Who wants to see game-related WTFs today!?
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@dhromed said:
@powerlord said:
I guess the fact that every computer I've had in the past decade does it is some kind of weird fluke?
It doesn't take "a few seconds". What are we talking about, zero time? Or a tenth of a second flash?
Back in the day when I ran UT99 on Win2000 with some no-name onboard GFX card I could run it in a window whilst I kept one eye on TeamSpeak and another eye on mIRC. I could easily Alt+Tab over to another window mid-game; I would often do that when dying ingame and let the battle continue whilst doing other tasks, clicking back to the game window and hitting fire to signify to respawn. I never noticed any delay between switching windows, the only delay experienced was when using Ctrl+Enter to flick between full-screen (1280 x 1024) and windowed. Changing to FS took under a second (enough to get shot), flicking back to windowed was pretty instant.
When I bought an nVidia GT6600 (still AGP, 6800 was on the cusp between AGP and PCIe) and flicked it off software rendering I noticed no real difference in speed, other than flicking to full-screen and back was near-instant in both transitions. I recall at the time someone with an ATi card experienced issues flicking between the two - his FS kept the same resolution and scaled up the graphics - so in frustration he bought a 6800 the next day and replaced his card. After some minor pissing around with newer UT renderers and comparing his settings to mine, he was impressed at how quick he could flick between FS and windowed.
I suppose it depends upon the game and the card... but just because you experience a large lag doesn't mean everyone else does. Clearly me, Blakey n dhromeo don't have an issue with it, and my rig ain't particularly powerful (enough to run UT2004 and Painkiller, don't bother with many modern games).
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@Cassidy said:
dhromeo
dhromeosaurus
aww yiss
@Cassidy said:
Painkiller
Painkiller has this awesome fucked-up game clock where everything somehow starts running in slow-motion when your system isn't good enough, but the fps is still good.
Guess what happens when you run it on a new system? GOOD LUCK.
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@bannedfromcoding said:
Some games (eg. Metro 2033) do this weird thing - when it launches in fullscreen mode, my secondary monitor gets "frozen" - it shows windows and stuff that were on it, but they stop updating.
You guys just have fucked-up computers. Metro 2033 (excellent game BTW) didn't do that on my machine.
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@dhromed said:
Painkiller has this awesome fucked-up game clock where everything somehow starts running in slow-motion when your system isn't good enough, but the fps is still good.
Aw, the old "Defender slowdown during chaotic effects" trick, eh? Cheater!
I did notice it once during the bridge stage when I was slipping like fuck on the ice and it was frameskipping madly, trying to cope with a million and one jumping ninjas plus exploding barrels. It eventually bombed back to the desktop; a quick reboot and recontinue from the last gamesave and everything was fine. I guess I'd been leaking memory gradually up to that point (or Win2K's mem management wasn't too good at the time). Not had it since.
@dhromed said:
Guess what happens when you run it on a new system? GOOD LUCK.
Bit ago I was given a new rig plus plumped for a IPS 24" monitor so have been replaying the Black Edition on higher difficulty (to get two additional episodes) at 1920x1200 (very purrrdy), trying to 5-star all episodes as well as unlock all the tarot cards. Only when I got pissed off at Alistar did I find I couldn't begin "Out of Hell" without losing current Gamesave data. I'm also convinced the Orphanage level contains a bug that prevents a card from being unlocked.
Still bastid addictive. Love its creepiness, scale and AI. Doom3 bored me shitless after PKiller.
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@dhromed said:
@powerlord said:
I guess the fact that every computer I've had in the past decade does it is some kind of weird fluke?
It doesn't take "a few seconds". What are we talking about, zero time? Or a tenth of a second flash?
Screen goes to black for five seconds, then returns with the new resolution, all drawn. All the screens do this, not just the one I'm changing.
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@blakeyrat said:
@bannedfromcoding said:
Some games (eg. Metro 2033) do this weird thing - when it launches in fullscreen mode, my secondary monitor gets "frozen" - it shows windows and stuff that were on it, but they stop updating.
You guys just have fucked-up computers. Metro 2033 (excellent game BTW) didn't do that on my machine.
Game's not bad, and I totally understand that sticking closer to the book's climate wouldn't make for a good FPS.
But I still couldn't like it much because it was so different to the book.
As of the hardware - Win7 64, i7-2630QM, GT540M, external monitor via HDMI. The freeze-frame thing pissed me off greatly, because I don't have clock on that monitor and thought the IMs and stuff just went quiet.
PS. "You must have a fucked-up computer, Hotline Miami doesn't do that on my machine". <font size="1">(No, I don't own or have installed that, ahem, "game".)</font>
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@MiffTheFox said:
Screen goes to black for five seconds, then returns with the new resolution, all drawn. All the screens do this, not just the one I'm changing.
That's definitely not normal behaviour.
I've always had Ati cards. Have you and bannedformcoding always had nvidia cards?
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@bannedfromcoding said:
PS. "You must have a fucked-up computer, Hotline Miami doesn't do that on my machine". <font size="1">(No, I don't own or have installed that, ahem, "game".)</font>
It's not fair to use blakeyrat's previous statements against him later.
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@dhromed said:
@Cassidy said:
Orphanage level
That one was so creepy.
Old Monastery's a creepy one - you can do all buildings on the island in any order. Down by the collapsed cliff you find your own coffin and hear enticing whispers. I played it in headphones late one night whilst the missus kipped... she then came into my office, tapped me on the shoulder to let me know it was late, then had to peel me off the ceiling.
Hell is exceptionally-well designed. Every source of anguish, pain and suffering in one large playfield.
Orphanage is deffo creepy - not just the darkness but the cries of the kids. Circus I also found disturbing, if only because of the roller-coaster ride. Others I found much of a muchness (Laboratory was too much like Train Station, Leningrad felt like someone tried to drop Medal of Honour into PKiller) but not played the hell out of those levels yet.
I take it you know the graverobbing trick to line your wallet?
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@Cassidy said:
Hell is exceptionally-well designed. Every source of anguish, pain and suffering in one large playfield.
Ahhhhh yes. I did'nt really understand what to do there. Bonus points for giving you all the enemies that you'd previously killed in the game.
@Cassidy said:
I take it you know the graverobbing trick to line your wallet?
Maybe, maybe not. It's been a long time. A lot of these levels I don't even remember. I liked the port for its funny captain enemies. It's also where I found out that splash damage from rockets is bigger than a direct hit.
There was just so much variety in there. Man.
I played it IDDQDIDKFA-style, though.
edit
oh man I just recalled some of those epic bosses.
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@dhromed said:
@MiffTheFox said:
Screen goes to black for five seconds, then returns with the new resolution, all drawn. All the screens do this, not just the one I'm changing.
That's definitely not normal behaviour.
I've always had Ati cards. Have you and bannedformcoding always had nvidia cards?
No, I've had S3 and 3dfx cards in the past.
The one time I tried shopping for an ATI (in the Radeon X*00 times), I've got two lemons, then a third that bluescreened on every single official driver available on the site. It worked perfectly stable with the unofficial Omega drivers, though.
A friend tells me that ever since the Radeon HD-series ATI drivers don't suck, but I just stick to nvidia.
Also, I've seen some rants about Nvidia's drivers being ass-slow whenever the "new style" WinVista/Win7/Win8 video subsystem issues a driver reset (eg. when UAC dims the screen).
And indeed, it does take around half a second for me, with random cases of over a second, while the onboard Intel graphics in another PC has no noticeable delay.
So maybe Miff's suffering from even worse case of this lag.
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This is my second Radeon, which replaced an older one in the same computer. My two systems before this that had discreet graphics had GeForces.
Also, I'm running a quad-monitor setup, so that might be affecting the refresh times? (My main gripe is how changing the resolution of one monitor affects the windows on the other monitors, but still...)
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@bannedfromcoding said:
Also, I've seen some rants about Nvidia's drivers being ass-slow whenever the "new style" WinVista/Win7/Win8 video subsystem issues a driver reset (eg. when UAC dims the screen).
Ironically, I only ever had that problem the one time I was relying on an ATI card.
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Slight off-topic
@bannedfromcoding said:
Also, I've seen some rants about Nvidia's drivers being ass-slow whenever the "new style" WinVista/Win7/Win8 video subsystem issues a driver reset (eg. when UAC dims the screen).
And indeed, it does take around half a second for me, with random cases of over a second, while the onboard Intel graphics in another PC has no noticeable delay.Protip: you can disable the screen dimming in the UAC settings.
I suppose that introduces some kind of vulnerability that an application could exploit to bypass that screen, but since nobody does it malware writers probably don't even bother trying it (they call it herd immunity).
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@dhromed said:
@Cassidy said:
Hell is exceptionally-well designed. Every source of anguish, pain and suffering in one large playfield.
Ahhhhh yes. I did'nt really understand what to do there.
Took me a bit to fathom out (especially when I started yelping in pain and initially couldn't fathom out where it came from - until I spotted the ghosts). Lucifer appearing coincides with the demon-morph point. But it's an amazing design. The hidden areas (goblets) are quite tricky to get to.
I know the dock level you mean. I showed someone how to get to a hidden area on top of one of the cranes - he was wobbling with vertigo.
The bikers are bastids - they pick up other monsters and use them as a shield to get closer.
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@dhromed said:
@Ben L. said:
If a fullscreen game loses focus without hiding itself, your computer becomes unusable until you force a reboot.
Uh, or you just hit the Start button. Or Ctrl+Alt+Del.
Today, it happened again. Here's a better explanation.- Start game, having not set it to be windowed before (in this case, the game was Half-Life 1)
- Game changes screen resolution to 1024×768
- Hear IRC ping while in the main menu
- Alt-tab to IRC program
- Half-Life loses focus, but does not release my screen. I now have mouse and keyboard controlled by my window manager and my entire screen controlled by Half-Life.
- The start button would not help as the game does not have focus, so opening the start menu wouldn't minimize it.
- Ctrl+Alt+Del does not help as the game owns the screen, so I wouldn't be able to interact with task manager without randomly clicking until I hit something (hopefully) helpful.
- Alt-Tabbing back to the game is impossible as Half-Life's graphics are not handled by my window manager.
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@spamcourt said:
Protip: you can disable the screen dimming in the UAC settings.
I suppose that introduces some kind of vulnerability that an application could exploit to bypass that screen, but since nobody does it malware writers probably don't even bother trying it (they call it herd immunity).In theory, if you do that, malware can use scripted mouse movements and clicks to click the "allow" button on your behalf. Like you said, I'm guessing 99.999999% of malware wouldn't bother, but. Eh. Better safe than sorry.
Plus my computer doesn't have the problem with slow UAC switches. I mean it did back in 2007 when Vista came out, but I assume GPU driver writers now optimize for that, since it happens pretty frequently.
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@blakeyrat said:
@spamcourt said:
Protip: you can disable the screen dimming in the UAC settings.
I suppose that introduces some kind of vulnerability that an application could exploit to bypass that screen, but since nobody does it malware writers probably don't even bother trying it (they call it herd immunity).In theory, if you do that, malware can use scripted mouse movements and clicks to click the "allow" button on your behalf. Like you said, I'm guessing 99.999999% of malware wouldn't bother, but. Eh. Better safe than sorry.
Plus my computer doesn't have the problem with slow UAC switches. I mean it did back in 2007 when Vista came out, but I assume GPU driver writers now optimize for that, since it happens pretty frequently.
Waitwaitwaitwait
You're telling me that disabling UAC from dimming the screen causes programs to be able to control the mouse without permission?
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@Ben L. said:
@blakeyrat said:
@spamcourt said:
Protip: you can disable the screen dimming in the UAC settings.
I suppose that introduces some kind of vulnerability that an application could exploit to bypass that screen, but since nobody does it malware writers probably don't even bother trying it (they call it herd immunity).In theory, if you do that, malware can use scripted mouse movements and clicks to click the "allow" button on your behalf. Like you said, I'm guessing 99.999999% of malware wouldn't bother, but. Eh. Better safe than sorry.
Plus my computer doesn't have the problem with slow UAC switches. I mean it did back in 2007 when Vista came out, but I assume GPU driver writers now optimize for that, since it happens pretty frequently.
Waitwaitwaitwait
You're telling me that disabling UAC from dimming the screen causes programs to be able to control the mouse without permission?
Disabling the screen dimming probably disables the use of the secure desktop for the UAC prompt.
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@Ben L. said:
@dhromed said:
@Ben L. said:
Today, it happened again. Here's a better explanation.If a fullscreen game loses focus without hiding itself, your computer becomes unusable until you force a reboot.
Uh, or you just hit the Start button. Or Ctrl+Alt+Del.
- Start game, having not set it to be windowed before (in this case, the game was Half-Life 1)
- Game changes screen resolution to 1024×768
- Hear IRC ping while in the main menu
- Alt-tab to IRC program
- Half-Life loses focus, but does not release my screen. I now have mouse and keyboard controlled by my window manager and my entire screen controlled by Half-Life.
- The start button would not help as the game does not have focus, so opening the start menu wouldn't minimize it.
- Ctrl+Alt+Del does not help as the game owns the screen, so I wouldn't be able to interact with task manager without randomly clicking until I hit something (hopefully) helpful.
- Alt-Tabbing back to the game is impossible as Half-Life's graphics are not handled by my window manager.
On windows 7 (for me), ctrl-alt-del will break the applications hold on the desktop, as it switches video modes in order to display the ctrl-alt-del options selection on the secure desktop. So far, i've yet to have this fail to allow interaction with taskmanager if i bring it up via the ctrl-alt-del options selection.
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@blakeyrat said:
In theory, if you do that, malware can use scripted mouse movements and clicks to click the "allow" button on your behalf. Like you said, I'm guessing 99.999999% of malware wouldn't bother, but. Eh. Better safe than sorr
I read about a driver installer that would automatically click to dismiss the non-certified driver warning from Windows. It wasn't overtly malware, but it behaved like malware.
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@MiffTheFox said:
@dhromed said:
Yes, exactly. Although I'm not currently running multiple screens. Didn't have room for them on my old desk and now that I finally got a new one, I haven't spent any time looking for new ones.@powerlord said:
I guess the fact that every computer I've had in the past decade does it is some kind of weird fluke?
It doesn't take "a few seconds". What are we talking about, zero time? Or a tenth of a second flash?
Screen goes to black for five seconds, then returns with the new resolution, all drawn. All the screens do this, not just the one I'm changing.
Anyway, it also seems to be game dependent, as Source games were notoriously slow to alt-tab prior to an update a year or two ago.
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@blakeyrat said:
In theory, if you do that, malware can use scripted mouse movements and clicks to click the "allow" button on your behalf.
In practice it doesn't work, because the UAC window is still displayed by a high-integrity application, while malware would be running at low or medium integrity (applications can't send window messages to windows owned by programs that have higher integrity level than themselves; the only way to start a program at high integrity is to either run it as administrator [doesn't matter how], or to have the executable in a secure path [Program Files or Windows] signed with a trusted certificate and uiAccess set to true in manifest).
@DescentJS said:So far, i've yet to have this fail to allow interaction with taskmanager if i bring it up via the ctrl-alt-del options selection.
If a service is pegging the CPU, this can time out (and if it doesn't, switching Task Manager to administrator access will; yes, I've had it happen).
@joe.edwards said:I read about a driver installer that would automatically click to dismiss the non-certified driver warning from Windows.
Old bluetooth driver installers would either do this, or use mouse and keyboard event injection to disable the driver prompt in System properties (some actually asked for permission; if you didn't give it to them you were greeted by 10-20 driver install prompts, apparently because at the time Microsoft didn't have certification program for bluetooth devices in place yet).
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@ender said:
@DescentJS said:
So far, i've yet to have this fail to allow interaction with taskmanager if i bring it up via the ctrl-alt-del options selection.
If a service is pegging the CPU, this can time out (and if it doesn't, switching Task Manager to administrator access will; yes, I've had it happen).That's true, but given that the problem (as described) was him being able to alt tab out of the game and yet unable to get it to let go of the display, I don't think the game could be pegging the CPU to uselessness. Also, that cpu pegging issue is not exactly game related (as pretty much any program can do that if given sufficient cpu priority).
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@ender said:
In practice it doesn't work, because the UAC window is still displayed by a high-integrity application, while malware would be running at low or medium integrity (applications can't send window messages to windows owned by programs that have higher integrity level than themselves; the only way to start a program at high integrity is to either run it as administrator [doesn't matter how], or to have the executable in a secure path [Program Files or Windows] signed with a trusted certificate and uiAccess set to true in manifest).
Hm. Well that was the reason I heard for the secure desktop. So if that's not what it's for, then I don't know what the secure desktop is for. I'm guessing Microsoft has a reason.
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@blakeyrat said:
@ender said:
In practice it doesn't work, because the UAC window is still displayed by a high-integrity application, while malware would be running at low or medium integrity (applications can't send window messages to windows owned by programs that have higher integrity level than themselves; the only way to start a program at high integrity is to either run it as administrator [doesn't matter how], or to have the executable in a secure path [Program Files or Windows] signed with a trusted certificate and uiAccess set to true in manifest).
Hm. Well that was the reason I heard for the secure desktop. So if that's not what it's for, then I don't know what the secure desktop is for. I'm guessing Microsoft has a reason.
I thought the exploit wasn't messages though, but SetCursorPos'ing the mouse over the OK button and sending a click via SendInput.
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@DescentJS said:
as pretty much any program can do that if given sufficient cpu priority
I've only ever seen it with runaway services, or when I manually set something to realtime priority (the latter being expected; the former not, as the service causing the problem didn't appear to be running at anything other than normal priority).
@blakeyrat said:I'm guessing Microsoft has a reason.
IIRC, the reason is that a program can't trick you into blindly clicking the confirmation dialog. OTOH, the whole UAC thing isn't so much a security feature (the integrity separation does much more for that), as something to force programmers to start writing programs that conform to the NT security model (hmm, that reminds me - it's been a few months since I've seen the last "How do I prevent installing to Program Files on Vista and newer?" post in certain free installer's newsgroup).
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@MiffTheFox said:
I thought the exploit wasn't messages though, but SetCursorPos'ing the mouse over the OK button and sending a click via SendInput.
SendInput doesn't work either to higher-integrity level.
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@dhromed said:
dhromeosaurus
I'm Dromeosaurus, a cousin of Velociraptor! And just as mean! And if you're not careful, I just might eat YOU!
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@ekolis said:
@dhromed said:
dhromeosaurus
I'm Dromeosaurus, a cousin of Velociraptor! And just as mean! And if you're not careful, I just might eat YOU!
Dhromedceiomimus?
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@MiffTheFox said:
@ekolis said:
@dhromed said:
dhromeosaurus
I'm Dromeosaurus, a cousin of Velociraptor! And just as mean! And if you're not careful, I just might eat YOU!
Dhromedceiomimus?
CRAGON_NOT_FOUND
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@MiffTheFox said:
(My main gripe is how changing the resolution of one monitor affects the windows on the other monitors, but still...)
Because windows treats the entire thing as 1 rectangular picture with 4 smaller rectangles fit inside. Anyres change on a monitor will affect this big picture i.e. all monitors.
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@Ben L. said:
Today, it happened again
Abnormal behaviour. Not a property of fullscreen applications.
It's easy to say "your computer is fucked", and it's probably true, but its like Window ME all over again all the time constantly with hardware, with half the people having no problems at all, and the other half cursing some brand X because it has consistently failed for them in various hardware configurations.
It's a mad world. :\
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I've had a UAC for Java Updater bomb me out ACIII once, and I was like, FUCK YOU JAVA, and alttabbed back to my game without any problems.
But here's a funny thing: Deus Ex Human Revolution is having serious problems displaying itself. It's really, really odd. There's screen corruption sometimes, sometimes things don't unload so I had my gun superimposed on top of a loading screen in a really buggy, artifacty way, and at times portions of windows, like the taskbar, would just flicker into the game.
Running Windows 8 with an Ati HD4850*. It's strange and unpredictable.
*) yes I know. I bought it, and the rest of my machine, for Fallout 3. It can run ACIII at a playable level, but it's clearly not a sufficient card anymore. Unfortunately, replacing it with a fatter one gives me space problems, which means I have to replace everything.
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@dhromed said:
But here's a funny thing: Deus Ex Human Revolution is having serious problems displaying itself.
Are you using the DirectX 11 renderer on that HD4850? The HD4xxx series is not Dx11 hardware, meaning it has to fall back on alternate code paths to emulate the missing features. This could be causing some problems.
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@Ragnax said:
Are you using the DirectX 11 renderer on that HD4850?
Well yeah.
Great, game down the drain.Hokay, apparently just some settings shenanigans. Everything's fine now.
