Display corruption when Alt-tabbing

Age of Empires II: DE II - Report a Bug
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:arrow_forward: GAME INFORMATION

:point_down: These details are CRITICAL; DO NOT skip them or your issue may not be reviewed.

  • GAME BUILD #: 73855
  • GAME PLATFORM: Steam
  • OPERATING SYSTEM: Windows 11 (Latest: 22H2 Build 22621.1105)

:arrow_forward: ISSUE EXPERIENCED

:point_down: DESCRIBE THE ISSUE IN DETAIL (below). LIMIT TO ONE BUG PER THREAD.

When alt-tabbing out of AOE 2 DE, display flickers and corruption is present as can be seen in video linked below. Note the flickering and corruption is much worse in reality than the video shows. Occurs regardless of in-game display settings (full screen, windowed or full display). This does not happen in the 10+ other games I play frequently.

:arrow_forward: FREQUENCY OF ISSUE

:point_down: How often does the issue occur? CHOSE ONE; DELETE THE REST!

  • 100% of the time / matches I play (ALWAYS)

:arrow_forward: REPRODUCTION STEPS

:point_down: List CLEAR and DETAILED STEPS we can take to reproduce the issue ourselves… Be descriptive!

Here’s the steps to reproduce the issue:

  1. Open game
  2. Alt-tab out of game
  3. Observe display corruption and flickering

:arrow_forward: EXPECTED RESULT

:point_down: What was SUPPOSED to happen if the bug you encountered were not present?

No display corruption and flickering

:arrow_forward: IMAGE

:point_down: ALWAYS attach a PICTURE (.jpg, .png, .gif) or VIDEO (.mp4, YouTube link) that highlights the problem.

Video link: Age of Empires II Definitive Edition Display Corruption/Flickering - YouTube

:arrow_forward: SPECS

  • CPU: 5800x3d
  • MOTHERBOARD: B450 Steel Legend (Bios Version P4.6)
  • RAM: 32 GB DDR4 3200 mhz
  • GPU: Radeon 6800XT (Driver Version 22.11.2)
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Hi @Michaelan96
This is a really strange issue, I’d say is driver related but it seems that you have it updated. Are you using any kind of overlay that could be interfering with the game?

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No overlays that I am aware of besides steam overlay. I also didn’t have this issue before when using Windows 10, I only upgraded to Windows 11 when I swapped my CPU, which makes me not suspect drivers as the upgrade was a clean install. I will try to uninstall/disable windows Xbox overlay and see if that changes anything.

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Successfully uninstalled xbox game bar using powershell, restarted and retested with and without steam overlay - nothing changed. Any other ideas?

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I recently installed Windows 11 on one of the laptops I play this game on constantly and started having a similar issue with display corruption. I resolved it by disabling optimizations for windowed games on the graphics settings of Windows itself (Settings App > System > Display > Graphics).

You might need to add the AoE2DE executable to the list by changing the option below “add an app” to “Desktop app” and browsing for it (default install path is usually “C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\AoE2DE\AoE2DE_s.exe”)

Settings should look similar to this:

Untitled
Untitled1112×633 52.5 KB

Hope this helps you and everyone else having this issue!

1 Like
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Issue solved after adding exception to AOE. Cheers!!

1 Like