Folks, Anet,
Just quickly want to describe -my- black screen issue because it may “enlighten” some of you. (Hah, get it).
Try pressing F12 or F11 when the screen goes black. You might find your network connectivity is to blame.
I don’t know who else has experienced the type of black screen that I get, but it occurs in windowed and in full screen and is definitely a network communication issue potentially caused by some kind of intolerent network device (firewall or router @ ANet that doesn’t like out of order packets or something??).
I know it is a network issue because;
I have two internet links, one through a premium provider, and one a popular cheap alternative. Same speed. Reputable provides a live internet IP. Cheapy provides a NAT, forcing me to NAT further into my own network, I suspect they also source cheap bandwidth due to convoluted routepaths.
The issue ONLY occurs on the cheap’n’popular provider. It happens at least every hour or two and NEVER occurs on the other link (on any machine).
I know it’s a client/server issue because;
When I get the black screen of utter frustration on the cheap internetz link, I can still press F11 for options or F12 for logout, and the logout/options windows pop up over the black. Log out succeeds and I can log back in from character select. The issue ALWAYS allows me to do this.
The sound continues and there’s no crashing/failing of anything on the effected machine.
When multiple machines are playing over the same link via LAN it happens indiscriminately to every machine (there is no correlation).
I suspect some of you have real hardware issues, and I’m really sorry because those really do suck. I know there’s an issue that sounds the same as this related to a loss of video signal but that is not this- this is a genuine network issue that affects this particular cheap and cheerful provider… and how many others?
I’ve been searching for a solution to this since release and haven’t seen one but if you guys know of one please let me know…
I’ve tried
MSS clamping
lowered MTUs
swapped routers, firewalls and PCs (all with ATi 6990/5870/5970 cards and any number of driversets).
Anti-aliasing is set to Use Application Settings. There are no driver crashes on any machine.
There is nothing wrong with the connection otherwise, all other TCP connections are fine and do not drop or falter in any way including SSH sessions and VPN connections.
So if you get this problem, and every time you get the nasty little black screen you can press F11 or F12, please scream in this thread – this is one issue that I will not mind seeing the back of.
ANET: If you are up for it I’m happy to assist in packet capture and analysis, but I have no interest in playing on a crap link for hours capturing untold amounts of data to inevitable frustration unless I know you are going to provide a genuine technical interest in this issue. Please feel free to contact me directly.
-edbones [MERC]