Performance + Multi-monitor

[Silvarren]

Hi there. New to the game. I spent quite a bit of time struggling to get the game working last night, and while I eventually succeeded, I had to do a few backflips. So, I had a few questions.

I roll with a quad core processor (2.4 ghz I believe),
16 GB of RAM
nVidia 760 GTX
Windows 7
1920 x 1080 60hz dual monitor setup using DisplayFusion

So, last night, I tried to start the game. The standard default windowed mode came up, the starting cinematic (SUPER EEEEEEAARTH! HOO RAH) played, I got to the main menu. Obviously noting the windowed mode, I went to fix that. I went to graphical settings, set the resolution to 1920 x 1080, and set the screen mode to Full Screen mode. I then see the screen mode set to full screen and then to the resolution. Then the screen flickers a few times (as it does when you set a game to full screen), and a black screen shows for a couple of minutes. I think at that point I decided that it had died. I tried to alt-tab out and it took about 30 seconds for there to even be a response. That seemed a bit slow, so I went ahead and did my ctrl+alt+del - end process thing to kill the game. I tried to run the game again, and the game started in windowed mode / default res. Figuring that Full Screen might have something to do with this (duh), I set it to cordless windowed mode.

After a minute or two of waiting for the graphics settings to finish up, the game was finally in the cordless windowed mode at my set resolution. However, being that I had a dual monitor setup, my mouse was able to scroll over to the other monitor. If I had played the game like this, the game would have lost focus if my mouse wandered into the other monitor and clicked. I also noticed that when my mouse was on my main monitor, it reverted to the normal "Windows" mouse, but when it was on my secondary monitor, it showed up as the Helldivers cursor. I figured this could be because my mouse wasn't being locked to that particular window, I would just have to use the "Lock mouse to current window" function of DisplayFusion. This was supposed to keep the mouse cursor fixed within the game window, and works with Magicka 2.

Unfortunately, it didn't have any effect, and when I did try to click on my main monitor (the one that had the Windows cursor), the game predictably lost focus and the game screen went black. This then froze the game, as it had basically figured I had alt-tabbed out.

I finally got the game working by disabling my second monitor, setting the game to full screen borderless window. Even when I had done that, the game still took about a minute or two to actually come up / display the menu once I had started the game, when typically games can get to the menu immediately after whatever publisher / tech credits that usually show at the beginning of games comes up at about 10-15 seconds.

I realize I may be semi-impatient, but is there a reason this game is so slow when I try to run it? Once I was in the game, it was easy enough to work and I didn't notice any drop in in-game performance, but getting there was a massive pain. Is this normal? Will it be fixed? And why are multiple monitors apparently not supported? :(

Thanks!

-S

[Rusty]

Just throwing an idea out there, but try disabling DisplayFusion and see if that makes a difference. It sounds like you tried a lot of other things, so now it is the chance to start eliminating other things to figure out why.
Your specs sound comparable to many peoples, so it really sounds like a software conflict.

[Silvarren]

I figured as much, sadly. I just find it strange that this is the only game that performs this way. Here's hoping either DisplayFusion or Arrowhead makes a fix. :)

[Rusty]

So it did do the trick? Update what happened.

[Silvarren]

Originally posted by Rusty:

So it did do the trick? Update what happened.

Haven't yet received a response from the developer of DisplayFusion. Display Fusion is software that allows me to have two separate desktops / task bars, as opposed to one big one stretched across the two monitors. Telling Display Fusion to ignore the second monitor (disabling it and condense the two desktops into one again) appears to make it work again. I'll leave an update if I hear back from the DF dev. :)

-S

[Rusty]

Oh. I thought you just closed DisplayFusion altogether anyways. At least the game works.