White screen frozen if I alt-tab during opening screen before I enter a game

[Oddible]

If I alt-tab out on the opening screen, or after I've hit the New button while the new game dialog is open and I alt-tab back I get a while screen and the game seems frozen - needs an alt-f4.

[Eric.B]

If you plan on alt-tabbing frequently, switch the rendering engine to OpenGL. Especially if you are playing full screen. DirectX9 does not work well with alt-tab unfortunately.

[Oddible]

Haha, ouch, that didn't work at all! I switched to OpenGL Full Screen and Alt-tab does nothing now :) I can hold alt tab and bring up the picker and tab through to another app but Gear City stays topmost. So I switched to non-fullscreen but then I have the gross titlebars and frame - so I used Borderless Windows app to make it full screen but then it just moves the white space to the bottom and right. Going back to DX9 - I have no problems alt-tabbing except in the opening screen. A bit slow but it works fullscreen.

[Eric.B]

What video card do you have? And are your drivers up to date?

[Oddible]

GeForce GTX 980M
Yep, I keep them up to date because I play several graphic intensive games and also have a Vive. It's all good, I'm back to DX9 with your Borderless Window checked and I can alt-tab fine once I'm in a game.

[Eric.B]

No worries, just found it odd that you were having issues with OpenGL. Generally it is only Intel with OpenGL issues.

Let me know if you run into more issues.

[Eric.B]

A second thought popped into my head. You wouldn't happen to be using one of those laptops with two video cards? One Intel and one Nvidia. Called "Optimus" or something similar. If so, your drivers may be using the Intel one instead of Nvidia card, thus the video issues you're having.

If you do have a two card system, or you don't know, you can send me the log files, I can verify for you: http://wiki.gearcity.info/doku.php?id=troubleshooting:steam_installfolder#getting_the_log_file

[Oddible]

Nope, this is an ASUS G-751GY only one card in here. I've had one of those Optimus latops in the past, won't go that route again.

DirectX 9 came out in 2002 (fifteen years ago).
DirectX 11 in 2011 (6 1/2 years ago).

Not sure what engine you're using and I realize that this game has been around for a while (2013?) but there is quite a bit of UI clunkiness. Both in OpenGL and DX. Don't get me wrong, this game is amazing and the depth is outstanding and I don't have a very high bar for my trading sims - but gamers are fickle (though probably not the gamers that this game would appeal to).

Anyway, happy to help diagnose but I'm going back to my newbie help threads in the meantime :)

[Eric.B]

I was just trying to diagnose your issue. I and many others do not have the same issues. :) OpenGL is implemented on the driver stack, so I was trying to figure out why you are having those issues. Anyway the game is working fine, so it's all good.

That being said, I am well aware of how old DX9 is. The game was written in 2010, the engine around 2009. I will not be switching rendering APIs to DX11 nor will I use any prebuilt all in one engines like Unity. If anything, any future products I make will abandon DX entirely since I personally haven't used the Windows ecosystem beyond work (excluding a Windows tablet) since 2005-ish. I don't even have a machine capable DX11. Since the Windows build is developed in XP64.

[Eric.B]

PS sorry for sounding a little grumpy, bed time!

[Pille]

I can confirm this tiny bug. But its not really heavy. I switched during first loading (after the intro) to desktop and after return to the game, it was white in game - so I restarted the game and it was fine. My setup: Intel 4770k, GTX970, 16G Ram. By the way - a really really lovely game. I loved Motor City from Max Design and I felt like home as I saw the gun and the office. Just lovely - thank you for making a 20year old wish come true - a new and better motor city, thanks. :-)

[Eric.B]

Unfortunately I am unable to duplicate the issue on AMD hardware in either XP or Windows 8. I do get a small graphical glitch on the return alt-tab due to the fact that D3D9 does not properly reload textures already in it's buffer. However if you wait the 250 frames the main menu still comes up fine.

Not much I can do about this other than refer you to the OpenGL assuming it works fine with your hardware/drivers. Or Oddible's work around of using a borderless window. Anything else would require a near complete rewrite of the game engine AND the GUI. Which would take about 2-3 years and I could not guarantee it would be less buggy.