -outdoor quests never have the problem, stuff like Detour. Indoor quests it happens frequently on. It happens every hour to two hours for me.

I confirmed on Lamannia that the damage numbers are still broken. I did not play long enough to see if the clipping problems are still there. I would be very surprised if they fixed that. The only thing i see fixed on the Mac is the transparent dialog in the launcher. Yay. Progress. I don't even use the Launcher :-)

[etotheipi]

The issue occurs in confined spaces. You will never see it outdoors. At some point, I may upload some screenshots of it. If I don't have to be in the quest for too much longer, I'll finish it semi-blind, but for newer players, this is kind of a debilitating bug and should be prioritized. Other than this bug, there's really nothing seriously wrong with the client.

Another issue with the Mac client is that it won't launch multiple versions of the game (like the Windows client now does). Perhaps copying DDO to a new folder would be a workaround for this, but if I want to multi-box, I usually just boot into Windows 7. For those who want to install Windows, make sure you give yourself at least a 75 GB partition. You will seriously regret anything below this.

[Dimwhit1]

Another issue with the Mac client is that it won't launch multiple versions of the game (like the Windows client now does).

I'm curious. Why would you want to launch multiple versions of the game?

[Myranna]

I'm curious. Why would you want to launch multiple versions of the game?

Pretty sure it's so you can play with another character, probably on a free account, that you can control. Some people like to multi-box, to group with another character when they don't have someone else to fill the role.

For WoW, you could do that if you made a copy of the app with a different name. (ie WoW2 if WoW was the main) then run that copy.

Myranna