Penumbra: Overture black screen in game

[ealbwal1]

Hi, I apologize if this isn't the right place for it but I used sdl12-compat to fix an issue with Penumbra: Overture (likely works with its sequel too) where the gamma setting didn't work.
From what I know it happens on at least Windows 10 and 11, and is likely related to having multiple monitors.

I'm not too familiar with how any of it works but I managed to get the gamma working after trying a few things. The most recent releases didn't improve the gamma issue, but in-game shows a black screen except for hud elements and menus. By using release 1.2.68 the gamma now works, but still had the same issue with the black screen in-game. What seemed to fix it was running the game through a .bat file with SDL12COMPAT_OPENGL_SCALING=0, idk if there's an easier way to solve it but that's what I could manage.

I figured I'd put it here in case anyone else has the same problem and hopefully it's something that can be added to a future release. Thanks.

[slouken]

Thanks for the info!

What is the output if you set the environment variable SDL12COMPAT_DEBUG_LOGGING=1?

[ealbwal1]

Can't seem to get that to work.
Only output is this:

INFO: sdl12-compat 1.2.68, built on Oct 25 2023 at 08:25:48, talking to SDL2 2.28.4 	
INFO: This app appears to be named 'Penumbra.exe' 	
SetCrashHandlerFilter succeeded	

[icculus]

Latest in revision control should work without the environment variable (rather, it now notices it's Penumbra.exe and sets it itself internally).

We still need to look at what the exe name is for this on Linux and macOS, since it likely has the same problem.

Also, do the later Penumbra games use SDL 1.2 still, or did they move to SDL2?

[ealbwal1]

Both are SDL 1.2

For windows:
Overture and Black Plague are both called Penumbra.exe, Requiem is Requiem.exe

For mac:
Penumbra.app, BlackPlague.app, Requiem.app

For linux:
penumbra.bin, blackplague.bin, requiem.bin

Also wondering about the gamma issue. 1.2.68 was the only (pre-compiled) version that made the gamma setting work properly, on later versions it's broken again.

[icculus]

Gamma is gone in newer SDLs, so we can't provide it.

We'd need to do in a post-processing shader, but unless we are willing to do invasive things to hook into the GL, we can't do it with Penumbra.

There is a non-invasive way to do it, but it won't work, because it would use the same mechanism as GL scaling, which doesn't work on these games.

(I don't know why 1.2.68 worked, that's probably worth exploring.)