Greetings, cultists,
Let's not beat around the bush and address one of the most obnoxious issues we've encountered since releasing Forgive Me Father – the "black screen bug". To briefly identify it, it's the issue that a very small percentage of players have experienced, which prevents them from starting the game at all, while only opening a black screen window that cannot be bypassed in any way.
We were able to help some of the affected players ourselves, and there have been reports that some players managed to solve this issue by reinstalling the game, deleting the AppData files and some other, unconventional methods. None of them were, however, reliable enough to help every single player who experienced this issue.
Even though the number of players unable to access the game because of this problem seems to be less than one percent, we still want to find a way to help you. Over the months, we've been collecting as much data as possible about the issue and investigating affected save files, yet we have not been able to locate the source of the problem. So far it seems that it can have a different cause every time it happens: some cases might be related to the Unreal Engine the game is made in, some of them can be caused by players' Windows settings and those are just some of the possible causes.
We are not giving up, though; we want to figure this out and we’d like to officially ask for your help one more time. If you're among those who do experience or have experienced the issue, please, contact us preferably on the Forgive Me Father Discord server, as we'd like to request specific information about your systems. You can upload the needed files here on Steam on the discussion forum where there is a thread dedicated to this issue, we strongly recommend to use Discord, though, as it offers much clearer and easier communication and room for potential follow-ups.
Once you're on the Discord server, please, head to the FORGIVE ME FATHER category and the #bug-report channel where you can report your issue and share your files, or reach out directly to BB_Lucas, the Community Manager of Byte Barrel.
First pack of things we'd like to ask from you is composed of your game files (saves, logs), PC Specs and DXDiag logs.
The game files can be found in this folder (please, send the whole folder):
C:\Users\%username%\AppData\Local\FMF
To access these files, open the Windows search bar and type %localappdata%, then press Enter.
Your PC Specs can be found by accessing your PC details, which is usually done by opening "Settings" and then opening "System" and "About" (these might be called differently on your system).
The DXDiag logs can be obtained by following these steps:
- Press Win + R on your keyboard.
- Type dxdiag and press Enter.
- Wait a few seconds for the window to load.
- Click “Save All Information...” (bottom-right corner).
- Choose where to save the file (e.g., Desktop or Documents).
- A file named DxDiag.txt will be created – this is your log.
You can put all the files to a new folder and pack it to a .zip or a .rar file. After that, just send it to us, preferably on the Discord server mentioned above.
Once that's done, we might follow-up with additional questions regarding your anti-virus settings, Steam settings, hardware specifications and other details.
It might sound like a lot, but we are determined to find out what's causing the issue and your help would be invaluable.
We also want to apologize to any of you who have purchased the game and were not able to start it. We're doing everything in our power to find a solution so that everyone could experience the Forgive Me Father madness first-hand.
Thank you for your continuous support!