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Game Maker and the Black Screen of Death


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#1 JGM_25

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Posted 23 August 2012 - 12:39 AM

So, I was fiddling with game maker 8.1, and upon closing a game I was testing, my entire screen became black. I couldn't do anything except power off my computer as, ctrl+alt+del was not doing anything.

Anyone else have this issue?

I looked through my code but there is nothing that could cause this. I was not using any external files either.

Edited by JGM_25, 23 August 2012 - 02:14 AM.

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#2 mcmonkey

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Posted 23 August 2012 - 04:12 AM

I've noticed something very similar:

Anytime I close any GM made game (really, any at all, any GM version, any gametype...), on any computer I've used (Though I only use Windows 7 comps) the screen goes black for a few seconds. Other programs only ever do this when switching between fullscreen / windowed mode... so it may be possible GM calls a system 'end_fullscreen_mode' or somesuch function that reloads the graphics card.
Sometimes this goes for long times depending on the game and what I have running at the time.
Also, one of the programs I have running (a Q3-engine game server) reports the exact time in milliseconds of any lag. It always has around 2000 ms lag when this happens, indicating the black screen is also preventing other programs from running. (I have a dualcore processor, so it shouldn't be from 100%CPU Usage.. but it could be ..)

It appears you somehow got stuck in what I described above.

Edited by mcmonkey, 23 August 2012 - 04:15 AM.

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#3 daz

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Posted 23 August 2012 - 04:34 AM

Yes I have had this happen (using GM:HTML5's delphi runner) -- something the end loop does likes to crash graphics cards. Windows 7 for me will reload graphics drivers upon noticing the crash - and as the above poster seems to also use it, is why the black screen will only last a few seconds on it.
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#4 JGM_25

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Posted 23 August 2012 - 07:38 AM

Strangely, this issue does not seem to have on my old Windows XP laptop.

I use Windows 7 32-bit on my desktop, and that's where the issue is. My games were not running in Fullscreen mode however when this happened.

Edited by JGM_25, 23 August 2012 - 08:59 AM.

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#5 TsukaYuriko

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Posted 23 August 2012 - 12:06 PM

Wow, and I thought this was a problem with my new graphics card. :blink: It only started happening a while ago, that's why I was suspecting my graphics card (which I got at around that time) to be the cause. Considering the different experiences users have had with this, it seems like it's a combination of both.

This happens to me every time I close a GM game that wasn't started from within GM. If I happen to have a media player playing music in the background, I can still hear it, but my pause/unpause/next/previous shortcuts don't work, nor does my computer respond to any other sort of input that isn't the power button.
Also, closing a game that was started from within GM sometimes makes my screen flicker black for a split-second, but I never had any crashes that way until now. Using task manager to kill the game's process, no matter where it was started from, will not cause a crash or flicker, and I'm currently using this as a workaround... and as long as I don't forget that I have to use it, it works. So I guess GM is doing something our PCs don't like at game end...

System specs: Windows 7 64-bit, i5 650 @ 3.2GHz, 6GB RAM, GeForce GTX 260. GM version is 8.1.141.

Edited by TsukaYuriko, 23 August 2012 - 12:08 PM.

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#6 JGM_25

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Posted 23 August 2012 - 05:03 PM

I have no idea either, but it would be nice to know why this is happening, because I don't want to send my games to friends and have them get black screens of doom.

My system:

Windows 7 32-bit, AMD Phenom II - Quad core, 4 cores @ 3.4 ghz, 4 gb DDR3 ram, Geforce GTX 285
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#7 JGM_25

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Posted 23 August 2012 - 11:01 PM

I noticed someone moved my posts. It'd be nice if the forum admins could forward this to the people programming Game Maker, so this issue could be looked into.
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#8 mcmonkey

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Posted 24 August 2012 - 04:47 AM

I noticed someone moved my posts. It'd be nice if the forum admins could forward this to the people programming Game Maker, so this issue could be looked into.

http://bugs.yoyogames.com

Post it there (I say you should do it as you're this topic's OP.)
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#9 JGM_25

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Posted 25 August 2012 - 12:13 AM

Hmm, I'll see about doing that.

Edited by JGM_25, 25 August 2012 - 12:24 AM.

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#10 slimslamman

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Posted 30 August 2012 - 01:25 AM

I've had this happen many times on Win 7. Sometimes i have fixed this issue using compatibility mode by playing with the settings. Other times I have found updating the graphics drives does the trick also.

I cannot wait until Win 8 is released so I get to find new problems all over again. :-(.

Sometimes I think MS should be more like Apple and have stricter requirements for software vendors.
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