Black Screen on released game (only happens to people reviewing on certain devices)

After releasing a game on Google Play, we've received reviews of people getting black screens when loading up the game, yet the audio is still playing. We tested the game on a range of devices before release without coming across this issue, yet it seems the bug only appears on certain Android devices (Samsung Galaxy Ace Plus, Galaxy Ace 2, Galaxy Tab 7.0 Plus, Galaxy S Advance) which we don't currently have in the studio. So far we've had to disallow certain devices from downloading the game

Naturally people reviewing cannot just send us logcat logs, and I cannot replicate the bug on any device.

Has anyone else come across this issue? I've searched for hours on blank screens without finding a solution.

Any help on this matter would be greatly appreciated!

Also if anyone has any of the above devices, could they possibly download/play/logcat the game and post up any blank screens w/logs if possible? Link Here

To avoid any confusion about how demanding the game is here's a list of android devices tested on before release:
Galaxy Ace (only tested but still ran fine @10-20fps - final build excluded ARMv6)
Galaxy S2
Galaxy S3
Galaxy Tab 7
HTC Desire HD
Nexus One
Nexus 7
Xperia Play
Xperia Neo
Xperia Arc S

 

No problems on my Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.0 Plus (GT-P6210)

Edit: And I haven't got any black screen complaints of my game from users with those devices.

 

No problems on my Samsung Galaxy Ace Plus (GT-S7500). No black screens when loading up the game. The game runs smoothly.

 

Thanks for the info guys!

Any chance you could tell me which version of Android you're running on?

 

I have CM10 4.1.2 Jelly Bean now.
Some time ago had stock 4.0.4 ICS and before that stock 3.2 HoneyComb, not any problems with all the Unity games I tested and my own game. But I haven't tested your game on the stock firmwares though...

Maybe ask on some forum dedicated for the devices you are having problems with, like XDA-Developers (good forum with many active users), where the threads are categorized by device/model. I asked there once for testing a game on one specific device and got testers quickly.

 

It's 2.3.6 (Gingerbread).

Here's all the data from the "About phone" section.

Model number: GT-S7500
Android version: 2.3.6
Baseband version: S7500XXLG1
Kernel version: 2.6.38.6 dpi@DELL150#1
Build number: GINGERBREAD.XXLH1

 

Not in your problem phone list, but I have no problems on my Moto Trumph ruining CM7

 

Galaxy is a touchy subject, some users CRY and give our game 1 star that all they see is a blank screen. Others... others give 5 stars... i think it has something to do with their ram or memory...

 

I don't think it's related but after a recent update with Unity 3.5.6 we've gotten a lot of complaints that there is freezing during game load or game play.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.batteryacid.highwayrider&hl=en

Trying to narrow it down, a few people with Samsung devices running 4.0.4 have mentioned it freezes for them.

 

Hmmmmm I can't see that it's to do with RAM - however there's a lot of users out there who are idiots and download all sorts of garbage, that will eventually clog up their phones. I would not be surprised if the half the bad reviews come from these users who expect your game to run perfectly every time on their heavily overloaded low-end device.
Like I said I've tested this game on the original Samsung Galaxy Ace, with a low (10-20) frame rate, and no black screens.
My previous game with Unity hasn't experienced this issue however, although this new game has far outdone the previous game in terms of downloads
Time to leave the office for the day - shall keep working on this issue. We're preparing an update for release shortly which also uses Unity 3.5.6, so we'll see what happens there.

 

Played the game too on my Google Nexus S with 4.1.2.

Did you get any info about the black screen problem? I have a prototype at the moment which works fine on my Samsung Galaxy S II, but shows me a black screen from beginning with my Nexus S.
Building with Unity 3.5.6 and Unity 4.0 Beta, both have the same issue.

Edit: Ok, fixed my black screen. Was a too gib texture in the assets folder.

 

Hi Pahe,

I'm having the same problem, could you explain your solution? Textures too big?

Thanks

 

Hi!

I have same problem.

Everything was fine, until I added ETC1/RGBA16 texture compression.

I had a game with 3APK's, different texture compressions:

So far I had APKs:
Code 10 – Tegra
Code 11 – PVRTC
Code 12 – ATI Adreno

But this didn't support Galaxy S III, many of Galaxy SII etc.

So I added 4th APK with ETC1/RGBA16 compression:

So made update and I have APKs:
Code 20 – Tegra
Code 21 – PVRTC
Code 22 – ATI Adreno
Code 23 – ETC1 or RGBA16

And now many people complains that they see main menu and GUI but they don’t see 3D.
Screen is black, looks like that Z buffer doesn’t clear.
Only 2D things are visible such as OnGUI elements and menus.
I tried both with OpenGL 1.1 and 2.0 but it doesn’t help.

I tried with both 24 bit Z buffer and 32 bit but it also doesn’t help.

It looks that all devices now download only version 23 (ETC1) which is not good.

Does anybody knows how to solve.

Ma Android now doesn't work with any of above versions, it looks like Z buffer and color buffer is not cleared.

Thanks

Bye

 

Sorry to bring a fairly old topic to life, but this problem doesn't seem to be solved.

This problem occurs for us when using an Samsung Galaxy S(GT-i9000, Android v2.3.5), building using Unity 3.5.7. Whenever we start the app, it's a black screen and music playing. After a long time it sometimes starts (without showing loading screen) and the FPS is showing 100000, and if I press any buttons on screen it just hangs and music keeps playing. This exact issue also seem to occur on another GT-i9000 (Android v.2.3.3) which we've tried. (Don't have access to the baseband atm)

What is even more weird is that this problem didn't occur when the first mentioned phone ran the Darky's Rom.

As someone else mentioned I also believe it has something to do about color buffer not being cleared.

Any suggestions? Someone said that using smaller textures solved their problem, but why did it work with the Darky's Rom? Reducing the texture size is not an option for us atm.

 

I had the problem with black screen and some scene was not load. I used a Pro version and 80% of crash was resolve on nexus on and galaxy. Only one scene was black. So I remove some texture in the scene and the scene was fine after. The problem appears on mobile with 512 mo on android. IOS was fine like itouch. In general unity pro version resolve or remove some textures or atlas too big.

 

Thank you for your input! Well we're already using Unity Pro so that can't really help us. Guess we will have to try to remove some textures just to see if there's any difference!

 

I don't know if it's related, but we once had black textures (not total black screen) on Galaxy S3. The problem was related to using a combination of 32 bit display buffer and/or using 32 bits textures (I don't remember exactly). In any case, right now we don't use 32 bit display buffer and don't use 32 bit textures and have no black textures anymore, but the image quality is not the best. You can always try to fiddle with those options (player settings, texture compression) to see what the problem is.