MacOS Catalina game black screen

[Veredian]

Hi Devs,

I recently updated to Catalina and while my launcher looks fine, after I click the green play button and the new window pops up I get stuck on a black screen. I am running the 64 bit version.

Model: MacBook Pro (13-inch, 2019)
OS: macOS Catalina (10.15.2)
Last tried: 1/30/2020

Works up until:


Then gets stuck on:


I was previously able to run the 64 bit version on Mojave.

Thanks!

[Dynratygus]

Good morning and thank you for posting in the Final Fantasy XIV Technical Support Forums.

How long have you been experiencing this issue? Additionally, what have you tried so far to alleviate the issue?

Thank you for visiting the Final Fantasy XIV Technical Support Forums.

[Packetdancer]

Not customer support, but: are you on a Mac with Intel Iris graphics? (This includes nearly every Mac laptop for the past several years except the most recent 16-inch MacBook Pro, so I'm assuming yes.)

The game actually says it requires at least a Radeon dedicated GPU in the system requirements; it used to work on Intel Iris graphics anyway, even though that wasn't officially supported. It no longer does.

You can find out what you have by going to the Apple menu, picking About this Mac, and going to the Graphics tab. (Alternatively, you can check for dedicated GPU support by opening /Applications/Utilities/Activity Monitor.app and seeing if there's a column that reads 'Requires High Perf. GPU'—if there's not, there isn't a high performance GPU for apps to say they require.)

Longer Technical Explanation

The macOS client is actually the Windows client, packaged up with a system called Crossover: a translation layer that lets Windows software run on macOS. (Crossover is based on the open-source WINE toolkit with a number of additions, for those familiar with it.)

When you move to Catalina, the operating system no longer has 32-bit support. Thus, Crossover cannot use native 32-bit support any longer and has to leap through some hoops to make 32-bit apps run—which sometimes introduces unexpected weirdness.

That's all fact; the rest is my best-guess reconstruction based on poking at the mac client.

The macOS version now seems to be forced into using the 64-bit version of the game client on Catalina, likely to ensure stability. However:

• The 64-bit version of the client seemingly only supports DirectX 11.
• To support calls to DirectX 11, the Crossover toolkit uses a translation layer called DXVK (which translates DirectX into Vulkan, a cross-platform graphics library).
• In order to support DX11, DXVK requires features present in version 1.1 of the Vulkan specification. (Vulkan specification versions are conceptually equivalent to DirectX revisions; if Vulkan 1.0 were DX10, Vulkan 1.1 would be DX11, etc.)
• To support Vulkan on macOS, DXVK is placed atop MoltenVK (a translation layer which turns Vulkan calls into Apple's "Metal" graphics framework).
• The version of Vulkan that MoltenVK exposes is determined by the capabilities of the graphics on the mac.
• The feature set of the Intel Iris chipset allows MoltenVK to support Vulkan 1.0. (I think it's specifically 1.0.2, but regardless, it's not 1.1.)

So the client tries to initialize DX11, DXVK fails because it doesn't have Vulkan 1.1, so the client tries to initialize DX11, which fails, so the client tries to initialize DX11, which fails...

Evidently you end up with a seemingly-frozen app with a black screen, which keeps desperately looking for a graphics API which (from its point of view) is probably mysteriously failing at a point where it shouldn't.

[Packetdancer]

For comparison, on Mojave it seems to be falling back to a less-stringent graphics requirement for some reason (though I haven't done a detailed dive into it because I don't wanna set up debugging on a Mojave machine right now).

(And hopefully chiming in there in an attempt to be helpful wasn't out-of-line; I literally just did this technical investigation to try to help someone out two days ago, so the details are still fairly fresh in my mind.)

[Veredian]

Thanks for all the replies!

Good morning and thank you for posting in the Final Fantasy XIV Technical Support Forums.

How long have you been experiencing this issue? Additionally, what have you tried so far to alleviate the issue?

Thank you for visiting the Final Fantasy XIV Technical Support Forums.

I updated to Catalina a few days ago, so around 1/25/2020? I've looked online and tried to change the cutscene indicator in the "FFXIV.cfg" file from 1 to 0 and back but that didn't fix the issue. I haven't really tried anything else other than that. Is there anything else I should try?

For comparison, on Mojave it seems to be falling back to a less-stringent graphics requirement for some reason (though I haven't done a detailed dive into it because I don't wanna set up debugging on a Mojave machine right now).

(And hopefully chiming in there in an attempt to be helpful wasn't out-of-line; I literally just did this technical investigation to try to help someone out two days ago, so the details are still fairly fresh in my mind.)

Thanks for chiming in! This was helpful. I checked my graphics card and it was an Intel Iris Plus Graphics 655 1536 MB, so it sounds like it's likely you're describing my problem Do you happen to have any suggestions for things that I could try? I was thinking of either trying to revert back to mojave or buying an external GPU. But I've never tried either of those so any advice would be helpful.

Thanks again!

[Packetdancer]

Thanks for chiming in! This was helpful. I checked my graphics card and it was an Intel Iris Plus Graphics 655 1536 MB, so it sounds like it's likely you're describing my problem Do you happen to have any suggestions for things that I could try? I was thinking of either trying to revert back to mojave or buying an external GPU. But I've never tried either of those so any advice would be helpful.

I wish I did; I know it's got to be a pain. A full downgrade to Mojave will have you back online, since it used to work on Mojave; you might need to reinstall because the bottled image caches some graphics stuff, and I don't know if that'll clear away/fix from a Catalina install. (Someone I know downgraded and it worked, but they just wiped the machine clean and reinstalled everything.) I would assume an eGPU will work, given what I was seeing in debug information, but I have no actual proof. (Also, that hardly makes it really playable on-the-go with a laptop...)

I admit this is purely a curiosity/help-others project; I play predominantly on Windows. Still, I'm going to experiment with seeing if I can get the Windows version running under Proton (rather than Crossover), because Valve's made a lot of gaming-specific changes to their version of WINE and I have hopes something there might be useful.

[Telesphorus]

Not sure if this will help but I play FFXIV Flawlessly in Linux using a runner client called https://lutris.net/
perhaps their successful configurations could assist you with your Proton experiments, after all Linux and Mac are both Unix derivatives after all.

[Rhaervis]

Good afternoon and thank you for posting on the Final Fantasy XIV Technical Support Forums.

We apologize for the delay in responding. Veredian, please try the following troubleshooting steps:

- Ensure the latest version of Safari is installed on your Mac (even if you don't use Safari.)
- After updating, open Safari browser and make sure that all Browser History and Cookies/Web Data have been deleted.
- Please also make sure that "Cookies" are accepted and not being filtered.

Once these options have been adjusted, please run the Apple Update program to check that all firmware is up-to-date on you Mac OS. Once this process is complete, please re-launch the FINAL FANTASY XIV application.

-Make sure your fire wall or antivirus program is not interfering with the game

- Check to see if the following port ranges are opened on your router. You can contact your ISP and request they open them for you:
▼TCP
54992 through 54994,
55006 through 55007,
55021 through 55040

Thank you for posting in the Final Fantasy Technical Support Forums.

[Avenger]

Good afternoon and thank you for posting on the Final Fantasy XIV Technical Support Forums.

We apologize for the delay in responding. Veredian, please try the following troubleshooting steps:

- Ensure the latest version of Safari is installed on your Mac (even if you don't use Safari.)
- After updating, open Safari browser and make sure that all Browser History and Cookies/Web Data have been deleted.
- Please also make sure that "Cookies" are accepted and not being filtered.

Once these options have been adjusted, please run the Apple Update program to check that all firmware is up-to-date on you Mac OS. Once this process is complete, please re-launch the FINAL FANTASY XIV application.

-Make sure your fire wall or antivirus program is not interfering with the game

- Check to see if the following port ranges are opened on your router. You can contact your ISP and request they open them for you:
▼TCP
54992 through 54994,
55006 through 55007,
55021 through 55040

Thank you for posting in the Final Fantasy Technical Support Forums.

@Rhaervis this is almost certainly not the issue, since a network error would result in disconnection, usually with an error like 90002 or 2002. The black screen issue, which is widely reported, appears to happen if you try to run FFXIV on a system with intel iris graphics on macOS Catalina.

[Avenger]

Some possible (but admittedly unappealing) workarounds for the iris graphics/catalina black screen issue are;
- boot into mojave
or
- buy the windows version and run it under boot camp
or
- try an eGPU