Failed to Spawn Player

I recently opened the DDDK to try and spawn more horsies, and discovered something interesting. Whenever I try to play in editor, it gives me an error message.

It doesn't matter whether or not the map is one that I've edited or one that comes with the DDDK. Also, before I hit "play in editor," the screen looks like this.

After, it looks like this:

Even if I change files, it's still dark. If anyone knows how to fix this, that would be great. (I'm not quite willing to re-install just yet.)

Sounds like perhaps you made a much bigger global change than intended? Instead of completely re-install you can try just verifying the DDDK's info to see if that resolves it. Right click on the Tool in Steam and go to Properties, then select the Local Files tab, then click Verify Integrity of Tool Cache... Hope maybe that helps you out.

So.. couple things to check...

1. Have you built the lighting?
2. Have you built paths?
3. Are your player spawns above the floor at least 25 units?
4. What light modes do you have it set to? Because there are a few in the UDK. Lit, Unlit, Wireframe, Brush Wireframe, Unlit with texel density, lighting complexity.. just to name a few. The map will look kinda dark because it is a dark map... just saying.
   
5. Have you deleted anything from the level? What have you changed in Kismet? Messing with the Events (Event Level Loaded.. for example) can break the chain.
   
6. Finally, which version of the map have you opened, because some of the DLC maps are setup in layers (some have the geometry, the sound the lights, in individual map sections, similarly named.) If you don't load the right one (DD_Atlantis.udk <--- this one.)  You will get wonky messages because it's not the full level.
   

Just some questions to ask yourself when things don't work.