I found the problem.
I've set up my 'main' file to act on various game states and because my load state is physically below the running state (where the problems were occuring), even though they were getting called first, the program starts in the loading state, dmd wasn't having it. I tried moving the load state above the rest, and it works fine. So sorry to have wasted everybody's time with such a simple and stupid mistake. Thankyou for all your help.
