Game keeps reverting to 1600X900 each time I open the game

[Marvin!]

Hello everyone. The resolution of my monitor is 1980X1080. Everytime I try to open the game again, the game reverts back to 1600X900. Not even the default resolution. What am I doing wrong here?

[Spooky Squid]

Sorry to hear you're having trouble, that's definitely a new one!

Not sure how your configuration file would have ended up with that resolution but it should be an easy fix.

In Steam right click on They Bleed Pixels and go to properties -> installed files and click on browse. You should see a file called "config.txt", open it in notepad.

To set the configuration back to the default screen setup, set these values to the following:

FIT_TO_SCREEN = 0
FULLSCREEN = 0
SCREEN_X = 1280
SCREEN_Y = 720

Then save the config.txt text file and launch the game.

That should launch the game at its native 720p res, in a window. If that works go ahead and tweak the settings to what you want. If it doesn't, let me know and we can try some other things. Hope that helps!

[Marvin!]

Soooooooo I've done a little bit of troubleshooting. These are the results I found:

- I'm not sure if this is expected, but everytime I boot the game, and the intro starts playing, Windows change the focus of the game, similar when I alt+tab the game. That happens every time I open the game, no matter that I did in my research.

- I tried to set different resolutions to see what it sticks and what doesn't. It's random. 800X600, and 1366X768 actually were kept after I opened the game again, but not with 1280X960, or 1440X900

- I use a dual monitor setup (actually TV + monitor), and I usually duplicate them when playing games. I tried playing the game just extending the displays. The game still doesn't open the game with the last resolution configuration saved in these resolutions, but at least it reverts back to the default 1280X720.

- When duplicating the monitors, the default resolution is distorted, almost like I was using an ultra-wide monitor. It looks fine when I use the extended displays.

- Finally, I used the "Show only in 1" option to show the displays. In this specific configuration, the game finally keeps the configuration. It stills "alt+tabs" the game, but the resolution is saved.

And that were my findings. I hope that is somehow useful

Windows can be a mess sometimes

[Spooky Squid]

Thanks so much for the detailed info! This is all very helpful. A few additional things that would be good to know:

- What resolution are your two monitors running at when you launch the game (eg are they both 1920X1080)? What are their max resolutions if different from that? (eg is your tv actually 4K).
- What OS/version are you running?
- What graphic card do you have?

I've done some testing on my end to see if I could replicate any of your issues:

I am able to replicate the loss of focus when playing full screen but not windowed. Made a note of that to see if it can be fixed in the future.

I'm able to save my resolutions in both extended and duplicated dual monitors, with any resolution I use. So something specific about your setup is probably causing some resolutions to fail.

The cause of a stretched view at default resolution while mirroring is likely a mix of graphics card and monitor settings outside the game. I should be able to help you troubleshoot that once I know the native resolution of your two monitors. Ideally you should be running the game at that default 1280X720 res. That will get you the best possible image quality in the end.

So let's see if we can get default res showing correctly on your preferred mirrored screen setup. Probably just need a few settings tweaked!

[Marvin!]

Sorry for the delay

- Both the monitor and the TV were at 1920X1080. That's their maximum resolution.
I'm using Windows 10 22H2, Geforce GTX 1050 Ti

I tried 2 different things: I unninstalled Parsec (it installs a dummy video adapter), installed the newest Nvidia drivers. While doing so, I asked for a fresh install. Didn't do anything, really

[Spooky Squid]

Very odd, this is quite close to my own setup. When you say it's stretched like a widescreen monitor, is that for both screens or just one?

If it's just one the fix is probably in that monitor (or TVs) settings. You'll want to look for something like "Aspect Ratio" in the settings (on the monitor itself not in windows) and try seeing if any of the options fix things.

If the issue is showing up on both screens this is probably a setting in your graphics card. You'll want to open NVIDIA Control Panel and go to Adjust Desktop Size and Position.
Make sure you have the correct monitor selected at the top, then try the various settings under "Select a Scaling Mode" to see if any fix the issue. You may need to experiment with the "Perform Scaling On" settings and and the override scaling mode checkbox, but most of the time just the Select Scaling mode setting will be enough to fix this sort of problem.

It's also possible that the games internal scaling in the options is also causing issues, though all of the possible choices should display the same on a 1080p screen or at the very least just look correct but smaller when set to pixel perfect.

May require a bit of trial and error to determine which combination of settings is causing the issue but hopefully one of the combos works correctly!

[KatDevsGames]

I can confirm I am also seeing this behavior on a laptop with one screen (but 8 virtual desktops).

I've gotten a partial fix by:
1: Right clicking on the game exe,
2: Select compatibility tab.
3: Press "Change high DPI settinngs"
4: Enable High DPI scaling override (check the box) and set the override mode to "Application".

When I follow this method, the game only resets its scaling once, shortly after starting, and thereafter behaves*. You just need to click back onto the game.

* Taking a screenshot or any overlay popping has a chance of setting it off and requiring you to click on the game again.

[Spooky Squid]

KatDevsGames thanks for the additional info and potential work around! Could you clarify which of the behaviors your seeing? Is it reverting to 1600X900 res on startup or is it the warped display at the default (720p) resolution? Also would be helpful to know what your monitor resolution and OS version are, if you could share that info.

Thanks!

[Spider]

Originally posted by KatDevsGames:

I've gotten a partial fix by:
1: Right clicking on the game exe,
2: Select compatibility tab.
3: Press "Change high DPI settinngs"
4: Enable High DPI scaling override (check the box) and set the override mode to "Application".

This fixed the issue for me. I'm pretty sure it was caused by my app scaling setting on windows. I have a 1440p monitor and I set it to 125% to make text in windows a bit easier to read. I'm assuming that's what caused it because 1600X900 is exactly 25% larger than 720p.

[Spooky Squid]

Thanks for this info! This does sound like a likely cause. I'll see if I'm able to replicate and if there might be some sort of flag we can set to disable windows high dpi scaling on our end in the future.

[Spooky Squid]

Just tested now and I'm still unable to replicate the issue.
Since my last attempt to replicate this my setup has changed a bit. I'm running Win 11 on a 4k monitor with 125% scaling. It's possible this issue only crops up with 125% scaling in Win 10 though, or there's an additional requirement to trigger the bug.

If anyone else is running into this please continue to report it here with basic screen specs, any additional details that might help and if the high dpi override fix works for you. Thanks!

[Spooky Squid]

Ok we've put an update in a beta branch that might fix this issue with the resolution randomly switching to 1600x900 for some players. Unfortunately I still have not been able to replicate this issue on my end. If any of you who have had it happen could give this version a test (with default windows compatibility settings) and let us know if things are fixed for you that would be really helpful!

To test the version, right click on They Bleed Pixels in your steam library. Select properties. Select "Betas" and pick "windpi - Windows DPI Awareness Testing" from the "Beta Participation" drop down. Close the properties window. You'll see the game briefly update, then just run it like normal.

To stop testing the beta, just follow the same instructions and select "none" in the Beta Participation drop down.

Hopefully we have this mystery problem solved. Thanks!

[Spider]

I still have the issue on the beta branch

[Spooky Squid]

Originally posted by Spider:

I still have the issue on the beta branch

Thanks for testing! The beta branch just got updated. Could you give it another test when you have a chance? Same process as before.

[dfse43td]

for me the game and other steam games keeps setting itself randomly to window mode or border and once I set it back to full screen I can toggle 1900x1200 again.

sometimes I'll be in game tho and it will switch back to windowed mode and force 1600x1000.