Game locks on splash screen

[jpaine]

I purchased Prey a few days ago and am having the hardest time getting the thing to work. I get to the splash screen, then after a few minutes, the Windows dialogue box sound goes off. After this point, nothing happens... My PC will no longer respond to input of any sort. The splash screen just stays there. I've tried both the retail install and the Steam versions, both of which reside on separate physical drives. Each yields the same results. I have an ATI Radeon X800 Platinum card, Windows XP pro service pack 2, Athlon 64-FX 53 processor, and 2 gigs of ram. I can run every other game I have tried with no problems, including HL2, Farcry, and Doom 3 (setting maxed out). I have tried multiple tweaks to my video card through the Catalyst Control Center, none yields any different result. I have the latest drivers for all my hardware and the latest updates to Windows. Quite frankly, I am getting frustrated... Perhaps the 360 version would have been a better choice. I need to be an electrical engineer just to run the game once...

[jpaine]

Oh, and I've installed the 1.2 patch on both installations. The problem remains the same.

[Excaliber]

I"m having the same exact problem. Bought Prey last night, installed it, installed the patch, and when I start the game it hangs on the splash screen with the indian and girl and PREY and that's that. I can't hit escape, ctrl/alt/del does nothing, I have to end up rebooting. I'm running this on an AMD X2 4800+ processor, 2 gigs of ram, and an ATI 1900xtx card with all drivers updated. All other games I have played boot up just fine, but this game... well, by reading all the problems, there's something in some recently updated driver that people are using that is causing this glitch. Can anybody help?

[lostinms]

Apparently it looks like the game is having problems with ATI cards. The only way I got it to work is reinstall windows which I think is a bit drastic.

[frustrated]

I am glad I am not alone in this. What a collasal disaster for 3D Realms this must be! A product that is NEW acting this way? It's almost you got a brand new copy of Vista! BTW, I will NEVER install that POS "OS" on my system due to spyware issues that Microsoft is so famous for. Miscrosoft is like the Butler of a Hotel (should be seen and NOT heard) walking in while you are making love and asks if it is good or if he can assist you.

[Excaliber]

Guess that means there needs to be another patch. Come on 3d, get after it, you have a few disgruntled customers here. Stop playing the blame game and get to fixing the problem at hand.

[jpaine]

I went ahead and cleaned my video card drivers out of my system totally... then did a fresh reinstall with the latest (I believe 7.1) hoping it was just a bad install. This achieved nothing. My next idea is to try to find some older ATI drivers for my card, clean out my current drivers, and install the older ones. Hopefully, at the very least, I'll find a set that worked at some point.

[Excaliber]

It is odd that there are no moderators or owners of the site replying to this thread. I'm questioning my purchase of this game now, and doubt I'll never buy another game from 3d.

[Mrkat]

I've got this problem as well, same results; PC just 'locks' on splash screen and fails to respond to any input after than. PC needs to be rebooted. Not even going to bother fiddling with this to try and fix it because even the shortcut parameters don't seem to do anything either (+seta r_fullscreen 0)

[Mrkat]

OK I lied, tried a little bit of fiddling and managed to get it to run in windowed mode (not going to try fullscreen yet)!

Create a new desktop shortcut directly from the main game .exe file and try that.

Failing that what I *actually did* was this... create short cut as above and then edit it's properties (right click select 'Properties') adding "+editor" to the file path listed in the top text field (make sure there is a space between the end of the path and the command you add).

Double click that to start the editor. After doing that (I moved a couple of the panels about) I shut it down and then started the game by double clicking the original shortcut I set up, that finally got the game started into Windowed mode.

Doing all that seems to have kicked the game into gear and start so the initial issue must have something to do with the default *.cfg files where all the settings for the game and editor are stored.

[jpaine]

Mrkat's solution is confimed working!!!!! At least for my configuration. It works for both the disc install and Steam! Here's what I did for Steam, step by step:

-Launch Steam, go to My Games
-Select Prey
-Hit the 'Properties' button in the lower right corner
-Hit 'Set Launch Options'
-Type "+editor +seta r_fullscreen 0" and hit OK
-Double click Prey, it should launch in a window, and the editor should pop up
-Exit the editor
-Go back to 'Set Launch Options' and replace all the text with "+r_fullscreen 1" and hit OK.
-Double click Prey

It should run fine, in fullscreen!! You can go ahead and just delete "+r_fullscreen 1" from the launch options once the game is up and running. THANK YOU Mrkat!!!

[Excaliber]

I've tried getting this to work, but without any luck. I went into my Prey desktop icon and clicked on properties, but haven't had any luck changing the launch target to make it work. What I have is... "C:\Program Files\Prey\prey.exe"

Do you add the + after the quotation marks? I've tried it both ways, and get an error saying the cd couldn't be authenticated.

[hyfe]

I've got the same issue. Locks up at the splash screen.

Going through a back-asswards way to make the game even run aside, do we have any kind of explanation for why the game is doing this to apparantly a good deal of users?

[jpaine]

Add the +editor +seta r_fullscreen 0 after the quotation marks... So for the retail, disc install, your shortcut should look something like this:

"C:\Program Files\Prey\prey.exe" +editor +seta r_fullscreen 0

And for Steam, you should put this under properties - set launch options

+editor +seta r_fullscreen 0

For the Steam version, DO NOT use a shortcut on your desktop, it won't work (or at least it didn't for me). You have to add the above in the 'set launch options' under 'properties.'

As a note, if you get the game running, you can change it back to fullscreen under the options menu and can just remove everything after the quotation marks in your shortcut.

As for why this works... I have a few guesses... For my PC, I have a labyrinth of programs monitoring network access, and I thought I had set them all to allow 'prey.exe,' but the first time I ran it in windowed-mode, one other dialogue box came up asking for permission to allow network access. Set any firewall you have to allow 'prey.exe' (make sure you tell it the right one, they are in two different locations for the retail disc install and Steam). Past that... I think Mrkat's idea that the cfg needs to be set up at least once may be valid. Most of these problems seem to be occurring on upper-end ATI graphics card machines, so I guess the +editor bypasses whatever part of the game that is taxing the card's drivers, but does at least let the game establish some baseline configuration...

I am no programmer, nor do I have any idea about the inner workings of this software, so the above is nothing more than a guess. However, since a Human Head Studios representative seems notably absent from this discussion, it may be the best guess we have.

[Mrkat]

Yay! I'm glad that 'hack' is working for a few of you because the game is worth it. There are a couple of cfg files dropped into the base folder that are used as settings references so the issue is likely related to what you said about GFX drivers (those are written to a text files somewhere when the game auto detects them iirc), but again as you said, it's best guess!.

Anyway I'm glad you guys have got this confirmed as a way around the problem.

[Excaliber]

Well, I tried changing the target, now something weird happens, there are 3 windows that open up in 800x600 resolution, and I have no clue what to do. Any suggestions? WHERE ARE THE MODERATORS HELP HERE?

[Mrkat]

Yes, that's the editor, it should happen. What you need to do now is either re-edit the shortcut and remove the "+editor" reference or create a new shortcut directly from the exe as mentioned above.

[Excaliber]

well, I don't know how to explain this, but I got it to work. I cheated though, and copied and pasted the target into the properties of prey. Then opened it. Once the editor opened, I closed it and copied a new icon onto my desktop, naming it prey2, then went into the properties and deleted all the content behind the original prey target that had been added. Clicked on it and whallah, it worked. I'm honestly extremely impressed with the game, but am extremely let down I had to go through all this to get it to work, all with no help from the people who should be here to support the game. Thank you everybody else!

[hyfe]

Well inputing that into the launch properties seems to have fixed the problem for me. As long as I launch it through steam and not off my desktop shortcut. That was pretty frustrating there for a while. Thanks for the fix.

The game itself is pretty fun. I just played it for a good 8 hrs.

[MichaelLong]

For everyone who is having this problem: This happens only in full screen mode? Windowed mode (running with "+set r_fullscreen 0") just works, there's no firewall/antivirus popup that is coming up that you have to clear before it works in windowed mode?

[Mrkat]

When I initially had the problem I was trying to run the game in full screen. I added r_fullscreen to the game shortcut to no avail which is why I then ran the editor. All I did then was add "+editor" and it automatically started in windowed mode (the game didn't go into FS and then drop back to windowed).

I don't know if I got my firewall popup becasue the game froze and it wouldn't Alt+return to minimise, but on checking the FW on rebooting a Prey entry was there, so permissions were added to that; I still had problems running the game desite doing this btw, it wasn't until I used the editor that it ran. No popup blockers installed other than the one that comes with Internet Explorer 7

[MichaelLong]

I would suggest turning the firewall off entirely while running Prey. Several firewall and antivirus products are known to interfere with it in various ways.

[jpaine]

The first time I got it to run at all was in windowed mode, with the editor. I also took that time to ensure that any firewall product on my computer was set to allow prey.exe. Unfortunately, that doesn't narrow down the possibilities, I addressed two at once. I'm starting to think this is mainly a firewall issue. As a side note, to MichaelLong, thank you for replying. I was honestly losing some faith in Human Head Studios, but I'm glad to see you are here to help. Also, now that I have it up and running, this is an amazing game!

[Mrkat]

Originally Posted by MichaelLong

I would suggest turning the firewall off entirely while running Prey. Several firewall and antivirus products are known to interfere with it in various ways.

Once the workaround has been done the game runs fine.

[hyfe]

Hmmm... I use a mcAfee firewall, and when I disabled the firewall and shut down the security sweet, I still had the same problem in full screen mode (locks up at Prey logo screen).

I too have been able to get around the problem starting it in windowed mode and then once that is loaded I'm able to load it to full screen via the video options in game.

[Saturn2888]

My problem wasn't solved in any way so far. I own the Steam version. While what I'm going to say might be a rehash, I just wanna say it again just to make sure. This problem is really bugging me.

When I startup Prey on my PC, I get a grey screen at a resolution of 640x480 or 800x600. I can still move my mouse and my other monitors work fine (3 in total). I also am running 2 graphics cards.

My computer specs:
WinXP Pro
Athlon X2 3800+
1GB RAM
Radeon 3870HD
Creative X-Fi

The other graphics card which only controls one monitor is an ATi Radeon X1300/X1550 series card. I had been using the Catalyst 8.2 drivers, but I upgraded to 8.3 as I got Prey. I tried deleting the game and redownloading it, but I got the same issue. Turning off Catalyst AI causes the game to quickly go into the low resolution and close itself so all my desktop icons become mangled and the game didn't even load. I would be willing to disclose any more needed anymore information.

I have no anti-virus or firewall on. When I startup my PC, there aren't unneeded services. This rig is clean; well, it should be. I've had a few problems w/ some DOS games, but I haven't had problems w/ big production games before. I think there's a DLL problem w/ my ATi drivers, but I do not know for sure. In switching from 8.2 to 8.3, I uninstalled 8.2 entirely, did a restarted, then installed 8.3 and restarted again. I also made sure to try playing the game w/ Ultramon on or closed. Neither way helped. Attached is a screenshot of Task Manager as it is right at this moment with Ultramon turned off. Is something missing that I want to be aware of?

If you could please assist me with this issue in any way you can, that'd be a great help.

Thank you very much.

[Unstop]

Sounds like the code for handling the ATI cards hasn't been updated and is having major issues. There needs to be a patch ASAP. I have an Nvidia Geforce 8800 GTS and never experienced one problem.

[Dopefish7590]

Also try to close Hamachi... That could be a possible problem.

[Saturn2888]

Hamachi wasn't even opened.

I dunno what it is, but it could very well be that the HD3870 isn't supported for some extremely odd reason. The only weird thing is that this game was sold on Steam and well... I'd like to play it, but if I can't even play it, there's no way to get your money back so I'm stuck trying to get help to get it to work as much as possible.

[Dopefish7590]

In your "Processes" tab in the task manager, there is "Logmein" process... That is Hamachi service... A background service, so Hamachi doesn't appear to be open... Try ending all "Logmein" tasks and then try to run the game.

Tell me if this works.

[damocles66]

I am also having this blank screen issue on start up. I have tried all of the suggested methods to get the game running. If i set the options in steam for the editor to start up, the game tries to start in a window but just hangs on the blank screen again, and the editor doesnt start. I have all firewalls turned off. I even have my computer in a DMZ.

I guess my only option if I want to play this game is to create a dual boot for XP (although I see that a lot of people on XP have this issue too). Perhaps this is just a monumental F*** up with the steam version of the game?

My machine specs are:

Vista 32bit Ultimate
Core 2 Duo 2.13ghz
2GB RAM
Nvidia 7900 GTX
Creative X-Fi

[Dopefish7590]

So, ending Logmein didn't do anything? That was the problem on my computer for a while.

I dunno then... Any demanding services in use?