Overview
This is a quickie guide as to how to fix the black screen problem that occurs with all of my Linux installs.
The Black Screen Fix
This is how I know to fix the black screen issue. If you already hit the black screen issue and are back to a functional desktop, skip to step 5. Otherwise start at step 1.
1) Load up either a terminal or the screen resolution tool for your distro/desktop. Keep this open as we will need this later.
2) Load the game. You may do this either via Steam, or if you prefer, you can cd to the directory and manually launch the game. It matters not which way. You will get the black screen and usually a pointer; nothing else will work besides the pointer. Except you can do one thing ..
3) Switch to another VT (CTL-ALT-F2) and login as root. Execute the following command:
killall -9 penumbra.bin
This will kill the game process. Return to X by generally doing a CTRL-ALT-F1. If that doesn’t work, keep doing this with other F-Keys. Most distros nowadays are F1.
4) Now, your screen will be messed up generally, at a lower resution of 640×480. If you have a terminal open you can use randr to fix this or as I prefer, you can use your screen resolution tool to fix this back to whatever resolution your desktop uses. Keep this open after fixing your resolution. You will need to reference the exact resolution shortly.
5) We need to modifiy a configuration file that should have been auto-generated just prior to the black screen issue. As your tastes prefer, modify the following file:
~/.frictionalgames/Penumbra/Overture/settings.cfg
6) Towards the bottom of the file, there will be your resolution settings. Fix it to match your screen resolution. Included in the guide is a screen-shot of the file being edited, with the proper line highlighted. Here is a snippet from my config:
<Screen Width=”1920″ Height=”1080″ FullScreen=”true” Vsync=”false” />
Ensure that you only change the numbers and you do NOT add any line breaks or extraneous characters.
7) Save and close the file.
8) Re-load the game. It should function now.