Think about, Alt-F4 is locked out by most games, windows takes like 3 minutes to shut down, and even the off button on most computers needs to be help for a couple of seconds.

What really bugs me is the Alt-F4 issue, why is it that alot of newer games lock the command out? It used to be the definitive "I need you shut down NOW" key, but now everything just ignore it and it bugs me to no end.

Er... cant you just open task manager and kill the game? Also why does it have to be so instantaneous?

IMPATIENCE RAWR

Because that requires C+A+D, then hoping that the taskmanager actually works and isn't overtaken by the game.
Seriously, sometimes the game will stop me and force it to switch back.

It's not just computers -- everything on earth now seems to have "soft" power keys which don't actually cut power but rather trigger the software to eventually cut power when it gets around to it -- tvs, dvd players, cell phones, etc.

oh god so much effort what was i thinking.



Heres an idea: Hit escape, then quit the game.

There's an easy solution to this problem: yank the cord.

Windows literally takes like less than 10 seconds to fully power off for me.

And w/ games I have never had an issue with being able to alt-tab or ctrl+alt+del out (usually the former).

And the power button requiring 5 seconds is by design, it's so stupid people don't press it and improperly shut down the machine but the hard reset is still there if your computer freezes.

Tibby is trying to hide Leisure Suit Larry from his mom

Disagree, almost all games I play are alt-f4able.
Including the very latest I've gotten, being Borderlands and Batman.



Mine takes about 20 seconds to go from me pushing the shut down button to the computer being off.

By the way, if windows "waiting for program to respond" annoys you, I use a bypass for that:
Make a shortcut to C:\Windows\System32\shutdown.exe
Add the arguments: -s -t 00
(this is for windows 7, I -think- xp uses the same)
and voila! you have a shutdown button that kills all programs almost immediately.

lmao

Speaking of crappy computer performance...

Is there any shortcut to go directly to Task Manager?

It takes me a lot longer to get to Task Manager in Win7 going from Cntrl Alt Del > Task Manager. I wish there was a way to just directly open the window. (im sure there is but I just dont know it)

ctrl-alt-esc in vista/7

ctrl-shift-esc

And 2k, and XP, and I think it opened something equivalent in 98/95 as well.



Also, like Connection said, it's ctrl+shift+esc.

When I play any game with a console, like TF2, I always quit by hitting the console key and typing quit.

Actually that's the same thing that Start -> Shutdown does... haha.

If you add an -f to that it'll be faster, but it will force programs to quit and not give them time to shut down properly which can cause data loss.

The reason why some games block Alt+F4 is probably because games treat the keyboard differently from other apps... you can rebind keys at will. So if someone who doesn't know about Alt+F4 binds a different function to each and tries to use them both at once... welll...

Anyways games that allow you to bind Alt SHOULD block the standard keys since otherwise Alt is near useless as a bindable key anyway (tapping it brings up the menu if the game has one, Alt+Space opens the system menu, Alt+Tab task switches out, etc).

All of these will minimize the game if it's full screen, too. Windowed mode is not as much of a problem, since minimizing causes Windows to swap the game's memory out to disk since it thinks you want to put it aside for awhile, while task switching when it's just a window won't do that.

Weird... C+A+Esc seems to do the same thing as Alt+Esc, which is task switch, but a different kind from Alt+Tab (it instantly switches and provides no feedback other than the change in active window). Yeah I know the shortcut for Task Manager is C+S+Esc, I just wanted to see if C+A+Esc did anything... and it does...



You can also right click on the taskbar and click "Task Manager", or Win+R > taskmgr, or make a shortcut to taskmgr.exe.

Oh god yes, thanks for this.
I hate having to babysit the computer when I try and power off, 3 times now I have left and come back with the stupid ****ing thing asking if I want to close X program.

If those 3 minutes of your time are really that valuable, maybe you shouldn't be playing video games and you should be doing those other important things

Oh, shutdown.exe doesn't show the dialogs, so I guess it's not EXACTLY the same. Still similar.

Um, no that already forces programs to quit without giving them time... or maybe it gives them a couple of seconds, but still doesn't require input from me, which is fine =p
The point is for it to shut down without me having to do anything else.

Because you're impatient? :downs:

Just to annoy you, Tibby.

I kinda see what Tibby is saying here.

I've been playing Fallout 3 and it repeatedly freezes on me for some reason and unlike every other game on the planet I can't alt-tab out of it, c-a-d doesn't work, alt f4 doesn't work... etc... I have to cold restart. It's annoying.

Dude, why don't you just close all your programs before you shutdown? That way you don't have to wait to make sure it actually does end up shutting down.

Theres some kind of mod out there that shortcuts ctrl-k to killing it immediately.



Cuz it's not always that simple, some programs run in the background and are forgotten about and -still- demand to be closed the right way. Besides, it's much easier if you have a little shutdown exe that kills everything for you

The kill-at-shutdown function in 7 is pretty rapid ... half the time it kills all my programs before I can hit cancel because I realized I wanted to save some Firefox tabs or whatever.

pfffft, i shut down my laptop the fastest way imaginable, take out the power cord and pop out the battery for a moment

>.>

Hell, a number of times I accidentally leaned on my power button and it goes HOLY **** WINDOWS IS SHUTTING DOWN and I can't cancel quickly enough.

If you really need to shut down in a hurry, how is it so hard to press and hold the power button for a couple of seconds?

What I really hate is when games have cutscenes, and my 'sound louder', 'sound softer' etc. keys cancel the cutscenes... WRAWR!

With some reservations due to good points brought up in this thread, I agree with Tibby. There's one thing that has never let me down when not having the time to tend to my PC to make sure it shuts down, and that's the almighty CUT POWER switch on the back. Only problem with that is, like ZZ brought up, the potential loss of data. Holding down the power button doesn't work on my computer, I wonder if such a feature is integral to a PSU, or to a motherboard?

It's in the BIOS of the motherboard usually.

Yeah, there's options for how your power button works in BIOS. Some even have the option to make it turn off immediately without holding it.

I think the reason games take longer to quit now than they did a few years ago is because more games are written in C++, so there's a lot more busywork when the stack unwinds.

yeah, that giant stack size... what is it in a default MSVC++ program again, 1 MB?

I think it's because there are a lot of vertex buffers/index buffers and textures loaded, and when DirectX (most games are in DirectX anyway) or most AAA games quit, threads need to wait for eachother...

Unwinding the stack itself is not slow. It's the operations that occur during unwinding that cause it to be slow. Such as memory deallocation.

And recompressing the textures -- usually when games start they decompress everything, so it takes a while to put it back the way it was.

Lollers.

I've never encountered such a thing

I hate sound softer and sound louder keys anyway -- I'd much rather have a fooking dial on the side of my laptop or on the front of my speakers than some extra stupid keys that only work if you can manage to find the right drivers in the hellhole that is every manufacturer's web site nowadays.


But I'm not bitter.