Compatibility Issue with ASUS RoG Chakram Core Mouse - Loss of Right/Left Click

Right, finally resolved this issue to the point I can play the game, by getting a new keyboard.

Video evidence:

Anyhow, what I’ve finally realised and confirmed today, is that 1 or twice a shard in SR left/right click will be lost and become non-responsive, usually it resolves quickly, but sometimes the only way to solve it is to hit escape. This can be further mitigated by changing the USB port the mouse is in when the game boots, increasing priority in task manager, shifting it off cores 0 and 1 and setting compatibility to Windows 7.

However, per a fuck ton of testing over the last week, this will not resolve it too 100%. Because as I found out today, for whatever reason the Steelseries Apex 7 keyboard magnifies this issue massively and none of the methods above solved it. Just made it occur less often. But by the third set of SR levels, usually these would become barely effective and it was better to quit to desktop and restart the game.

Said testing involved uninstalling drivers, reinstalling them, trying different polling settings and using the repair.exe and deleting and remaking keybindings.txt. And a lot of swearing of course. Plus some percussive maintenance of the mouse, which it survived, so the Chakram gets the angry-bastard seal of approval.

Although I ended up spending over NZ$200 getting the parts to test this, namely a new keyboard and a 2nd hand Logitech G500s mouse.

Can say issue is not present in any other game I’ve played since mid July 2023 and is only really noticeable with channelling builds and ones heavily reliant on Attack Damage Converted to Health. Nor did I ever notice it with my venerable G9 (needs a new flex cable damnit) or the G502 Hero I used for 2 years until the middle mouse button died just after warranty. Which is why I no longer recommend Logitech mice :frowning:

As for why this occurring - I put it down to how ASUS had to implement the joystick this mouse has on it’s left side. Not the most useful thing due it’s poor positioning, but eventually I’ll get a 3d printed extension for it. Anyhow, this makes the mouse count as a controller in Steam. So what I hypothesise is happening is that GD recognises the mouse briefly as a controller and the game thus expects signals from a controller’s triggers rather than those from a mouse.

Not being able to dig into the code, this is the best I can do.

Which it’s why I will now tag @Zantai Mainly because he ignored my DM about this :stuck_out_tongue:

/tut-tut

Because this issue really does need a solution from Crate. As I suspect ASUS is going to keep that joystick as a thing, because it can be bound as 4 different keys or to macros, which is convenient to some players. Especially those with freakishly long thumbs. But I am happy to help be the guinea pig for helping to solve this. Does help I can’t work at present lawl.

As for the Apex 7, already talking to SteelSeries Support about that, which the keyboard change having worked, means they’ve got an issue. Should be an easy-ish fix though in theory, since it due to them bundling some mouse stuff in with the keyboard. Which I need to go make a post on and also link to this post on the ASUS forum to update them.

Right, more stuff to type :upside_down_face: Least the NZXT is pretty solid to type on though, much better than I was expecting for a sub NZ$200 mechanical keyboard.


Edit - fluffing grammer is hards when you’re on your third night of broken sleep :upside_down_face:

Oh yeah, should also attack the builds I used for testing:
Click Registration Testing Builds.zip (3.1 MB)

1’s a EoR/AoM Archon build that’s been my work horse for this. Other’s a semi-spam AoM Sheildbreaker that also shows this issue relatively well that I haven’t yet got around to renaming, because I’ve been neck deep in testing this issue.

Archon’s got a very full stash, because of course I’m going to loot what I can :stuck_out_tongue: Alas the shared stash was too full to fix some of it’s gear

You’d think with an issue like this one of the devs would chime in right? I suspect this is because the lie by a certain troll got believed by Zantai, but that maybe that’s the depression talking.

Anyhow, looking at the game’s files I suspect much of the controller stuff is hidden in the DirectInput.dll, which equals fun trying to edit it to remove game controller support. Definitely can’t just delete it either, as otherwise the game will not load. Fucked if I know how I’m going to edit it to fix this since I know nothing about dll editing :upside_down_face: But me being me I’ll probably end up learning a lot lawl.

Did try turning off controller support in steam, no luck, still ends up with click registration problem cropping up at the worst possible moment.

Oh well, without any support, guess I have to do this my fucking self. Rather typical and rather funny given I’m constantly having to fight to do just basic self-care stuff due to how severe my ADHD has gotten.

Not as blackly farcical as being denied access to funding to pay for my ADHD diagnosis though, because can be having those on welfare getting in debt so they can work now can we? Especially those with ADHD which is known to keep people stuck on welfare due to the dysfunction it creates if it’s not treated.

Right, sleep, before I fall down a rabbit hole of trying to understand the code the decompiler spits out and finding all the tools to mess with it. Still got more testing hardware/drivers wise, but I doubt it will change the current info on this.

On weird thing though, running the game with antivirus on and no task manager tweaks lead to a lot of annoyance with click registration. Weird because that wasn’t the case yesterday, maybe system resource issues?

/shrug

Well, with no help, I am just forced to stumble in the dark looking for evidence by bumping right into it…

And of course, a different mouse doesn’t have this issue, but Ch’thon damn it of course my right hand doesn’t like the Logitech G500S, despite it basically being a G502. Though I suspect it’ll break down after a year of playing GD, because all Logitech mice after the G9s are like that now…

Which I why I will reverse engineer this game, because a) it doesn’t happen in any other bloody game, b) I didn’t spend over NZ$100 on the Chakram just to not be able to use it, c) problem exists, problem will get solved and d) the lack of any response from Crate just annoys me enough to drive this “solution”.

At least in the meantime I can get back to sharpening my build ideas against the lathe that is SR34-35. Even if it’s frustrating as hell sometimes :upside_down_face: And now uncomfortable lawl.

/Bump

Yo, @Zantai get back to me already damn it :stuck_out_tongue: Else I’ll just tag the other devs.

Anyhow, using the DirectInput.dll files from 1.1.1.0 eliminated this issue, but only with the NZXT keyboard and ASUS Chakram mouse. And over 3+ SR runs showed no perceivable sign of occurring. Using the SteelSeries Apex 7 brought it back, but at a much lower level than previously. And this was without any of the mitigating steps taken though. But having to shift the mouse port regularly during play is not the most ideal solution…

So there’s definitely a compatibly issue here with changes made to controller support, but also still some high weirdness with how the Apex 7 and Chakram interact. Need to uninstall the software for both though and use device manager to uninstall these devices so I can see if generic windows drivers help.

I strongly suspect too that a custom DirectInput.dll stripping out controller support or one from the 1.0 release (or earlier) might actually resolve this. But yeah, I need to know what tools were used to compile it, because Hex editing is beyond me without a key and preferably I’d rather find a way to resolve this without breaking controller support.

Oh well, at least I worked out DirectInput.dll actually has some role in this, so I don’t, at this point, need to decompile grimdawn.exe and dig around in it’s code. At the moment :upside_down_face: And confirmed there’s definitely some weirdness with the Apex 7 and Chakram, though need logging tools in game and for windows for mouse/keyboard to do this and fluff knows how I’ll get my hands on those.

So I’ll take my wins when I can lawl.

Apex 7 is definitely nicer to type on that the NZXT Foundation too.

  • Edit 1

/sigh

Damn it, uninstalling all the software and drivers only reduced this issue slightly for the Apex 7 and Chakram. Will do a restart, but I doubt it will have any positive effect. Did have a bunch of hilarious deaths in SR34-35, Lucius will no longer be disrespected now lawl. And those fire traps need a nerf.

Only difference of note is took 3 tries of SR34-35 (died in the boss room 3 times) plus one full 34-35 for it to show up and unplugging the mouse resolved it. Allowing for 35’s boss room and 36 to be done. Should have been worse frankly.

  • Edit 2

Well, well, well, rebooting windows did actually help a bit, with all mitigation steps in place and the old 1.1.1.0 DirectInput.dlls, I managed one run from 30-35 with no L/R drop outs and 2 more 30-31 runs until I had to hit escape in the 3rd run and no further issues after that. Which is much better behaviour than previously. As usually by the time I’d hit 34 I’d have to unplug and replug the mouse.

Still, it eventually gets there and I suspect 3hrs of SR testing will result in having to replug the mouse multiple times, so this still needs to be looked at by Crate, as this bug only turns up after multiple level loads. But also, given the generic windows drivers work better, time to go annoy ASUS. Because there’s probably something on their end, Though out of all the companies involved, they’re most likely to do nothing unless it’s RMA time. Because if you’ve been following hardware news you know exactly how useless ASUS can be lawl.

Hopefully Steelseries can push them to help.

But yeah, like I’ve said time and time again, give me the tools/which tools to use and I’ll muddle away and fix it myself. Because I’ve got all the bloody time in the world and I can at least puzzle out the root cause.

:upside_down_face: :upside_down_face: :upside_down_face: :upside_down_face:

…And just confirmed in more testing today it’s still present with logitech mice. Fucking brilliant.

It’s not as bad as previously, but it’s still noticeable and still annoying to run into when running a less tanky build. Especially noticeable with a more glassy one. Now brought a steelseries mouse to check out if that fixes this. But ffs I wish I was functionally enough to decompile the exe and .dll and dig into the weeds of why this happening.

Alas, I’m slightly less functional than when I made this lawl.

/BUMP

3 different mouse brands, including a Steelseries one and it’s still fucking happening. Finally confirmed it was happening with the Steelseries Rival 5 mouse I got last week (new) and weirdly it still happened even after unplugging and replugging that mouse.

Didn’t turn off windows defender or mess with GD’s priority/core settings though.

So at this point, it’s probably the keyboard that’s at fault. How I know not, only that keyboard has remained constant. Only testing step left is a fresh windows 10 install on a different drive (blaaaah) and trying out a different Steelseries keyboard ideally to confirm if it’s an issue with the Steelseries drivers or it’s just a very weird fault with my Apex 7.

Testing with the NZXT Foundation showed it doesn’t happen with that one. As I tested it out over a couple of days of heavy gameplay, albeit with the usual precautions of priority and core shifts to GD. But my main hypothesis at this point is somehow the Apex 7 is interfering with any mouse used. Could just be a crusty old IRQ conflict, but modern bloody BIOS doesn’t expose that to the end user unless you get a workstation/server motherboard (I’d assume). Since IRQ conflicts are meant to be a thing of the bloody past. But nothing is showing up in the windows logs that would be indicative of an IRQ conflict, since windows logging system is meant to record it in one of the logs.

So all I can go on is something is happening, but what I know bloody not.

Would have preferred to avoid spending ~NZ$230 on mice to get to this point, but that’s weird tech problems for you when you don’t have the knowledge to dive into drivers etc. On the bright side, I now have enough mice to last me 2 decades :3 And spare mice means I can take apart the one in use for cleaning out at a slower pace.

If a different Steelseries keyboard works though, I will probably talk to them about doing a refund through them if possible. Since Mighty Ape will fuck around with the RMA since it’s such a damn esoteric issue that only happens in one game. Will go easier if I can get Steelseries to tell them to do it.