Keyboard "forgets" held down keys

[halogene]

Hi everybody,

I am almost sure this isn't a Nexuiz problem but maybe someone here knows how to fix it anyway.

The following happens: the game is running beautifully except for the fact that every now and then the game seems to forget I have held a key pressed. I usually move a lot and it happens that a movement key keeps being pressed down for more than ten seconds with lots of other keys pressed and released during that same time. This keyboard amnesia is especially annoying if I am trying to bunnyhop, the game suddenly forgets the forward movement key is pressed and I slow down or stop jumping at a spot. This is making my bunnyhopping style more silly than it was intended to be (well ok my sponsors might like that but that is not the point).

I checked the keyboard settings and tried to turn on/off the key repetition, but that doesn't help too.

What bugs me most is that the game runs without problems on my Windows installation on the same machine, making me boot up Windows more often than Linux these days.

Any suggestions?

Oh, I almost forgot: the problem appears when running Nexuiz on Ubuntu 8.04 (Hardy).

[esteel]

Several ideas.. there seem to be problems with the gnome-screensaver kick in and grabing input focus. Usually i noticed a short flash as the screensaver starts notices you are doing stuff and closes again.

An other idea is simply bad keyboards. Depending on how keyboards are build you can only press some keys at once. For example on lots of keyboards i had problems with moving forwards, strafe left, switching to nexgun and jumping at the same time Only a few keyboards are build in a good way allowing you to press many keys at once.

[halogene]

well I already turned the screensaver off as it was indeed stealing focus. But when the screensaver stole focus I couldn't even move with the mouse anymore until I respawned.

As for the keyboard I guess that shouldn't be the problem. I can play Nexuiz on the same machine when I boot up the Windows installation - no dead keys or whatsoever.

Thanks for the tips though...

[divVerent]

You may have some accessibility feature on. Try moving the keys you hold for long away from the shift/ctrl/alt/win/caps keys.

[halogene]

hmm I stumble over this issue most of the time when my forward movement becomes interrupted, and "move forward" is already assigned to "e". So the accessibility tools should not be the problem... As far as I can see, I even turned them off anyway.

Thanks though...

[dp]

hmm I stumble over this issue most of the time when my forward movement becomes interrupted, and "move forward" is already assigned to "e". So the accessibility tools should not be the problem... As far as I can see, I even turned them off anyway.

Thanks though...

I get this same exact problem in Urban Terror, which is ioquake3 engine. There's no bunny hopping but during extended jumps (strafe and walljump combos) it will suddenly lose the down event on my forward key (which is also E - I don't understand these WASD ppl at all) - I have to let it go then hit/hold it again with no other keys down or it never gets the key. Since it's predictable online and I haven't it offline w/ bots, I think it's a bug in server code for ioquake3. Perhaps something similar is happening here? Or is it offline as well?

[halogene]

I have to check tonight but I believe it happens no matter whether I am playing on- or offline. I don't play offline much However, if I remember right, this occurred only after upgrade to Ubuntu Hardy, as I played through the solo "campaign" completely under Ubuntu Feisty or Gutsy and didn't notice any such behavior. Of course, I didn't know about bunny hopping at that time... nor laser jumping... nor anything at all, it seems to me

Maybe I should make a clean reinstall anyway, the dist-upgrade produced some weird behavior also in other aspects. Or maybe I am switching to Gentoo... (dreaming of hours days weeks spent on compiling the kernel and configuring fancy config files)