Starting with Steam (only) black screen

[Szara]

Starting very recently, I believe with the last steam client update, if I start Rimworld with the steam shortcut I see InitializingInterface with the normal loading background for a moment then the screen goes black, and it just sits there.

Starting without steam is fine, so it's not breaking my game, this is merely a curiosity I want to report. I've tried disabling steam overlay with no effect. Problem happens with and without any launch properties added on. So it happens both in fullscreen and windowed. It is indifferent to mods being listed in the modsconfig.xml.

On second thought I should have put this in the Support forum, but I can't delete it myself.

[Calahan]

These two quotes seem to be a match made in heaven (the latter taken form the pinned black screen thread)...

...if I start Rimworld with the steam shortcut I see InitializingInterface with the normal loading background for a moment then the screen goes black, and it just sits there.

If you, or anyone you run into recieves the black screen immedietly after an 'initilization' window, and you've tried everything else, try this; Go into the folder %appdata%/LocalLow\Ludeon Studios and uncheck the 'read only' box. This fixed the issue for me.

In theory, if your Ludeon Studios folder is read only then the game shouldn't work at all for you, but you said it does work when running the game outside of Steam. So if this solution allows the game to work through Steam again for you then... then tbh I'm not sure what's going on but it appears Steam is interfering with folder privileges somewhere along the lines.

[Szara]

Well, I use the  -savedatafolder command normally, so it shouldn't even be looking at that folder. Regardless, in the spirit of troubleshooting I did attempt to set the specified folder and my local savedata folder to read only but nothing happens. Literally it does not change anything as far as I can tell. Open folder properties, uncheck read only, apply, all contents, ok, ok. Open properties again, and it's still the box mark of partially read-only. Curious indeed, as I'm doing so with administrative privileges as well. I tried using the command line do undo the read only with just as much success. Resetting the registry entries, also nothing. On the theory that privileges might be the problem I tried running steam with admin privileges, yet that yielded no change. So I guess until Steam randomly fixes itself I'll just be ignoring Steam for Rimworld.

Oh how ever will I recover from the loss of my hours being tracked?


(Easily as it turns out)

One of the strange parts is that I never have seen InitializingInterface pop up when it's loading normally. I can only presume that is part of the 'first time' setup Rimworld does when it is missing some data.

Eh. Whatever. Less messing with Windows and Steam, more organ harvesting. Just. Disregard all of this, probably. It doesn't seem to be worth trying to fix, but if that information proves useful in understanding the problem, awesome.

[Vampner]

Hey guys, I also had this problem, bought the game yesterday, I figured it out.

With steam, rightclick Rimworld, properties, language, change to english.

Aaand woops, fixed.