Game flashing after update (impossible to play)

[leshr95]

Hello all, did anyone experience the game flashing and a wobbly mouse after the update? It is impossible to play. I'd like to know if there is a fix before asking for a refund, because I really like the game.

[rodrigo oot]

Does it still happen in windowed mode?

I will try to fix it but if you want to play in the meantime DM me and I will send you the previous version. Cheers

[Cha0Z]

The screen is flickering every time I open the game. When I open the task manager the game returns to normal, but it starts flickering again in a new session
Happening only in fullscreen mode.

[mldwy3]

the flashing is really bad

[rodrigo oot]

In the next update I'll change fullscreen to be windowed fullscreen only. Until then I hope you can use ctrl+alt+delete trick or windowed mode to make it playable. Or DM me on discord if you want access to previous version until I make that into a thing. Thanks

[Funkmaster #uwotm8]

Game is also flashing for me and practically bricks my laptop. Only thing that works is alt+f4. Setting -windowed launch option doesn't do anything. What happened? Please hotfix!

[artayd2]

Happened to me first time I played a few minutes ago, I had to turn off vsync

[rodrigo oot]

Can someone with the issue please try this and tell me if it fixes it:
In Steam, right click Gnomes, properties
In the launch options put this exactly:
cmd /C "set SDL_HINT_VIDEO_MINIMIZE_ON_FOCUS_LOSS=0 && %command%"

If it fixes it I will update the game to make this permanent
Cheers

[rodrigo oot]

I've just pushed what is hopefully the fix up into the game, fingers crossed

[stucknbooks]

Still doesn't work....

[rodrigo oot]

Originally posted by stucknbooks:

Still doesn't work....

What gpu do you use?
Multiple monitors?
DPI scaling?
Are drivers up to date?
If you reach me on discord I could send you a build to test to try and fix it.

Thanks.

This issue has been very hard to track down since it's some kind of driver specific bug that I can't repro

[DrPhil.com]

Task Mgr is working for me! God tier game thanks!!!!

[rodrigo oot]

Originally posted by DrPhil.com:

Task Mgr is working for me! God tier game thanks!!!!

Thanks so much. I still hoped to fix this properly, since it seems to have affected many people.
I wanted to confirm that unless you do task manager, you still get flickering even with vsync off?
If you or anyone else with the issue could contact me on the discord, I would really appreciate it, would be good to completely solve this issue for everyone. Thanks again

[stucknbooks]

I tried this, finally, and it worked. I have been very busy, so didn't get to it until now...

Originally posted by rodrigo oot:

Can someone with the issue please try this and tell me if it fixes it:
In Steam, right click Gnomes, properties
In the launch options put this exactly:
cmd /C "set SDL_HINT_VIDEO_MINIMIZE_ON_FOCUS_LOSS=0 && %command%"

If it fixes it I will update the game to make this permanent
Cheers

[omuretsu]

For me the launch option did not work (the game rendered normally while the cmd window was focused, but the game started "flickering" as soon as I focused the game). The flickering I got is like the game is constantly trying to switch display modes on the screen. ALT-F4 was the only way out. I couldn't interact with the menu and there was no settings.json file, so I did not see a way to force windowed mode which is also a suggested fix elsewhere.

Found a different fix on discord that did work for me (laptop with integrated GPU + Nvidia dedicated GPU): Nvidia control panel -> manage 3D settings -> program settings -> add an entry for gnomes.exe -> force it to use the Nvidia GPU

After that I was able to actually load into a responsive game, but ran into another issue, the game stopped responding properly when I alt-tabbed and refocused the game. That issue seems to be fixed by going to windowed mode instead of fullscreen.

[rodrigo oot]

Hi!
Thanks for posting,
The SDL HINT thing has been put into the game now anyway so forget about it.

https://gnomes.wiki.gg/wiki/Video_Troubleshooting

Here I wrote it up as a guide, but yes its the things you saw on the discord basically. Settings json should hopefully get generated after the game is ran! :S

If you have the time to record a video or reach out to me on the discord about further issues with this I would love to try and fix this case because it sounds quite bad when it shows up.

Or even if you could describe the flickering to me more... is it like every second frame is a white screen?