[SOLVED] Game crashes at startup as soon as I focus the window (caused by Wooting keyboard)

[Cleridwen]

Hello,
I have tried to fix this for an afternoon but couldn't. I remember plahying the game on that exact same machine months ago, but I can't get it to work now.

What happens

When I click play the game, then select Distance, the game opens a black screen then instantly gives an "Oops!" pop-up notifying me that the game crashed and that an error log was generated (see below).
I noticed that if I open the game, but instantly focus another window on my seconday screen, the game would go on normally and never crash, until I click or alt-tab back to the game, where it would instantly crash.

What I tried (without success)

• Reinstall the game (with my very slow and limited 4G).
  
• Edit the GraphicSettings.xml file (changing resolution, disabling v-sync)
  
• Delete the content of the "Distance" folder in Documents/My Games. It seems to get restored automatically from a cloud save, even if I delete just the settings. I tried to launch the game offline to force it to generate new files, without success.
  
• Reinstall VC redist, and DirectX
  
• Start the game with and without a controller plugged in
  
• Close background programs
  
• Disable the Shadowplay overlay

Hardware and software

My hardware: Ryzen R9 3900X, RTX 2080 Ti, 32GB of RAM, game on an SSD, 3440x1440 (more here, Desktop: https://pastebin.com/XDvYsDEy )
error.log file: https://pastebin.com/hXW1bryG
output_log.txt file: https://pastebin.com/UvSBrimN
crash.dmp file: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1k0bAX8zXXCo7CPRA0JnuDRkquAg0IiiV/view
I have the lastest Windows 10 20H2 update and the latest Nvidia 460.89 graphic drivers.

Thank you for reading, hoping someone can potentially guide me into resolving this, or that maybe I can report a game breaking bug.

Happy new year

[Californ1a]

The game seems to think you have a steering wheel plugged in, but can't initialize it. You said you've already tried unplugging your controller, try unplugging some other usb devices as well; something is being detected as a wheel. It could even potentially be a software device if you have something like vjoy or joy2key installed. I suspect it's probably your keyboard, seeing as wooting's analog keyboards aren't typical devices.

You can also try renaming the steering wheel plugin the game uses, so it can't try to load a steering wheel. In "..\Steam\steamapps\common\Distance\Distance_Data\Plugins\" rename the "LogitechSteeringWheel.dll" to something like "LogitechSteeringWheel.dll.bak" just so the game can't find it.

[Cleridwen]

@Californ1a that's right, it is the keyboard! The game works fine if I unplug it before starting the game, and crashes as soon as I plug it back in.
Renaming or removing the "LogitechSteeringWheel.dll" doesn't help. Disabling Xinput in the keyboard's software doesn't help either.

I don't understand this keyboard. It is a good mechanical keyboard, but the analog feature is causing so many incompatibilities with tons of games. I wish there was an easy way to force the keyboard to not act as a controller and therefore not cause these issues. But it seems like it's not a thing.

[Cleridwen]

Okay, I the keyboard has both an Xinput mode that can be turned on and off, and a Directinput mode that has to be disabled manually in the device manager. If you have the same issue you can do that by following that guide https://wooting.helpscoutdocs.com/article/66-guide-how-to-disable-the-second-game
now Distance works just fine.

[Californ1a]

Ah, good you got it working. I've heard people have more success with Wooting keyboards on Linux and that their Windows drivers tend to have some issues currently.

[Cleridwen]

Californ1a původně napsal:

Ah, good you got it working. I've heard people have more success with Wooting keyboards on Linux and that their Windows drivers tend to have some issues currently.

Yes, after talking with people on the Wooting Discord server, this is partially the fault of Window's way of managint Directinput controllers. It is a bit buggy, unmaintained, and even after disabling them in the device manager, they can randomly come back when Windows feels like it.