Rome 2 Black Screen during campaign.

[jakeHofferbert]

When playing Total War: Rome II's different campaigns, the game goes to a black screen without any visuals besides the cursor and audio, which still seems to update as if interacting with the game. This happens at a few different points in the campaign but most commonly when loading into a battle from the campaign map, or when loading back to the campaign map from the end of a battle. I tried a few different campaigns and went straight into a faction's starting battle and this occurred each time (Grand Campaign, Imperator Augustus, Rise of the Republic) Wrath of Sparta seemed to play fine with a quick test. I can however play custom battles perfectly fine it seems. 

I am using driver version 31.0.101.4826 with an Arc A750. A few files are attached showing system specs and game settings. Also, I am on the most up to date versions of my BIOS and Windows 11.

I am playing Total War: Rome II - Emperor Edition through Steam

This can be reproduced most reliably by loading into the Grand Campaign and attempting to play a battle (The factions I tested were Rome and the Arverni). If the glitch does not occur loading into the battle, play through the battle and it might occur when loading back to the campaign map after the battle (This is what happened in the Rise if the Republic campaign). All of these instances happened during the first attempted battle of the campaign (Minus the case of Wrath of Sparta which had no issue in its first attempted battle).

I have also attached a video of the glitch occurring. However, in the recording, the screen does not go black, it instead continues to show the loading screen. From my perspective the screen was black, and you can see when this happens when I start to circle my cursor around after the loading progress bar has filled.

[Andres_Intel]

Hello jakeHofferbert,

Thank you for posting on the Intel communities. I know how annoying is when a game has flickering issues, like this black screen that you have, I will be more than glad to help you.  

I see on the Intel® SSU that the graphics driver is not up to date, we released a new version some days ago, please follow the steps below and let me know the results:

• Clean install the graphics driver to version 31.0.101.4885 with Display Driver Uninstaller (DDU). For guidance, How to Use the Display Driver Uninstaller (DDU) to Uninstall an Intel® Graphics Driver.

Regards,  

Andres P. 

Intel Customer Support Technician 

[jakeHofferbert]

Hello Andres_Intel,

That driver version was released the same day that I made my post so I didn't see it at the time. After updating using DDU, the issue still seems to persist. Let me know if there is any other information I can give to help find a solution.

After a bit more tinkering, the game will load into a campaign on the settings that I shared, seemingly without issue, but if I change any settings, it will black screen when loading with the new settings. For example, I changed the 'water' setting to 'high' from 'very high.' The screen went black after trying to load the changes. I then restarted the game and attempted the same change and the game loaded fine. So there seems to be some issue with the loading process, not necessarily the specific settings used. The same thing happened when changing the 'trees,' 'terrain,' and 'texture filtering' settings at different points of that process; either when first making the change, or when reverting back to what it was originally set to.

Thanks.

[Andres_Intel]

Hello jakeHofferbert,

Thank you for your response, and for completing the recommended steps.

I will start with an investigation and as soon have further information I will let you know.

Regards,  

Andres P. 

Intel Customer Support Technician 

[Andres_Intel]

Hello jakeHofferbert, 

Thank you for your time.

We still working on the investigation, now we will start working on the reproduction as soon as I have the results I will let you know. 

Regards,  

Andres P. 

Intel Customer Support Technician 

[Andres_Intel]

Hello jakeHofferbert,

Thank you for your patience. 

We still working really hard on the reproduction, and we will have the results soon, as soon as I have them will let you know.

Regards,  

Andres P. 

Intel Customer Support Technician

[jakeHofferbert]

Any update on narrowing down what the problem might be?

If there's any other information I can provide to help, let me know.

Thanks.

[jakeHofferbert]

Hello,

It's been three months since I made my original post requesting help with this issue. I recently updated to driver version 31.0.101.5084 and the issue still persists. I just want to ask if the issue is still being looked into or if I will have to write off being able to play this game at this point. If there is any more information I can provide to help solve the issue, please let me know.

Thanks.

[Hektor]

I'm not sure if you should write it off just yet. Theres so many similar posts about Rome  2 and Attila and all the other pre Warhammer 1 total war games just not working on ARC. I bought and Arc A770 and A750 (both LEs) a few months apart to replace old RX 480 8gbs in a 10th and 11th gen intel system 8 months into Arcs lifespan for the first purchase. I had a rough time in the first few months in some games (like League would crash for me for no reason every 5 games) but intel has been working very hard trying to fix the drivers and I've seen them improved significantly. My guess is this is less of an Intel issue and more of a CA/Sega issue. Its been put on full blast that they only care about the bottom line offering terrible products by rehashing old assets (and their bugs) and theyve been doing it since Empire in an unsustainable fashion. Pharaoh's sales are so bad because the fanbase knows theyre just talking Troy assets and doing what they can with them rather than doing Medieval 3 something better they dont have any assets for. Rome 2 and Attila are said to work in Direct X Vulkan if you mod the game files to use Vulkan API but I can't actually show you where or how  to do that its just mentioned in the forums everywhere, so we at least know it can be done. 

[TheZethy]

I have recently encountered this bug on my Intel Serpent Canyon NUC. That uses an Arc 770M 16GB. I was able to get the game to run by moving the texture quality from Ultra down to Very High. In game, the textures flicker or look like they haven't been fully loaded in.

For Intel, is there some kind of log that would be helpful in investigating this problem? I notice that this post is a few months old and there have been multiple drivers since then.

[Gabriela_Intel]

Hi everyone! Thanks so much for your patience. We are waiting for the fix to be available publicly. We'll follow up again here when the driver with the fix is available.

[Gabriela_Intel]

Hi everyone! Thanks so much for your patience. We are waiting for the fix to be available publicly. We'll follow up again here when the driver with the fix is available.

[jakeHofferbert]

Awesome, thanks for the update. Looking forward to getting a possible fix and testing it out.

[ChrisT2]

I wish I had seen this thread prior to buying my Arc GPU as I'm experiencing the same issue while playing Rome 2. Hopefully it'll be resolved soon with a proper driver. I got 3 weeks left before my GPU can be refunded or exchanged. I'll keep my fingers crossed in the meantime.

[Hektor]

You can mod the game to have it run using DXVX as a temp fix. To be honest from what Ive seen this is mostly a Total War issue not an Intel issue. Their games spaghetti code.