Index ⇒ Games Support ⇒ Blood 2: The Chosen - it hates and refuses to work right.

[Soul Reaver]

Hey there. I downloaded the Blood 2 rip from Home of the Underdogs (left the computer running all night to get it too. I downloaded it without using BitTorrent, since BitTorrent wouldn't work for me) but now that I have it, it has a major problem...

Specifically, neither menu nor HUD work properly! After the first screen (showing the Blood 2 logo), it enters the menu. At best, I get a 1-second long flash of the menu, and then the screen goes black... only the game's version number remains visible. I'm still IN the game though, and I can still select menu options etc... I just can't see what I'm doing.

Then, if I manage to blindly fumble my way into the game, it also doesn't have a HUD... I can't see my health, ammo, or crosshairs or anything.

Very occasionally the menu screen is visible for a split second (usually after I just move the cursor down or make a selection), but usually it's just black. The HUD seems to be missing at all times.

I looked at the Blood 2 troubleshooting page and saw that there was a problem with 'flickering menus'. I thought maybe that's what they were talking about, and applied the suggested solution (turning on Triple Buffering) but it didn't seem to make any difference - still I just get a black screen. I've tried several different video options but none seem to work.

I'm running this with a nVidia GeForce 4 Ti card, by the way.

The game is simply unplayable as it is - although the 3D graphics work fine, I can't customize the controls or save or figure out what I'm doing. I can't see my health or ammo or anything. I can't easily download it again without investing a huge amount of time, so I'm wondering if this problem is a Blood 2 problem... or a specific problem from the Home of the Underdogs rip.

[Soul Reaver]

Kind of silly to reply to my own topic, but here it is:

This is a problem with Blood 2, and apparently not an uncommon one. I stumbled across some possible solutions for it while looking through the archives on the Blood 2 forums.

There's a possible solution listed here: www.planetshogo.com (I think that's the right address. The solution is slightly down the page) - it involves either disabling vSync or Zbuffering for the GeForce card.

However, what worked for me was to open the console (~ key) and typing in "fpsmax 30" (without the quotation marks, obviously. Or maybe it was maxfps 30..? Can't remember for sure now. ). That managed to solve the problem for me. Maybe it'll help someone else out in the future too.

[loki1985]

try to turn off various sh*t in the graphics menu from the launcher, helped me with exactly the same problem years ago...

[dead-meat]

Now that you're saying it... I only had that problme with the old GeForce 2 card. Now that I have one from ATI it works fine.

Lol.. and I thought it was because the version from HOTU had the latest patches in it.

Nice to know...

[Soul Reaver]

try to turn off various sh*t in the graphics menu from the launcher, helped me with exactly the same problem years ago...

Using the graphics menu didn't help me much - most of the options made little or no difference to the problem. I obviously didn't try out all the different combinations of options, but I did try a lot of them.

Anyway, since I figured out that setting maxiumum fps to 30 solves the problem, I don't think I need to fiddle with the settings anymore (lest I accidentally make it worse again.)