Game boots to black screen with sound

digitalpacman

When I launch the game it boots to a black screen, a cursor, and sound. It is also the completely wrong resolution.

In my shaders cache folder F:\Users\brad\AppData\Roaming\Natural Selection 2

I just bought the game and downloaded it via steam. Already confirmed that the game was installed correctly using the steam tools.

I tried to add an attachment of my dxdiag but using chrome I see no way to upload.
I have a very good graphics card with 4gb ram on it, the newest drivers, and windows 7 pro 64bit

The log.txt has this junk in it and goes on forever:

Date: 08/30/12
Time: 00:10:36
--------------------------------------------------------------
Build 217
Starting Natural Selection 2
RenderDevice: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 570 (8.17.13.142)
Error: Couldn't load 'shaders/GUISystem.shader_template' (Error document empty.)
Error: Couldn't load 'shaders/Deferred.shader_template' (Error document empty.)
ID3DXEffectCompiler: There were no techniques
ID3DXEffectCompiler: Compilation failed

Error: Couldn't load shader 'shaders/Level.surface_shader' for material 'materials/refinery/refinery_wall_01.material'
ID3DXEffectCompiler: There were no techniques
ID3DXEffectCompiler: Compilation failed

Error: Couldn't load shader 'shaders/Level.surface_shader' for material 'materials/refinery/refinery_wall_12.material'
ID3DXEffectCompiler: There were no techniques
ID3DXEffectCompiler: Compilation failed

Error: Couldn't load shader 'shaders/Level.surface_shader' for material 'materials/refinery/refinery_wall_05.material'
ID3DXEffectCompiler: There were no techniques
ID3DXEffectCompiler: Compilation failed

Error: Couldn't load shader 'shaders/Level.surface_shader' for material 'materials/refinery/refinery_wall_02_trim_a.material'
ID3DXEffectCompiler: There were no techniques
ID3DXEffectCompiler: Compilation failed

....


ID3DXEffectCompiler: There were no techniques
ID3DXEffectCompiler: Compilation failed

ID3DXEffectCompiler: There were no techniques
ID3DXEffectCompiler: Compilation failed

princess

Seems to be a common problem reported on the forums:

<!--quoteo(post=1965079:date=Aug 20 2012, 02:00 AM:name=ScardyBob)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (ScardyBob @ Aug 20 2012, 02:00 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1965079"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Try these steps I suggest in this <a href="http://www.unknownworlds.com/ns2/forums/index.php?showtopic=118991&view=findpost&p=1945082" target="_blank">post</a>:<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->

<!--quoteo(post=1945082:date=Jun 20 2012, 03:28 AM:name=ScardyBob)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (ScardyBob @ Jun 20 2012, 03:28 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1945082"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->So I just ran into this problem on my laptop. Essentially, Steam popped up saying it was fiddling with my NS2 files and after it finished NS2 loaded with a blackscreen and this spammed in console:
ID3DXEffectCompiler: Compilation Failed
ID3DXEffectCompiler: There were no techniques

To fix it I had to do the following:
- Deleted local content for NS2 via steam
- Deleted the NS2 folder in the AppData directory (e.g. \AppData\Roaming\Natural Selection 2)
- Deleted the NS2 folder in the Steam directory (e.g. \Steam\steamapps\common\Natural Selection 2)
- Redownloaded NS2

It seems the 'Delete local content' option in Steam doesn't fully get rid of all NS2 files, which is why I needed to manually delete those others.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->