The black screen after zoning — found it
If you ever zoned into a pitch-black world — players and chat visible, but no ground and no way to move — that wasn't your PC. Our default graphics settings were pushing the ancient FFXI client past its memory limits. Fixed in today's launcher update, and yes, the weekend's server crash is fixed too.
Some of you have zoned into a black void: other players standing around, chat still scrolling, but no world, no ground, and a character that will not move. Restarting the game fixed it, until it happened again an hour later. One of you got it climbing Delkfutt's Tower; another right after a homepoint out of Dynamis.
Here is what was actually happening. FFXI is a 2002 game, and its client can only ever use a limited amount of memory no matter how much your PC has. It also never quite cleans up after itself when you change zones. Play long enough, cross enough zone lines, and the next zone simply fails to load — the world comes up black, and because the ground never loaded either, you cannot walk anywhere. The server, and your character, were fine the whole time.
What made it our fault: the launcher was shipping everyone its maximum-quality graphics defaults, including fully uncompressed textures — roughly four times the memory of the normal setting, for a difference you would need a magnifying glass to spot. That setting came from the machine the launcher was first built on. Sound familiar? It is the same family of bug as the camera and controller ones we fixed earlier — one machine's preferences quietly becoming everyone's.
Today's launcher update fixes it:
- Texture quality now defaults to High (compressed) for everyone, existing installs included. This is a one-time change — if you go into Settings and deliberately pick Uncompressed afterwards, the launcher will respect that and never touch it again.
- New installs get the safer defaults out of the box.
If it still happens to you after this update, two things help: restart the game client before very long sessions (Dynamis runs especially), and if you have installed HD texture packs, know that they spend the same limited memory. And if it keeps happening anyway, come find us on Discord — we want to hear about it.
One more fix in the same patch: the server crash from this weekend is found and closed. A player who got charmed in Dynamis and pressed Call Squad while mind-controlled took the whole zone down with them — a genuine first, and honestly kind of magnificent. The squad now politely refuses to answer a charmed master, and the engine bug underneath is fixed for good.
The launcher updates itself: restart it and the new version installs on its own. Thanks to everyone who reported the black screens with screenshots — they are what cracked it.