Flickering Black Screen on Build but Editor Works Fine

Hi all,

So the title pretty much sums up the problem I'm seeing.
When I run my game in the editor, everything's fine, but when I build and run on the same system, I get a black flickery screen.

Here are some details and things I've tried:

1) The game is a top-down shooter, one of the weapons is a rifle that has a 'scope' effect which simply circle-wipes to simulate zooming, shrinking the visible area as the reticule moves further from the player.

2) I've run a build on a Windows laptop and it works fine, but a build running on my iMac encounters the flickering issue. Another user has successfully run the game on a Windows desktop.

3) I've isolated the issue to my calling of the OnRenderImage function to handle the above 'zooming' effect. Even if I remove the code I use inside that function call, as long as the function is being called I still experience the issue. Commenting out the OnRenderImage call all together, the game runs fine on my system, just without the zooming effect.

4) I've established that the game is still running, even with the black screen issue, as I can hear the sound effects when a gun is fired.

Any suggestions or ideas would be appreciated =)
If anyone would like to test this out and tell me if they see the same issue, that'd be awesome too.
Here's a link:

https://bitglassgames.itch.io/controlled-chaos

Looking around the forum, I can't see an issue that relates directly to what I'm seeing.
Having said that I am completely new to shaders so if there is a solution out there and I'm missing it, or if there's a better way to achieve the effect I want, I'd be really happy for any assistance =)

 

It sounds like z fighting might be a possible source of issue, but it's hard to tell without seeing some code. Use code tags and share your code that you think is the source of the issue so people can maybe look. If you have a video of the issue, that helps also. It's rare that people want to download and run your program. Maybe someone will, but it's not as common.

 

To try and solve the issue/learn more about shaders I jumped into this tutorial by Matt Schell ( https://learn.unity.com/tutorial/writing-your-first-shader-in-unity# ).
He mentioned the ZWrite parameter and I remembered a post on the forum ( https://forum.unity.com/threads/black-screen-after-load.310798/#post-2052191 ) where issue was related to Z filtering.
I figured since the game was running and this black screen simply appeared to be blocking the rest of the visual data, I added ZTest Always and shazzam! it works!

For anyone wondering, here's shader code:

Code (CSharp):

1. Shader "Unlit/CircleWipeShader"
2. {
3.     Properties
4.     {
5.         _MainTex ("Texture", 2D) = "white" {}
6.         _Radius ("WipeRadius", float) = 0
7.         _Ratio ("ScreenRatio", float) = 0
8.     }
9.     SubShader
10.     {
11.         Tags { "RenderType"="Opaque" }
12.         LOD 100
13.  
14.         ZTest Always
15.  
16.         Pass
17.         {
18.             CGPROGRAM
19.             #pragma vertex vert
20.             #pragma fragment frag
21.             // make fog work
22.             #pragma multi_compile_fog
23.  
24.             #include "UnityCG.cginc"
25.  
26.             struct appdata
27.             {
28.                 float4 vertex : POSITION;
29.                 float2 uv : TEXCOORD0;
30.             };
31.  
32.             struct v2f
33.             {
34.                 float2 uv : TEXCOORD0;
35.                 UNITY_FOG_COORDS(1)
36.                 float4 vertex : SV_POSITION;
37.             };
38.  
39.             sampler2D _MainTex;
40.             float4 _MainTex_ST;
41.             float _Radius;
42.             float _Ratio;
43.  
44.             v2f vert (appdata v)
45.             {
46.                 v2f o;
47.                 o.vertex = UnityObjectToClipPos(v.vertex);
48.                 o.uv = TRANSFORM_TEX(v.uv, _MainTex);
49.                 UNITY_TRANSFER_FOG(o,o.vertex);
50.                 return o;
51.             }
52.  
53.             fixed4 frag (v2f i) : SV_Target
54.             {
55.                 // sample the texture
56.                 fixed4 col = tex2D(_MainTex, i.uv);
57.                 // apply fog
58.                 //UNITY_APPLY_FOG(i.fogCoord, col);
59.                 //return col;
60.                 float3 pos = float3(i.uv.x - 0.5, (i.uv.y - 0.5) / _Ratio, 0);
61.  
62.                 return length(pos) > _Radius ? fixed4(0, 0, 0, 0) : col;
63.             }
64.             ENDCG
65.         }
66.     }
67. }

And here's the c# controlling script:

Code (CSharp):

1. public class CircleWipeController : MonoBehaviour
2. {
3.     public Shader shader;
4.    
5.     private Material material;
6.  
7.     public float reticuleDistance = 0f;
8.  
9.     private bool aiming;
10.  
11.     // Start is called before the first frame update
12.     void Start()
13.     {
14.         material = new Material(shader);
15.         material.SetFloat("_Radius", 1000.0f);
16.         material.SetFloat("_Ratio", 1.0f);
17.     }
18.  
19.     private void OnRenderImage(RenderTexture source, RenderTexture destination)
20.     {
21.         Graphics.Blit(source, destination, material);
22.     }
23.  
24.     private void Update()
25.     {
26.         if(aiming)
27.         {
28.             float h = Screen.width * 1.0f;
29.             float v = Screen.height * 1.0f;
30.             float r = h / v;
31.             material.SetFloat("_Radius", reticuleDistance);
32.             material.SetFloat("_Ratio", r);
33.         }
34.     }
35.  
36.     public void SetRadius(float _retDist)
37.     {
38.         //set reticule distance
39.         reticuleDistance = _retDist;
40.         if(_retDist == 1000.0f)
41.         {
42.             material.SetFloat("_Radius", 1000.0f);
43.             aiming = false;
44.         }
45.         else { aiming = true; }
46.     }
47. }

 

Hey thanks for the reply. That's exactly what it was. I must've been typing my response when you replied.
Managed to get it all working by adding ZTest Always to the shader ;-)

 

Nice, glad you got it figured out and posted a solution!