Aliens: Colonial Marines Tips

PC Game launches with a black screen:

Open up the Steam client.  In your Library right-click the game and select Properties.  Under the General tab, select Set Launch Options... In the command line, type -windowed; this will allow you to run the game in a resolution that your system definitely supports so you can use the menu to pick an appropriate fullscreen game resolution. Once you pick one that works you can remove -windowed from the command line and re-boot the title.  

What Graphics Card is running ACM:

Go to the ACM file in your Steam folder: Local Disc C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\Steamapps\Common\Aliens Colonial Marines\Binaries\Win32 Right-click the ACM icon, highlight and run with graphics processor to see if your dedicated card is set to default.  If not, select Change Default Graphics Processor and select your card.   Adding Graphics Card to ACM: Some graphics cards are not being recognized by the game, which causes the game to run at lower than expected settings. During launch PecanCompat.ini file checks the hardware and assigns a grade for CPU and GPU of 1-5, then the file has 5 different sets of the [SystemSetting] options, that it chooses from based on your assigned systems hardware grade.

Step 1: Check your assinged grade C:\Users\Crank\Documents\My Games\Aliens Colonial Marines\PecanGame\Logs --->Launch is the log file that shows the information ACM stored about your last game launch.  To find your hardware grade; look for these lines, not far down the page... [0000.53] Log: Machine detected compatibility level: Composite: 5. CPU: 5. GPU: 5. [0000.53] Log: Previous detected compatibility level: Composite: 4. CPU: 5. GPU: 4. Just above these lines are the logs for the GPU compatibility test, (you will need the Device ID). [0000.52] Log: GPU stats: [0000.52] Log: DeviceID: 00001244 <----that one (varies with card model) [0000.52] Log: DeviceName: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 550 Ti 

Step 2: Adding your video card to the list it checks Go to the Config Folder and open PecanCompat.ini Under [AppCompatGPU-0x10DE] your video card may not be on the list.  The game uses the Device ID to recognize the hardware. 0x014F=1,GeForce 6200 where 0x014F is the device ID (a little changed) =1 is the score they assigned any particular card.  This is an example of a device ID from the log file---> DeviceID: 00001244 It was not on the PecanCompat card list. Use the line 0x1244=5,NVIDIA GeForce GTX 550 Ti <-drop zeros from ID line add that x and give it a 5 Now your game should give your gpu= 5 score and when i launch it uses [AppCompatBucket5] which is a [SystemSettings] profile located at the bottom of the PecanCompat.ini This should allow the game to run at a higher setting. 

Step 3 (optional): Change the values for these particular strings to '0'. TEXTUREGROUP_World=(LODBias=0) TEXTUREGROUP_WorldNormalMap=(LODBias=0) TEXTUREGROUP_WorldSpecular=(LODBias=0)   2 people found this useful. - Me too!   Topic is closed for comments   Support Software by Zendesk

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