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Supporting Information: Alt Enter Change

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Secrets
Former Staff
Posts: 414

Supporting Information: Alt Enter Change

Post#1 » Thu Oct 08, 2020 1:15 pm

Recently we made some changes to disable ALT + ENTER, and we'd like to give some background on why:

When you hit ALT+ENTER, it causes the game to switch from fullscreen to windowed. This causes a device reset, and under some configs, will cause the game to crash if you continue playing within a few minutes to an hour.
Sometimes you accidentally hit alt enter because of a bug in the game's input handling where alt sticks until you press it a few times. This means that if you start typing a message and alt tab, you may tab back in and accidentally crash your client if the combination of alt and enter is pressed in conjunction with submitting a message. This fixes that issue by disabling the key combination.

Most modern games disable ALT+ENTER by default due to similar stability issues regarding random device resets, especially when it pertains to DirectX 9. Since we don't have the source code to Warhammer Online, we had to do this in assembly and not fix the root issue, which is the crash with texture_Cache set to 0.00.

We've noticed this mostly with the texture cache set to default (0.00 in the configuration) plus alt tabbing out of the game and back into it. However, enabling the texture cache at 1.00 is a frame hit, and while we're not sure why, we want to make 0.00 available for those that want increased frames and are aware that any device resets will crash the game.

As a third aside, borderless in DX9 games gives mixed performance depending on GPU and OS. Here's the recommended settings with texture cache at 0.00:

For windowed mode with a border (In Windows 10, the border is sometimes not present regardless of this setting, and we recommend you run fullscreen = false in Windows 10 under all circumstances)

Code: Select all

<Mode window_frame="true" fullscreen="false" />
For fullscreen (highly not recommended!)

Code: Select all

<Mode window_frame="false" fullscreen="true" />
For borderless windowed (highly not recommended for performance reasons - try it and check your framerate)

Code: Select all

<Mode window_frame="false" fullscreen="true" />
As a note, there is a performance hit in borderless windowed (no frame, no fullscreen) regardless of OS.
Fullscreen does not have this performance hit, but may result in crashes during gameplay if you alt-tab out of fullscreen mode and continue playing without restarting and if the texture cache is set to 0.00.

Essentially, after changing resolution, restart your game completely. Regardless of setting, the game is fragile when it comes to device resets and it's a sure way to ensure it runs properly.

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hammerhead
Posts: 308

Re: Supporting Information: Alt Enter Change

Post#2 » Thu Oct 08, 2020 3:34 pm

Secrets wrote: Thu Oct 08, 2020 1:15 pm
Spoiler:
Recently we made some changes to disable ALT + ENTER, and we'd like to give some background on why:

When you hit ALT+ENTER, it causes the game to switch from fullscreen to windowed. This causes a device reset, and under some configs, will cause the game to crash if you continue playing within a few minutes to an hour.
Sometimes you accidentally hit alt enter because of a bug in the game's input handling where alt sticks until you press it a few times. This means that if you start typing a message and alt tab, you may tab back in and accidentally crash your client if the combination of alt and enter is pressed in conjunction with submitting a message. This fixes that issue by disabling the key combination.

Most modern games disable ALT+ENTER by default due to similar stability issues regarding random device resets, especially when it pertains to DirectX 9. Since we don't have the source code to Warhammer Online, we had to do this in assembly and not fix the root issue, which is the crash with texture_Cache set to 0.00.

We've noticed this mostly with the texture cache set to default (0.00 in the configuration) plus alt tabbing out of the game and back into it. However, enabling the texture cache at 1.00 is a frame hit, and while we're not sure why, we want to make 0.00 available for those that want increased frames and are aware that any device resets will crash the game.

As a third aside, borderless in DX9 games gives mixed performance depending on GPU and OS. Here's the recommended settings with texture cache at 0.00:

For windowed mode with a border (In Windows 10, the border is sometimes not present regardless of this setting, and we recommend you run fullscreen = false in Windows 10 under all circumstances)

Code: Select all

<Mode window_frame="true" fullscreen="false" />
For fullscreen (highly not recommended!)

Code: Select all

<Mode window_frame="false" fullscreen="true" />
For borderless windowed (highly not recommended for performance reasons - try it and check your framerate)

Code: Select all

<Mode window_frame="false" fullscreen="true" />
As a note, there is a performance hit in borderless windowed (no frame, no fullscreen) regardless of OS.
Fullscreen does not have this performance hit, but may result in crashes during gameplay if you alt-tab out of fullscreen mode and continue playing without restarting and if the texture cache is set to 0.00.

Essentially, after changing resolution, restart your game completely. Regardless of setting, the game is fragile when it comes to device resets and it's a sure way to ensure it runs properly.
Hello Secrets. I use two monitors for my normal work, and when I play on the second I leave discord and twitch. Before this patch, I always used the borderless mode, since it was inconvenient for me from the full screen, and in the mode with a frame, I sometimes touched it. Now if in full screen mode I shift the focus from the game to discord (from one monitor to the second), for example, is it considered an alt-tab or how will it affect performance (my config: w10 and 1070ti)?
(\|)o0(|/)

User avatar
Secrets
Former Staff
Posts: 414

Re: Supporting Information: Alt Enter Change

Post#3 » Thu Oct 08, 2020 4:50 pm

It's fine to keep it in borderless, but it will affect performance on some systems. It's unclear which systems or configurations cause the borderless issues, but normally any system with special effects on (Windows 10 w/ Aero effects) If you were previously using Borderless, continue to. There's no changes to borderless itself, but this is more for those who want to get a few extra frames from their gameplay.

Alt tab only affects performance in fullscreen=true mode.

User avatar
Niall
Posts: 22

Re: Supporting Information: Alt Enter Change

Post#4 » Fri Oct 09, 2020 9:17 am

Hi Secrets!
Great investigation!
But where exactly to set the value of "texture_Cache" and <Mode window_frame="true" fullscreen="false" />?

User avatar
Melekith
Posts: 37

Re: Supporting Information: Alt Enter Change

Post#5 » Fri Oct 09, 2020 4:48 pm

Niall wrote: Fri Oct 09, 2020 9:17 am Hi Secrets!
Great investigation!
But where exactly to set the value of "texture_Cache" and <Mode window_frame="true" fullscreen="false" />?
In your Warhammer Folder, go to User, open "UserSettings.xml" with Editor and change the line. Its the fourth line under "<Graphics>"

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