Alt-tab causes quick-access menu flickering bug after 1.07 patch

[dusty-2011]

Alt-tab causes quick-access menu flickering bug after 1.07 patch

This is a relatively new bug that I've been experiencing after the 1.07 patch. The 1.08 patch did not fix this bug, and I can't find other reports of the bug, so now it's time to report the bug.

The bug concerns the quick-access menu (opened by holding down Tab on the keyboard). Before alt-tabbing, I can open the quick access menu by pressing Tab once or by holding down Tab. After alt-tabbing, I can still open the quick access menu by pressing Tab once, but when holding down Tab the quick access menu keeps opening and closing quickly after each other. The quick access menu just keeps flickering when you hold down Tab which is almost as bad as having a seizure. There is a workaround, you can simply let go off tab and then select your sign of choice. Or you can shut down the game completely and then open the game again, after which holding down Tab works fine again.

The bug is not reproducable when using an Xbox 360 controller. This is probably a keyboard-only bug, and therefore probably PC-only as well.

The bug does not occur always after each alt-tab. But it is easily reproducable by alt-tabbing a few times when other applications are open (internet explorer, firefox, musicbee). The bug will probably occur as well with no other applications open but I haven't tested explicitly for that.

 

[dusty-2011]

This bug is not fixed in the 1.08.1 patch!

When is RED going to acknowledge this bug and fix it?

 

[SigilFey]

This is system dependent, not really a problem with the game. It will happen in other games as well.

Alt-Tabbing is not a good idea for any title that uses a large portion of your system's resources. The reason being:

A computer has limited resources that will be utilized in "exclusive mode" by an OS to ensure that your computer reserves the correct amount of CPU/GPU cycles, RAM, VRAM, swap file, etc. for the game to run. When you Alt-Tab out of a game while it's running, you are suspending most or all of that game's functionality and unloading various bits of it from memory. If you use another program (e-mail, another game, mp3 player, whatever) you are then giving that program exclusive mode access to system resources instead, which may cause the computer to unload even more of the game's data. If the game unloads too much, it can cause any range of issues.

Again, this is true of any program, if it unloads too many resources, you WILL see weirdness when you Tab back into it. Sometimes, the game can recover, sometimes the errors will stick until the game is restarted, sometimes the game will hang or crash, sometimes you'll wind up with a BSoD (if critical resources are exhausted).

For TW3, even running in Borderless mode is not going to help out too much with Alt-Tabbing, since the game is very resource intensive. CDPR may be able to optimize it a bit more, but the only real fix for this until the next generations of hardware come out is: don't Alt-Tab when playing TW3.

 

[dusty-2011]

This is system dependent, not really a problem with the game. It will happen in other games as well.

Alt-Tabbing is not a good idea for any title that uses a large portion of your system's resources. The reason being:

A computer has limited resources that will be utilized in "exclusive mode" by an OS to ensure that your computer reserves the correct amount of CPU/GPU cycles, RAM, VRAM, swap file, etc. for the game to run. When you Alt-Tab out of a game while it's running, you are suspending most or all of that game's functionality and unloading various bits of it from memory. If you use another program (e-mail, another game, mp3 player, whatever) you are then giving that program exclusive mode access to system resources instead, which may cause the computer to unload even more of the game's data. If the game unloads too much, it can cause any range of issues.

Again, this is true of any program, if it unloads too many resources, you WILL see weirdness when you Tab back into it. Sometimes, the game can recover, sometimes the errors will stick until the game is restarted, sometimes the game will hang or crash, sometimes you'll wind up with a BSoD (if critical resources are exhausted).

For TW3, even running in Borderless mode is not going to help out too much with Alt-Tabbing, since the game is very resource intensive. CDPR may be able to optimize it a bit more, but the only real fix for this until the next generations of hardware come out is: don't Alt-Tab when playing TW3.

Sorry, but this is not useful at all. This bug that I describe in this post did not exist before the 1.07 patch. It is therefore a regression: a new bug caused by changes made in the 1.07 patch. One need only analyze the relevant changes made in that patch and find the culprit.

This bug exists both when running in borderless window mode or when running in fullscreen mode, that makes no difference.

Did you even test this on a range of systems before you claim it is system dependent?? This is a very weird claim. This is simply a regression, a new bug caused by a patch. Regressions are fairly common. This bug with alt-tabbing did not exist on release, and is a new bug introduced in the 1.07 patch.

This bug can easily be patched by CD Projekt Red.

Your claim that this happens in other games as well is also quite dary. I've played hundreds of other games and while some did have bugs with alt-tabbing none had this specific bug. This is a very specific bug with alt-tabbing that is only seen in The Witcher 3 post 1.07 patch. It can be fixed with a patch.

 

[SigilFey]

And there are many users that are still (post 1.07) able to Alt-Tab freely with The Witcher 3. Let me try to be more clear.

Just because this bug never appeared before does not mean that the game was "broken" by 1.07. I have seen many, many posts for all versions of the game that dealt with "Alt-Tab doesn't work!!!" Since the day of release on Steam...before I even had an account on these forums. For you, only as of 1.07, the game now needs something that your system cannot make available, and the engine cannot recover completely without human help.

I have the game running on 2 systems, a monstrous gaming desktop, and a 2-year old gaming laptop. I can Alt-Tab out of Fullscreen and recover without a hitch on the desktop, never had one issue, with any version. From v1.0 until now, my laptop basically can't recover at all. Hangs the system almost every single time, requiring a hard-boot. Not enough resources.

No program (game or otherwise) is specifically built for Alt-Tabbing (meaning it does not affect the purpose of the program). It's simply an OS convenience feature. Optimizations can certainly be made to any program to better take advantage of the feature, true. But whether or not it works correctly will always boil down to how powerful your system is and whether it can make the correct resources available to every program open. CDPR may not even be able to recreate the issue unless they have your exact system.

Send in a support ticket! You have nothing to lose. Things like this can be hard for developers to nail down, though, and for very little return. With all of the other other issues facing the game, don't be too surprised if this doesn't get any immediate, focused attention.

 

[alaskawolf]

Actually, Sigil is quite correct in his assertions. As far as an Alt-Tabbing bug, I have had no problems on either of my systems and I utilize the Alt-Tab function quite frequently. I agree with Sigil, send in a support ticket.

 

[dusty-2011]

And there are many users that are still (post 1.07) able to Alt-Tab freely with The Witcher 3. Let me try to be more clear.

Just because this bug never appeared before does not mean that the game was "broken" by 1.07. I have seen many, many posts for all versions of the game that dealt with "Alt-Tab doesn't work!!!" Since the day of release on Steam...before I even had an account on these forums. For you, only as of 1.07, the game now needs something that your system cannot make available, and the engine cannot recover completely without human help.

I have the game running on 2 systems, a monstrous gaming desktop, and a 2-year old gaming laptop. I can Alt-Tab out of Fullscreen and recover without a hitch on the desktop, never had one issue, with any version. From v1.0 until now, my laptop basically can't recover at all. Hangs the system almost every single time, requiring a hard-boot. Not enough resources.

No program (game or otherwise) is specifically built for Alt-Tabbing (meaning it does not affect the purpose of the program). It's simply an OS convenience feature. Optimizations can certainly be made to any program to better take advantage of the feature, true. But whether or not it works correctly will always boil down to how powerful your system is and whether it can make the correct resources available to every program open. CDPR may not even be able to recreate the issue unless they have your exact system.

Send in a support ticket! You have nothing to lose. Things like this can be hard for developers to nail down, though, and for very little return. With all of the other other issues facing the game, don't be too surprised if this doesn't get any immediate, focused attention.

Well, most on the PC play the game with a controller, and therefore do not face this bug. And the ones that do play with a keyboard very often only press Tab once to open the quick access menu. Only few are used to holding down Tab to open the quick access menu. So many will never see the bug. And those that are faced with the bug, might just think "why not simply press Tab once, that works", and therefore not complain about the bug.

But it is still a very annoying bug if you, like myself, are used to holding down Tab. I'm trying to change that habit into pressing Tab once, but it's difficult. Sometimes I still hold down tab and then the quick access menu appears like 10 times in a row.

The problem is really not the power of my PC, or the resources available. I have a GTX 970, an i5-4590, 16 GB RAM, W 8.1 64-bits and the game is installed on a 512 GB SSD. This is a (very) expensive gaming computer with plenty of resources available.

Alt-tabbing out of a game works fine for me generally. It also works fine for The Witcher 3, except this one bug.

 

[SigilFey]

Ah...a GTX 970 experiencing graphical weirdness again. (What does this game have against those cards?)

Yes, you have plenty of power to Alt-Tab out. You're pretty comparable to my big-rig. (Unless you're running multiple instances of Wild Hunt, or something.) It's probably a driver-related issue. I tried many versions, but eventually rolled back to the 353.30 reference drivers. I've found those to give the best all-round performance (even over Guru3D Tweakforce drivers!) You could give that a shot, but I'm on a 980 ti...slightly different architecture, so no guarantees.

I can't say I agree with your assessment that most PC users are playing on a controller. (I'd avoid that argument...:shuriken:...unless you want to be pelted by controllers that PC gamers aren't using anyway. [Ironically, I just knocked my Xbox 360 controller off my desk by accident while I was typing this. I just use it for Dark Souls 2! I swear -- that's the only game! ...and SkyRogue -- but that's only because there's no joystick support yet!!! And DA: Inquisition. Shut up.])

I do feel your pain about the "dodging-and-then-accessing-the-quick-menu" scenario. Things like that can get under your skin, as they only seem to happen at THE most inopportune moment. But...second time today I've said: "Murphy's Law". The only way around that is to re-bind your controls. "Z" is a good option, and shouldn't get in the way.

 

[alaskawolf]

I'll have to concur Sigil, I don't know of any of my fellow PC gamers using controllers to play Witcher. Just too awkward for me. Biggest differences I see between dusty's (very) expensive gaming computer, and my cheapy home-brewed cardboard box computer is that I am running dual Zotac 970 GTXs, i7-5960X, 32 Gb RAM on Win 10, is the CPU difference the i5 vs i7. Wonder if the throttled down i5 cores could be causing some of the issues people are reporting?

Personally, I think NVidia has done a much better job on the Win 10 drivers than they've done with the 7 and 8 drivers, but even so I think a lot more people would be reporting it if it were a driver issue, or a bug in the game code. Besides, if its "GTX 970 experiencing graphical weirdness again", shouldn't I be having twice the problem? o_0

 

[SigilFey]

I'll have to concur Sigil, I don't know of any of my fellow PC gamers using controllers to play Witcher. Just too awkward for me. Biggest differences I see between dusty's (very) expensive gaming computer, and my cheapy home-brewed cardboard box computer is that I am running dual Zotac 970 GTXs, i7-5960X, 32 Gb RAM on Win 10, is the CPU difference the i5 vs i7. Wonder if the throttled down i5 cores could be causing some of the issues people are reporting?

Personally, I think NVidia has done a much better job on the Win 10 drivers than they've done with the 7 and 8 drivers, but even so I think a lot more people would be reporting it if it were a driver issue, or a bug in the game code. Besides, if its "GTX 970 experiencing graphical weirdness again", shouldn't I be having twice the problem? o_0

Are you a lucky duck! 970's haven't been playing nicely, especially in SLI. Neither has Windows 10 for many users. Seems like you must have been a blind nun from Venezuela in your past life, or something.

And I firggin' hate controllers with a passion. Looking around is like trying to move your own head by physically slapping it in one direction or another, and moving at a set speed in a particular direction is harder that balancing on a beam while drunk. I hate it when I'm forced to use one for a game simply because programmers can't be bothered making controls for PC games that work on PCs.

 

[alaskawolf]

Yeah, I've seen a lot of people post about issues with Win 10 and the 970GTX cards. It's really odd how I haven't had these problems, but what strikes me is that a lot of the posts I read were using i5 cores. Just one of those things that makes you go ...hmmmm. Even Intel states that the i5 cores are mainstream cores, and not designed for high-end gaming. As Witcher 3 is one of the most intensive games to date, I am just wondering if they are bottlenecking on the game; they're only 14nm cores running at a higher speed so they tend to heat up to their thermal limits quicker. Wish I had one to test out, but I don't.

Friend of mine built her PC identical to mine ,except I used an old moving box, and she used a fancy Dole banana box. Still, neither of us have had problems with either the 970s or Win 10. The only problem she has had so far was caused by GOG Galaxy, and once we got rid of that she's had no further problems.

Think I may have been a flying nun once....

 

[dusty-2011]

Yeah, I've seen a lot of people post about issues with Win 10 and the 970GTX cards. It's really odd how I haven't had these problems, but what strikes me is that a lot of the posts I read were using i5 cores. Just one of those things that makes you go ...hmmmm. Even Intel states that the i5 cores are mainstream cores, and not designed for high-end gaming. As Witcher 3 is one of the most intensive games to date, I am just wondering if they are bottlenecking on the game; they're only 14nm cores running at a higher speed so they tend to heat up to their thermal limits quicker. Wish I had one to test out, but I don't.

Friend of mine built her PC identical to mine ,except I used an old moving box, and she used a fancy Dole banana box. Still, neither of us have had problems with either the 970s or Win 10. The only problem she has had so far was caused by GOG Galaxy, and once we got rid of that she's had no further problems.

Think I may have been a flying nun once....

Is it possible to stick to the topic? This thread is about a bug with the quick access menu. If you do not experience that bug, then a simple "I don't see this bug on my PC" would suffice. This topic is not for general chatter about Windows 10 or Core i5's etc. I'm not a moderator here, but I'm the topic starter and I would like the posts in this topic to be related to the bug report. Thank you!

 

[dusty-2011]

This bug is still present in the latest game version, 1.08.3.

 

[dusty-2011]

This bug is still present in the game patched to v 1.10!! CD Projekt RED you disappoint me

 

[dusty-2011]

This bug is still present in the game patched to v 1.11!!

CD Projekt RED, it is about time you acknowledge the bug, and start working on a fix...

 

[dusty-2011]

This bug is still present in the game patched to v 1.12.

CD Projekt RED, good to see you care about PC-only bugs. Oh wait...

It's about time this gets fixed.