hello, 

whenever i launch my game it will start in the background and i will have sound, the game mouse cursor but no visuals. 

if i try to alt tab or launch in forced windowed it sometimes comes up as a white or black screen. 

i have tried reinstalling my graphic drivers, windows update, comparability mode, installing windows visuals again. Nothing seems to work. not even installing the codecs again. 

I'm running windows 10, 64 bits. 

bump

if the videos when the game starts up aren't even playing, it could be a problem with the video playback. You can try running the game with the "-novideo" launch option, either inside the ES2 game properties in Steam (the Launch Options button) or by creating a shortcut with the option for the EndlessSpace2.exe file. This will just skip the videos and wont try to play them.

It says that your default display resolution is set to 0x0. Try going to your Steam>steamapps>common>Endless Space 2 folder, and editing Registry.xml:

change your resolution to

<Resolution>1920x1080 (60)</Resolution> (copy and paste if you need to)

Hopefully that fixes it for you

Yeah, as I said the Registry.xml file has the resolution set to 1920x1080 already. Despite, this it changes to 0x0.

You could try to delete the registry.xml file and see if it fixes your issue. 

Unfortunately that does not solve the issue, I have tried removing and replacing the registry.xml file, forcing the changes via REGEDIT, reinstalling drivers & the game, setting registry.xml to read only, adding "-novideo" parameters to the launch sequence on steam, redownloading the redistributables, compatabilitiy mode....

No luck

Another idea: Download and install K-Lite Mega Codec Pack

Installed and no dice, unfortunately

Hi Aphareus i had the same issue and tried the same troubleshooting tips and nothing helped.

But now i tried something and it worked.

i found 2 endless space II related registry files. One in the game folder, under "steamapps/common/Endless Space 2" and the other one in my documents folder, under "documents/Endless Space 2/Users/8numbers".

i opened the registry file in the documents folder and searched for <Video>. There the video options only looked like this:

 <Video>
<VSyncCount>1</VSyncCount>
<QualityLevel>Beautiful</QualityLevel>
<TargetFrameRate>100</TargetFrameRate>
 </Video>

The i looked in the Steam-Game-folder registry-file, and its video-options looked like this:

    <Video>
<VSyncCount>1</VSyncCount>
<DisplayMode>Fullscreen</DisplayMode>
<RefreshRate>60</RefreshRate>
<Resolution>1920x1080 (60)</Resolution>
<QualityLevel>Beautiful</QualityLevel>
<TargetFrameRate>100</TargetFrameRate>
    </Video>

Then i copied the three columes:

<DisplayMode>Fullscreen</DisplayMode>
<RefreshRate>60</RefreshRate>
<Resolution>1920x1080 (60)</Resolution>

from the game-folder registry file into the documents registry-file. in the end the video-options in both registry-files look the same like this:

    <Video>
<VSyncCount>1</VSyncCount>
<DisplayMode>Fullscreen</DisplayMode>
<RefreshRate>60</RefreshRate>
<Resolution>1920x1080 (60)</Resolution>
<QualityLevel>Beautiful</QualityLevel>
<TargetFrameRate>100</TargetFrameRate>
    </Video>

and now the game starts with the loading screen and i'm able to play endless space 2 again.

i hope you can solve your blackscreen issue too.

I'd like to report that none of the above have worked for me, however my issue seems to have been resolved. I had recently purchased a new monitor to use as a secondary, and plugged it in - and on a whim, decided to run ES2 and EL to see if the issue would have been magically resolved.

and well... it was lmao

Thank you everyone for your input though

had the same issue, audio works but see only black screen when the game starts. fixed it by disabling HDR

Hi

Disabling HDR fixed the issue.

Thanks