No inventory, Health, or skill window

[eldergamer]

I recently upgraded from an older ati video card to an Nvidia gtx 970. It's been a great card so far but when I try to play Zomboid 33.14 the game came up and seemed ok until I tried opening the info, Health window. All that happens is a red boarder square with a number in it appears about where the systray would be on a windows desktop. It appears only for about 2-3 seconds. For example: the first time I press h for health a 1 inch by 1/2 inch red square appears in the lower right of my screen. If I press (h) again the square appears again but this time with a 2 in it and so on.

 

I have multiple versions of windows on separate drives. I installed drives one at a time and tested windows 7, 8.1, and 10. Every version seems to have the same trouble. The only thing that has changed on my system is moving from the ATI 6870 to the Nvidia gtx 970. I loaded the latest and greatest drivers and done all windows updates available. I could really use some help.

 

I am including a short video example of what I'm talking about. Notice in the video there is nothing on the upper left side of the screen. No icons at all. No primary weapon, no box icon , no heart icon , no skill icon, and when I try to open them with a hotkey nothing happens except for the little red square in the lower right corner of my screen with a number in it.

 

I tried to include a video example a window keeps popping up saying I'm only allowed to upload 4 mb. The video is only 3.6 mb so I'm not sure why it's being denied. I will try and reduce the size some more and resubmit it. I've lowered the quality a bit. The video is now 1.33mb. It looks awful but it's good enough to show an example of what's been happening. Well that didn't work either! Something is wrong with your attachments. They will not allow submissions of any size.

 

I am adding a link to a google drive so you can download the video: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B-zWYJ-wf33AZE5ORTUxNzQ4Rnc/view?usp=sharing

 

I hope the video helps explain what I'm seeing or should I say not seeing.

 

Thanks

Eldergamer

[Rathlord]

Do you have mods installed?

[eldergamer]

No mods. This all seemed to happen right after I traded out my Ati Radion hd6870 for the Nvidia gtx 970. But last night I remembered I had played zomboid once on my Home Theater PC in the living room so I could show it to some friends. It worked fine when I showed them. It was not version 33.14 though because it was a couple of years ago.

 

Back to my point... Anyway, When I loaded the game up I had the same thing happen on that machine. I know it ran fine before and I still had the same video card in that machine so it wasn't that. The only difference was I upgraded that machine from windows 8 to windows 10. Now I'm wondering if it has anything at all to do with video cards and more to do with windows.

 

The monkey wrench in that train of thought is that I have Zomboid on my windows 8.1 machine at work and it runs fine. I even upgraded the video card on that machine too.

I just don't know where to start and I cant seem to find anything on this issue. Probably because it's hard to explain without the sample video I posted. I don't no how someone would word the problem so I cant really search for the answer.

 

Thanks
David

[EnigmaGrey]

Is the game played a different a resolution? Maybe the UI elements just got bumped off screen. Go to %UserProfile% and delete Options.ini. This should reset the positions of the windows, and the game resolution .etc

 

If this doesn't work, start the game normally and load a save/start a new game. Press C (character info panel) then S (skills). Do they show up? Do you see a red thing in the lower-right hand corner with a number?

[eldergamer]

The game has always been set for 1920x1080 in full screen mode. I did like you said and deleted the Options.ini and it reset the game to 1024x768 in windowed mode. I went ahead and left it in this mode thinking if you were right about the UI elements were off screen and windowed mode would force them onto the same page. Unfortunately there was no change. No Character, info, nor skill icons showed up and no windows for those UI elements opened up.

 

Something was different this time though. The red box in the lower right corner did not appear during any attempts to bring up the Character, skill, or info screens. I went back and set it to full screen mode and the red box in the corner came back. I'm not sure what this tells us but it didn't show any red square during any attempt to open the missing UI while in a windowed mode. Out of curiosity I deleted the save game and the options.ini and started a new game from scratch setting up a new character as well. Just in case my save game was corrupted but no joy... It still does the same thing.

 

I swapped out my current drive with my windows 7 premium and tried the game. Same issue... Now I'm really confused. This has to have something to do with my video card. The game use to run on that drive the only difference was my ati radion HD 6870 use to be the card in machine when I ran that drive with the windows 7 premium. I'm running the same system except for removal of the ATI card to the new Nvidia gtx 970. I know the card is good because I bought it for the release of fallout 4 which I played to completion without issues. I have also played other games also without issue. Weird huh?

 

Eldergamer

 

[EnigmaGrey]

After getting the red box in the corner, go to %UserProfile%\zomboid and grab the console.txt. Upload its contents to pasetbinc.om and link it here (or, if it'll fit, attach it to your next post).

 

We'll take a look.

[eldergamer]

Problem solved but sadly a new non technical problem begins... (Heavy Sigh)

 

Found the problem... (Short answer) Steam.

Thanks for your guys help. I appreciate it. If your intrested in the long answer read below. If not then thanks again problem solved.

 

(The Long answer)

 

I use the nosteam in the games runline to avoid all the steam stuff that starts with the game. I completely forgot that the newer versions of Zomboid required the steam client to run because I never see any steam anything (Thanks to the nosteam in the games startup). When I finished playing fallout 4 which required steam to install even though I had the game in hand I decided to killed that window 8.1 install and reinstalled windows from a clean image I made before installing the game or steam. When I put zomboid on the new windows 8.1 it didn't work. Because I copied the zomboid folder to a flash drive before I wiped the system. When I plopped it back down on the clean version of windows 8.1 it didn't work because there was no steam client install. Zomboid didn't use to require steam, it could stand on it own but that's not the case with 33.14.

 

When I put previous windows versions of windows on that machine like windows 7 and later windows 10 they were images I made of the drive with older versions of zomboid that worked without steam but when I updated zomboid to 33.14 they stopped working because there was no steam client installed. So this was all just a bunch of coincidences and me missing a major piece of this puzzle.

 

Interesting note the reason the machine at my work played zomboid was because I bought elite dangerous from steam but the internet was down at my house for almost a week. I downloaded the steam client to my work machine so I could play that game. That's why Zomboid 33.14 worked on my workstation at work.

 

The zombid didn't work on my home theater system in the living room was because I upgrade that pc to windows 10 and I didn't put the steam client on. So I remembered zomboid working on that machine but as I mentioned before I forgot that steam was required now thanks to the nosteam in the runline of the games startup not giving any indication that steam needed to be loaded.

 

Crazy huh... Sorry to trouble you guys.

 

Eldergamer

[EnigmaGrey]

PZ doesn't require Steam to run. Add -nosteam to the bat file. The game is also on GoG, without Steam.

 

Most likely, sometime during this process, the bat file was just replaced with one from Steam. It commonly happens if you update the game (or Steam updates it for you).

[eldergamer]

Then I don't understand... I guess I came to all the wrong conclusions...

 

Would it be possible to change my license for zomboid from steam to GOG then. I was one of the Kickstarter people who purchased the drm free version of the game and downloaded it from Desura. I would like very much to have the GOG version. I buy everything I can through them. They are my favorite!

 

Eldergamer

[EnigmaGrey]

The game was never released on kickstarter. Do you mean Google checkout/Paypal?

 

From Lemmy101: Due to what happened with Desura, if possible we'll try and give people the choice of which alternate service they move to. However we're still just getting going with the newly released Games in Development so still have to find out how to deal with this. I'm sure we'll have discussions with GOG in the upcoming days and figure out how we can deal with this but given that GOG and Desura share more in common it'd be nice to give people the option of jumping here.

 

GoG also does not provide support for beta branches. Those are still exclusive to Steam, until GoG provides a mechanism of their own.

[eldergamer]

Holy crap! Your right... I'm sorry. I just looked it up. I bought the drm free version from either indistone and downloaded it from desura or just bought and downloaded it from desura directly.

I can't remember....

 

I found a message between you and I when desura was possibly closing. I cut and pasted it below. Small world...

Desura support@desura.com via amazonses.com

6/27/15

to me

Hi notrandom,

Your comment (below) received a reply from EnigmaGrey:

What does Desura's issues mean for Project Zomboids version 32 release? Are you going to still put it up on Desura for those of us who choose to weather the storm? I received excellent service from Dersura for a long time so I'm going to stay. They've earned my loyalty. If they close there doors so be it but I'll be with them until they do.

--------------------
There's no staff at Desura to put the build up.
--------------------

To view and reply to this message, follow the link below:
http://www.desura.com/games/project-zomboid/#4408700

To control the emails you receive from Desura, follow the link below:
http://www.desura.com/members/edit/notrandom

Thanks,
The Desura Team
http://www.desura.com

 

 

Desura support@desura.com via amazonses.com

6/27/15

to me

Hi notrandom,

Your comment (below) received a reply from EnigmaGrey:

I never realized it was a one person show. I'm very sorry to hear that. I hope that Desura can survive in spite of the situation.

Who else is Indiestone considering to host the DRM Free version of Project Zomboid? Do you know if they have considered GOG.com?

--------------------
GoG does not accept works in progress, but the team does want the game up on GoG when it's released. For the rest, I'll leave it to Chris: http://theindiestone.com/forums/index.php/topic/14855-important-fao-desura-players-please-read/page-2#entry185418

It should be noted the Steam version is still DRM free and will continue to be. It only requires you to activate that key and download it. Depending on your scruples, you may not even need to download the client, assuming steamcmd lets you activate the game there (https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/SteamCMD).

I'm sorry the answer isn't what you were looking
for.
--------------------

To view and reply to this message, follow the link below:
http://www.desura.com/games/project-zomboid/#4408706