Mac black screen bug

Posted October 2nd, 2014 by Tynan Sylvester

A lot of players on Mac have reported that they can’t play the game; they just get a black screen on startup.

A temporary fix is to hit Command+Esc to force the game into windowed mode and play that way.

If that doesn’t work, you can use these other steps for solving game startup problems.

Sorry about this. I’m investigating now and will release a Mac version hotfix ASAP. There is a forum thread working to track down this issue.

One question – is there anyone out there on Mac who is not getting this bug?

15 Responses to “Mac black screen bug”

  1. S

    Yeah, I don’t have this bug. Have also commented on the thread. Alpha 7 works perfectly on my MBP 15″


  2. Oh! Good to know, thanks. I thought every Mac user had this bug.

    Anyway, on investigation this seems to be a Unity issue. I even tried rebuilding Alpha 6 with the latest version of Unity and the bug appears (while on the originally-built Alpha 6 it does not occur).

  3. Mystic

    One clarification: from the discussion in the forum, it appears the first responder may very well have the bug as well, but just hasn’t tickled it.

    A Unity bug, eh? Now, I’m curious … how good are the Unity folks about issuing patches for things like this once they are reported?

  4. vcw

    I don’t have the bug, too. I played just a couple of minutes, but it worked

  5. Ashley Coleman

    I am a developer who uses Unity. Versions above 4.3.5 do not display fullscreen games on the Macs I use so if you work out a solution to this problem please share. I have also noticed problems with Lighting on certain graphics cards after that version, worth investigating? Try rolling back to Unity 4.2 and see if your problem persists. I have opened a trouble ticket with Unity but so far they have been very quiet, I would have thought seeing as we have over 100 licences of their software they would want to resolve this asap πŸ™

  6. JustJust

    i have this bug on windows.
    I just push dont use core mod.
    I am very sad, becouse i can play rimworld πŸ™


  7. JustJust – try steps at http://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=4805.0

  8. Cameron Harris

    I have a early 2011 MacBook pro and I also DON’T have any problems or a black screen issue. It has worked perfectly. Keep up the good work Tynan! This is a great game!

  9. Derek Shoales

    I have a mid-2009 15″ MacBook Pro, 3.06 Core2Duo, 4GB RAM, Nvidia GeForce 9400M 256MB running 10.9.5. I currently have the black screen issue where running in windowed mode corrects the problem. If I don’t go full-screen, I can hear the music start and can also hear the UI sounds play as I move my cursor (which is visible) around the screen.


  10. Oakley Sunglasses Dangerous

    Ludeon Studios

  11. Eck

    I posted this in the forum, but figured a cross-post might be helpful.

    It looks like Rimworld isn’t the only game suffering from this problem.

    Apparently, starting the game in full screen on a Mac in a non-native resolution can cause the black screen for some mac users. It looks like the bug may have been fixed in Unity 4.5.4.

    From the log files I saw earlier, it looks like Rimworld was still using 4.5.3 which is where other people were having the problem too.

    I hope this helps. πŸ™‚

    – Eck

  12. Eck

    Bah! I can’t edit my post so I couldn’t fix my missing anchor tag. Grrr.

    Unity forum link:
    http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/black-screen-after-game-start-on-mac-os.224820/


  13. unsuitabletorpo92.yolasite.com

    Ludeon Studios

  14. dan

    I don’t have the bug. late 2008 macbook. My buddy with a 2012 mb has the black screen, it works in windowed mode.


  15. Well, it’s fixed in next build. So all will be well.