Quake 3 black screen

TXTad · Posted: Tue Jan 01, 2008 8:20 pm Post subject: Quake 3 black screen

Howdy!

Somewhere along the line I've lost the ability to play Quake 3. Now when I start Quake, the game starts fine and I have sound (and presumably a running game) but the video is black. This is true if I'm running full screen or in a window. In a window, the rest of the desktop is still visible and working fine. I installed Tremulous and Nexuiz and both of these games have the same problem. The rest of the system runs fine. I can leave the game and everything else is still running fine.

If anyone has any suggestions, I'd appreciate any help.

Thanks,
Tad

whig · l33t Joined: 27 Nov 2004 Posts: 973 Location: New Zealand

Odds are the graphics configuration has gone awry. What is your card and what is the result of "eselect opengl show"?

TXTad · Posted: Wed Jan 02, 2008 2:30 am Post subject:

I've got an old Shuttle XPC with on board dual head nVidia video.

lspci says:

whig · l33t Joined: 27 Nov 2004 Posts: 973 Location: New Zealand

Let's dig further. Run glxinfo, you want to see direct rendering in there. Does glxgears work too? Which versions of nvidia-drivers and xorg-server are running? The X log could also have clues.

TXTad · Posted: Sat Jan 12, 2008 4:11 am Post subject:

glxinfo:

whig · l33t Joined: 27 Nov 2004 Posts: 973 Location: New Zealand

It is odd glxgears is unaffected, but nevertheless a plus as something is working. The info shows glx versions in sync so that's good too. But I wonder about how up to date your system is. The version of nvidia drivers you have is no longer in portage, ideally nvidia-drivers-96.43.01 ought to be the best. Bringing an old system to a current state can be a mission so standard warnings apply. There was no mention but if compiz/beryl is present try temporarily disabling it.

TXTad · Posted: Sun Jan 13, 2008 3:24 am Post subject:

I cannot update the nvidia drivers due to the fact that my GPU is no longer supported in the current code.

This problem exists with other 3D games, but, glxgears continues to work.

Everything else on my system is as up to date as possible.

I do not run any 3D desktop enhancements as I am a "trailing edge" adopter of new technologies and, though I'd like to have it, as of a couple of months ago when I looked, it still required masked packages.

Tad

bunder · Bodhisattva Joined: 10 Apr 2004 Posts: 5934

do any other GL apps work, such as enemy-territory? or is this purely a quake3 issue?

cheers
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TXTad · Posted: Sun Jan 13, 2008 3:45 am Post subject:

It seems that several other 3D games do not work either, so this is apparently not a Quake problem.

bunder · Bodhisattva Joined: 10 Apr 2004 Posts: 5934

does the screen turn black, or does the monitor turn off?

one thing to check for is whether your video card has a power connector on it.

cheers
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TXTad · Posted: Sun Jan 13, 2008 5:33 am Post subject:

If Quake is running in a window, only it's window goes black. It is strictly limited to the game.

whig · l33t Joined: 27 Nov 2004 Posts: 973 Location: New Zealand

The version of nvidia-drivers I mentioned above is supported by nvidia, for bug/X/kernel fixes but needless to say not new features. My laptop uses it, although it's 6600 series. Did it fail when you tried it?

Luppy · n00b Joined: 27 Aug 2005 Posts: 27

I get what sounds to be the same problem although all my other 3D games work perfectly. When quake 3 starts up (in window or fullscreen mode) I see the intro movie of ID being stamped but when it is time to goto the menu I only see the last frame of the ID movie. I can hear the sounds of the menu options when I move the mouse but the screen always stays on the last frame of the intro movie

Luppy · n00b Joined: 27 Aug 2005 Posts: 27

ok I managed to solve my problem... turns out that I copied the files in the baseq3 on the CD into my users