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).

  • over_clox@lemmy.worldEnglish
    15·
    16 hours ago

    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.

    • Brewchin@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2·
      11 hours ago

      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.