I’ve had a problem in several games, and I don’t really no where to to being debugging it. It’s not like there is any error message. Is it my DE? my distro? drivers? proton? the game engine itself?
I’ve done some basic web searches, and all of the answers are hyper specific, or “alt-tab just breaks some times”.
The actual problem: When I alt-tab, some games will appear to freeze when I tab back in. I’ve noticed that while I am holding alt-tab and have a non-game window selected, the game is not frozen. As long as have not selected the window I am trying to swap to, it keeps running. It’s almost as if the game has inverted it’s internal state of whether it’s in the foreground are not.
(if it does matter, I am using Gnome on 22.04 PopOS, Nvidia 565 driver, Steam/Proton).
Disclaimer: Theory, based loosely on related experiences in Windows ages ago back when I actually used Windows.
The keyboard handler might be getting confused when you Alt+Tab, leaving the game stuck thinking you’re still holding Alt+Tab when you return to the game.
Just for shits and giggles, the next time you experience this, try tapping Alt once or twice to see if that refreshes the keyboard buffer and status.
You might even try tapping the other toggle/special keys as well, such as Ctrl, Shift, Esc…
I realize Windows and Linux are like comparing bananas to oranges, but still, the keyboard buffer might not be getting refreshed properly when switching apps.
It’s worth a try, do let us know if this helps in any way.
Sounds plausible.
FWIW, New World (doesn’t have borderless fullscreen) got me into the habit of tapping the Windows key before doing anything outside the game. Other than when the game is starting, it never has any problems when I do that.
I’m using EndeavourOS, KDE, Wayland, so YMMV.
I’ve tried every key combo I could think of, and it didn’t seem to help. However I started using super-D to swap workspaces instead, and I have not hit the problem so far.
Ah, interesting, glad you found a workaround at least.
That makes sense really, it highly suggests that the game has trouble passing keyboard control off to the operating system when using hotkeys that the game has available for gameplay, but since the Super key is handled only by the operating system, that doesn’t confuse the game.
👍
Good to know general knowledge. The game is clearly still running in the back ground when I swap workspaces, so no real chance for the it get confused.
You could try using Gamescope to contain the game. I’m on Sway and some full screen games can confuse it on multiple monitors, this usually fixes it.
gamescope -w 1920 -h 1080 %command%I’ll give it a try. I’ve seen as a solution to multiple problems, so probably a good tool to learn.
Might be game specific. I don’t know how to solve the issue but maybe you could try opening the game in a different virtual desktop and switching desktops and see if that causes it. Or press the meta key and see if that causes it too
This has been working so far! Thanks for the suggestion. (I’ve had the same problem in more than 1 game).
Most probably graphics / nividia issue. But not a general issue, related to the configuration or hardware or something.
For most such cases when you can’t figure out anything, it’s generally a good idea to ask in your distro’s support forum. There are people who can usually help you debug a few things. It doesn’t always solve your problem, but you can get some possible pointers.
I’ll give it a try. I’ve seen as a solution to multiple problems, so probably a good tool to learn.
Thanks. I think this it best general answer (don’t solve my specific problem, but for sure answers how to best get help.)
