Dragon Age 2 Mac No Video

[EnderBeta]

Dragon Age 2 on late 2015 iMac running OS X 10.11 has no video. I uninstalled and reinstalled the game and still no video.

[ThandalNLyman · Accepted solution]

Last patch for DA2 was released in March 2012.  There will NEVER be any more development or fixes by the studio

The game was also initially released in March 2011, which was before the "Retina display" was even available on a Macbook.  The selection of resolutions was built to query the rig's hardware and present the responses.  At the time, supporting 1920x1080 (16:9) was state-of-the-art.  Complaining that a five year-old game doesn't behave completely correctly on more modern gear than it was designed for seems a bit... petulant.

[Leora85]

@EnderBeta Moved this over to the DA2 board for you, hopefully someone here will be able to help. Unfortunately I'm no good with Macs, so I can't be of much help. You might want to check the stickies at the top of the board, they might contain something helpful. 

There's also an archived Mac tech support on the Bioware forums, you can find it here. Might be worth a look, though you can't post on the board, someone might have had the same issue in the past.

Good luck

[EnderBeta]

This is really frustrating.

How do I delete the config file or change the resolution manually? I don't know if it is because the game is freaking out over the high resolution.

The few games Origin has on the Mac and they don't work. I feel so ripped off.

Edit:

I'm walking away from Origin until this is solved. This is *.

[EA_David]

@EnderBeta Hi, on Mac the dragonage.ini config file should be at ~/Documents/BioWare/Dragon Age 2/Settings/ 

Make a backup first, then try deleting it, then check again after the restart. 

If the issue persists, you can try manually entering the resolution values. 

[EnderBeta]

I deleted the entire game off my Mac. I'll download it again and try again but at this point the game needs to be patched. If the game is going to be sold it needs to be fixed!

Edit:

After reinstalling the game and the DLC I entered the game and was greeted with white and black squared artifacts that flicker.

I know it isn't my machine because I can open up Elder Scrolls Online and play that as well as Witcher 2 and Star Wars KOTOR I and II no problem.

[EnderBeta]

As a test I tried Dragon Age 2 on my 2012 Mac Mini and it doesn't have the same issue. I tired it on the iMac again and it still is having video issues.

As a test I launched World of Warcraft on my iMac and it works perfectly so I know it isn't my graphics card.

Looking at the settings file my video options are currently set to:

A space was inserted in the bracketed section to avoid a emoji. 

[Video Options]
UseDirectX11Renderer=0
FullScreen=1
ResolutionWidth=5120
ResolutionHeight=2880
RefreshRate=60
PresentThreshold=5
UseVSync=1
UseTrilinearFiltering=0
UseTripleBuffering=0
UseDesktopGamma=0
Gamma=1
TexturePack=1
EnableShadows=1
AntialiasingLevel=8
EnableLatentQueries=0
EnableSSAO=0
EnableHighQualityBlur=0
EnableDiffusionDOF=0
AnisotropicFilteringLevel=0
EnablePerPixelSelection=1
GraphicsDetailLevel=1
ForceLowSettings=0
DisableMRT=0
DisableAspectRatioCorrection=0

Manually changing the resolution from 5120x2880 to 1920x1080 for testing purposes gets the video of the game back up.

[ThandalNLyman]

@EnderBeta; WoW is a completely different game, and its 3D graphics use elements of the proprietary graphics engine originally developed by Blizzard for use in Warcraft III.  Being able to run WoW, or any of the other games you mentioned in your earlier post, says absolutely nothing about whether (or how well) your rig can run DA2. 

(And as you discovered, exceeding the designed max resolution is a Bad Idea.)

[EnderBeta]

It was about confirming that the graphics chip was not fried. The artifacts I was seeing was something you see when the computer is fried.

Please don't make excuses for the developer. If 4GB video memory is not enough for for this game to render a 5K image then don't display the resolution as an available resolution and shocker if the resolution is changed make a confirmation screen so that in the event that the game has no video players are not stuck.

What I found is that this game on the Mac needs to be patched.

[ThandalNLyman · Accepted solution]

Last patch for DA2 was released in March 2012.  There will NEVER be any more development or fixes by the studio

The game was also initially released in March 2011, which was before the "Retina display" was even available on a Macbook.  The selection of resolutions was built to query the rig's hardware and present the responses.  At the time, supporting 1920x1080 (16:9) was state-of-the-art.  Complaining that a five year-old game doesn't behave completely correctly on more modern gear than it was designed for seems a bit... petulant.

[morilindez]

I found a working solution for this as well, depending on what your circumstances are. 

I had changed the video settings in the game, and it glitched out after I saved them. I wasn't able to restart the game with video - only audio.

I uninstalled the game and reinstall - no dice.

After that, I opened up ~/Documents/Bioware/Dragon Age 2/Settings and opened up the DragonAge.ini file. I proceeded to delete the Video section of the config file. 

When I restarted the game, it worked perfectly.

I hope this helps anyone else who gets into a similar state.