Video settings seem to be locked now

[CherryBomb]

I noticed a change while in Rainbow in the Dark this life. I have been using an exploit that I found while playing Second Life, about 15 years ago, whenever I play DDO in a low light (dark) area.

The exploit is to change the gamma level from the nominal 1.0 to about 3.0. While this does not provide any additional illumination, it does cause the entire scene to be "lighter". This allows details which are hidden in the shadows/darkness to appear. This change only affects the images on my screen.

This life when I attempted to alter the gamma level in preparation for Rainbow in the Dark, I found that I was unable to make any change. Any attempt to change the gamma would be negated and the level would snap back to 1.0.

Further, I am unable to change any of the three video settings, Brightness, Contrast or Gamma Level. All of these now seem to be locked to 1.0.

This is just an observation. No problem running the game. Just kills my exploit fun.

 

[J1NG]

I just tried modifying settings on my client and there was no issues. Have you recently had any upgrades or updates that happened?

J1NG

 

[rabidfox]

Windows (and different video cards/drivers) messes with that (and not consistently for folks as mine works) when running full screen windowed. A good trick that works for some is to manually edit the gamma setting in your userpref file for DDO. Or temporarily swap to full screen (non-windowed) and gamma should work again while in that quest.

 

[Biggdaddy]

What Rabidfox said.

A trick that works for me, I use the nVidia control panel to adjust the gamma in windowed mode.

LV

 

[CherryBomb]

I just went into the user pref ini and deleted the three lines:

Brightness=1.0
Contrast=1.0
Gamma Level=1.0
(spelling for each)

I started DDO and attempted to change each but found that any changes are still ignored and they snap back to 1.0.

The three lines setting those were restored to the user pref ini after exiting the game. They were added to end of the section rather than their original positions in the file.

 

[Lacci]

I can´t change any of these settings in windowed mode, I can only change them in full screen mode.
But then again, DDO resets them to the defaults every two weeks or so...

 

[rabidfox]

I just went into the user pref ini and deleted the three lines:

Brightness=1.0
Contrast=1.0
Gamma Level=1.0
(spelling for each)

I started DDO and attempted to change each but found that any changes are still ignored and they snap back to 1.0.

The three lines setting those were restored to the user pref ini after exiting the game. They were added to end of the section rather than their original positions in the file.

Don't delete. Try "Gamma Level=1.4" or another value that you want there. For some folks, that keeps the settings correct when launching. You may have to lock the userpref file too so DDO doesn't overwrite it later, that's hit or miss for some folks. It's unfortunately so varied from system to system (based off hardware and driver versions, etc.) that a lot of things people have found works or doesn't work is equally all over the place.

 

[J1NG]

Try restarting your computer. If there was an update of any kind relating to the display or GPU, it can pin them until a restart happens as well.

J1NG

 

[FVSHasBeenEvenMoreGutted]

exploit talk isnt allowed on the forums, you should be banned

 

[Zaszgul]

If you are using AMD's Adrenaline app, you can set up a Gaming profile for DDO to change Brightness dynamically when the game is launched, and have it go back to normal when the game exits (same deal for clock timings and power limit). Or, use the app's sliders to manually adjust Brightness yourself whenever you want (e.g. per quest).

I assume Nvidia has equivalent functionality in their app.

 

[FireEater]

Can also use Reshade

 

[CherryBomb]

I am no so much concerned that I cannot get a better view in dark settings. My concern is that for some reason, I cannot make changes to some settings in the game. Once again, I did not do anything in regards to locking/blocking settings. This seems to be something that DDO caused. I would like to know what is happening. If it is happening to others. And perhaps, is there something that I can do about it.

 

[rabidfox]

This seems to be something that DDO caused. I would like to know what is happening. If it is happening to others. And perhaps, is there something that I can do about it.

It's more likely a windows or video card drive update to your system did it; as one can find lots of examples of this being an issue with multiple games out there when run fullscreen windowed. It's possible a DDO update changed things, but windows/driver update is the likely culprit; I'd check you update history for those and see what's gone thru in recent weeks.

 

[Zaszgul]

I am no so much concerned that I cannot get a better view in dark settings. My concern is that for some reason, I cannot make changes to some settings in the game. Once again, I did not do anything in regards to locking/blocking settings. This seems to be something that DDO caused. I would like to know what is happening. If it is happening to others. And perhaps, is there something that I can do about it.

Modern GPU drivers lock these settings by design, it's not something DDO is doing. Your AMD or Nvidia app is the "correct" way to change this now.

As rabidfox said, if you didn't update your display driver on purpose recently, then Windows did it for you in secret.

 

[CherryBomb]

Why would Winders or NVidia lock in the graphics options of DDO?

https://imgur.com/a/jgIBUpT

 

[Gimp-1]

Why would Winders or NVidia lock in the graphics options of DDO?

https://imgur.com/a/jgIBUpT

Have you tried running in Full Screen (Windowed) mode? I remember that in one setting i was unable to change those settings and as soon as i switched it was adjustable again. YMMV..

 

[CherryBomb]

Changed to Full Screen (Windowed). Does not fix the problem.

https://imgur.com/a/W0gOBeZ

 

[FireEater]

If you plug in Reshade it will automatically load in your settings when you start so no need to keep diddling the brightness/contrast/gamma, whatever it is you're needing to do. Set it and forget it.

For instance here I've only tweaked Gamma and Exposure just a little and that works for me.

 

[CherryBomb]

Once again, the point is not that I want to be making changes willy nilly. The problem is that the game, DDO, has allowed me to do things and then all of a sudden those things stop working. This has happened several times lately. I run everything as pretty much vanilla. I don't run 3rd party utilities. I don't go to weird internet places or do downloads. Just run windows 10, firefox and DDO for the most part. But DDO gets keeps getting screwed up.

I would like to know why things get altered, why user pref ini entries are spontaneously changed. I don't do it. Reporting to DDO central has mostly proved to be fruitless so there is no help coming from them.

I would also like to know how to fix things when they break. Locking down the ini file seems to go against the way DDO operates since the game uses that file to save state.

This particular time, the video setting have been affected. So I am trying to determine what flag has caused the video settings to be locked to 1.0.

BTW, the last problem that I experienced was caused when an arcane setting in the .ini file was changed from "True" to "False". No idea how that happened. I had not even thought about, much less edited that file in about a year.

 

[Phoenicis]

Last time I had this happen (bright/contrast/gamma locked) it turned out to be a video driver update caused the video card software to take control of the settings, locking all the game controls to defaults.

Unfortunately that was years ago and I'm on a new computer due to other issues.

I do recall having to go into the software for the card and tell it to release the controls to the game, but nothing further than that.