Lord of the Rings Online Forum

When I try to adjust the graphics using the in-game control panel, the screen simply goes black and I have to quit. Any ideas or suggestions? Thanks!

In a simple phrase -- it doesn't work.

A longer and more complex explanation revolves around the specific screen sizes and resolutions you are trying to select.

"In theory," when the screen goes black, all you need to do is wait 30 seconds and it will revert back to the last setting, as you did not confirm the request to change resolution.

I actually found a partial workaround for this. I just got a new computer, I had no issues with the default resolution on the old computer, but on my new Retina display, for some reason the default resolution was 800x800 which was awful.

Anyway, after a lot of playing around I discovered that if I went into Manage bottles, chose the bottle LOTRO was in, and used the wine configuration tool, I could sort of fix this. What I did was go to the graphics tab in the configuration tool and turn on the Emulate a virtual desktop check box, and then tell the desktop to be 1920x1080. After I did this I could use the ingame control panel to adjust the resolutions, although oddly enough 1920x1080 was a little to big to fit on the screen. I'm still tweaking these setting to figure out what is optimal for my computer, but this is one way to adjust the resolution if you are for some reason stuck on a bad resolution.

****Okay, I may have spoken too soon. After loading the game I was sort of in a windowed mode, basically I could still see the menu bar and the top of the window of the virtual desktop I had created. I didn't really play, just quit out to try the fix for not being in full screen from the tips and tricks page. That didn't really work, and finally I just relaunched the game. This time I noticed something weird. All though all the keyboard commands worked just fine, and the cursor tracked properly, I couldn't click on anything (despite having been able to adjust the resolution by using the trackpad to click). I could run around, but everytime I tried to click anything the cursor jumped, and it never did what I wanted it to. I suspect that maybe somehow there is an issue between where it looks like the cursor is, and where the computer thinks it is. When I went back to the original default settings this odd behavior went away.

I don't know if anyone else had any ideas, I'm going to continue to play around with things.

I only have two comments -- first, I've never been able to get the in-game screen resolution change mechanism to work correctly -- ESPECIALLY for the higher resolutions. I always play in a window, I simply pick the largest "resolution" which works and then stretch that to occupy as much screen as I want on my 27-inch (2560 x 1440) iMac.

The second point -- for the Mac Client now in Beta, Turbine specifically does not support the higher resolutions on the Retina Displays because of font sizing issues (i.e. at high res "normal" fonts need to be increased in size to be readable.)

Are you saying that they are going to come out with a native mac client??
I hve this same problem it drives me crazy. I don't want to upgrade to Mt. Lion just to fix it though.

Steve Cleek wrote:

Are you saying that they are going to come out with a native mac
client??
I have this same problem it drives me crazy. I don't want to upgrade
to Mt. Lion just to fix it though.

Yes, they have. It's been in Beta for the entire Riders of Rohan beta. (i.e. since July.)

It is an OpenGL port of the Game Engine, works well and looks gorgeous. It runs on only either 10.7 or 10.8. Intel only.

Or, that is to say, it works as well as the Windows Client does now. BOTH clients have a significant Crash to Desktop problems -- the primary reason why the release date was delayed. "Hopefully," with Beta 6 on 1 October, they will have finally squashed the last of those bugs.

The parallel issue is that the Riders of Rohan beta does NOT run in ANY version of WINE or Codeweavers' Crossover. It crashes on launch.
So far, no solution has been found, although there are some theories as to why. I.e. the RoR Game Client is significantly changed, and not just to accommodate the Mac. Significant new technologies are deployed in the Game Client. "Obviously" one or more of those changes is the issue. We will see if anything changes with Beta 6 on 1 October.

The only real complaint I have about the Mac Client so far is the fact that it follows the "Apple Way." That is to say, things are put in folders like the hidden, <user>/Library and use names like com.tubine.lotroclient, and, worst of all -- it is all a single App file!!! (a 16GB app distributed as a 12GB .dmg file -- ouch!) But, other than the issue of downloading a single 12GB .dmg file without a "torrent," none of them are particularly insurmountable -- just annoying.