C4D - Nothing seems to fix this stupid black screen
Are you sure it is not functioning as intended?  What do you expect to occur on an empty project?  I would expect that it should still be black even if you add lights as there is nothing for the lights to reflect off of.  If you haven't assigned materials to the objects, depending on the render mode, I'd still expect nothing to show up as it wouldn't be able to reflect any light back at the camera.

Make sure you have lights in the scene, an object (with actual surface geometry) in the scene and materials on the object.  If you're still getting black, you may be able to try different render modes.  I'm not familiar with Cinema4D specifically, but typically there are different render modes available.  This may also be what changed resulting in a change in behavior from what you are used to.  Some render modes behave differently in incomplete scenes than others.