text: Trying the Stand Alone 2.0 I had the same issue. I was able to launch the game and change game settings (which were muddied) but after I chose to restart the game the screen would be black and could hear the flicking over menu options with the mouse. In order to see the game again I had to delete darkmod.cfg (and run tdm_update.exe to replace it). After looking through old posts (and trying one? FAQ) I couldn't find the answer but did figure out through trial and error that Anti-aliasing was the issue. I have an AMD 5850 and in the Control Center>Gaming>3D Applicating Settings I found that under Anti-aliasing the Filter "EDGE DETECT" was the issue. I could set it to Wide Tent or Box and leave all the other settings alone and The Dark Mod would work. Hopefully if you have the issue you can find something similar in your cards settings. Also for me at least aliasing is limited to x8 in game so just set it to that instead of x16 just in case.
  The other little issue I had was the training mission not downloading and Tears of St. Lucia not loading after a save. However trying to download training mission and restarting did clear up the muddied menu settings. Anyway found out I had to rename and move the folder which I had so far left where it downloaded. So moving it to C:\games and renaming it simply "darkmod" (and probably running tdm_update.exe which was down the previous day) solved those issues. I don't appear to have any other issues so thanks to the folks who made this! hoping to dive in asap!
  I have this issue, the screen goes black after the initial briefing for missions. I haven't been able to pay anything except for the training mission. I use an Nvidia card, there is no options relating to "edge detection".. I guess I could use the work-around of deleting the .cfg every time, but it'd be a giant hassle to rebind all my keys and change settings again.
  Are you forcing any graphics settings via the contol panel stuff? Could you try running the updater again, it will validate your files - just in case.
  Checked Nvidia control panel, nothing looks forced, things are left up to applications. The updater was crashing instantly so I tried a fresh copy of the game, updated, same problem in the game even with default in-game settings.
  I can get one or two 1 frame flashes on the pre-mission screen, then just black. If I can find any solutions on my own by messing with things, I'll post it.Found the problem (sort of). Alberic's Curse mission was causing the problem. Other missions work fine, but the pre-mission menu for that one mission causes a black screen. No idea why, I'll try uninstalling it and re-downloading it.