Updated 10/17: HP Closing after Launching from Steam OR Being Unable to Alt-Tab OR Can't Bind Opportunity/Inventory Keys

For posting information about any bugs, crashes, or graphical issues you encounter while playing House Party. Not the place for general, gameplay, or spoiler-related questions.
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eekdon
Posts: 1546
Joined: Tue Feb 13, 2018 4:29 pm

Updated 10/17: HP Closing after Launching from Steam OR Being Unable to Alt-Tab OR Can't Bind Opportunity/Inventory Keys

If you are not having either of the exact issues listed above (or do not have the game on Steam), then this post does not pertain to you:

Anyone having either of the above issues, please go to Steam, find House Party in your Library, right click on it, select Properties. Then once the Properties window appears, go to Betas. Please select "testing" from the dropdown list, and then hit Close (no code is needed). Your game should update to a testing version (it will show the word "testing" next to House Party in your library) we have active right now that includes changes that hopefully will fix these issues for you.

Note that once we confirm that this testing branch helps folks out (without causing more issues), we will push the update "Live" and you should swap back to the NONE options in the Beta tab. Be advised that at no point do beta/testing branches on Steam contain extra content or anything like that; they exist purely for this purpose or in the case of older game versions, to roll back the game version for using old saves or old custom stories.

UPDATE: we added a few more tweaks to the "testing" branch a few minutes ago that should actually let the fixes work for ALL users. Please let the game update again via the "testing" branch/beta selection and then play the most recent update. You may also need to reconfigure your in-game graphics settings due to the changes we implemented. Thank you.

Update 10/11/18: FYI to anyone else experiencing similar issues we're currently working with Unity on this. Seems to be mostly affecting AMD card users for some reason. The only way I can reproduce anything similar is to have my laptop's GPU set to my NVIDIA card as the default, and then navigate to the Steam folder for HP, right click HouseParty.exe, and force it to run with the integrated GPU. Crashes after about 5-6 seconds of a black/blank screen and the game "disappears" right afterwards.

SO, if you have an integrated GPU or more than one GPU installed, please check your default GPU settings in the GPU control panel. Make sure House Party has no special settings forcing it to run with anything but your dedicated GPU. Do not try to open the game directly from the Steam folder/SteamApps .exe file.

Can't promise a fix for everyone, especially those who do not meet our minimum system requirements, but we'll keep you updated with whatever we find!

Update 10/17: Everyone make sure you update Steam, as there was a known issue with Steam causing crashes for AMD users on Windows systems:

https://store.steampowered.com/news/44791/
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JohnC998
Posts: 39
Joined: Wed Feb 21, 2018 9:32 am

Re: House Party Closing after Launching from Steam OR Being Unable to Alt-Tab OR Cannot Bind Opportunity/Inventory Keys

Hello. Followed your instructions but nothing has changed:

1) House Party launched to the Main Menu, full NPC animation.
2) Specify Original Story and click "New Game"
3) Much disk activity which eventually stops after about a minute.
4) Windows goes to black and spinner shows input not allowed.
5) Clicking House Party window changes window from black to gray.
6) Must now kill the task.
billtolliver
Posts: 10
Joined: Sat Sep 29, 2018 12:08 am

Re: House Party Closing after Launching from Steam OR Being Unable to Alt-Tab OR Cannot Bind Opportunity/Inventory Keys

yes testing doesn't work. had same issue. screen goes from black to grey. game was working perfectly fine for me until new patch I can go back to 10.4 and it works fine but new patch just doesn't work at all
eekdon
Posts: 1546
Joined: Tue Feb 13, 2018 4:29 pm

Re: House Party Closing after Launching from Steam OR Being Unable to Alt-Tab OR Cannot Bind Opportunity/Inventory Keys

JohnC998 wrote: Mon Oct 01, 2018 2:26 pm Hello. Followed your instructions but nothing has changed:

1) House Party launched to the Main Menu, full NPC animation.
2) Specify Original Story and click "New Game"
3) Much disk activity which eventually stops after about a minute.
4) Windows goes to black and spinner shows input not allowed.
5) Clicking House Party window changes window from black to gray.
6) Must now kill the task.
Alright thank you, and this happens consistently *every time*?
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eekdon
Posts: 1546
Joined: Tue Feb 13, 2018 4:29 pm

Re: House Party Closing after Launching from Steam OR Being Unable to Alt-Tab OR Cannot Bind Opportunity/Inventory Keys

billtolliver wrote: Mon Oct 01, 2018 3:28 pm yes testing doesn't work. had same issue. screen goes from black to grey. game was working perfectly fine for me until new patch I can go back to 10.4 and it works fine but new patch just doesn't work at all
Is there any sort of flickering before it goes to gray? Is it a solid color of gray like...a gray cloud, or is it a very dark gray/near-black as if the monitor is getting signal but not displaying anything?
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billtolliver
Posts: 10
Joined: Sat Sep 29, 2018 12:08 am

Re: House Party Closing after Launching from Steam OR Being Unable to Alt-Tab OR Cannot Bind Opportunity/Inventory Keys

its not the monitor its the game it just goes grey and says House party not responding exe
JohnC998
Posts: 39
Joined: Wed Feb 21, 2018 9:32 am

Re: House Party Closing after Launching from Steam OR Being Unable to Alt-Tab OR Cannot Bind Opportunity/Inventory Keys

Yes, erasmus, *every time*. After clicking "New Game," "Loading..." screen shows for about a minute then goes black and shows the no input spinner. Clicking brings the solid grey screen. No flickering noticed on any screen.
eekdon
Posts: 1546
Joined: Tue Feb 13, 2018 4:29 pm

Re: House Party Closing after Launching from Steam OR Being Unable to Alt-Tab OR Cannot Bind Opportunity/Inventory Keys

billtolliver wrote: Mon Oct 01, 2018 8:40 pm its not the monitor its the game it just goes grey and says House party not responding exe
We have no control over your monitor. That sounds like a negative interaction with a graphics driver.
vrossi wrote: Tue Oct 02, 2018 8:46 am There is no flickering it just goes full black..
JohnC998 wrote: Tue Oct 02, 2018 9:26 am Yes, erasmus, *every time*. After clicking "New Game," "Loading..." screen shows for about a minute then goes black and shows the no input spinner. Clicking brings the solid grey screen. No flickering noticed on any screen.
Alright so this thread on the Steam forums has a large set of troubleshooting steps I'd like you to step through. So far two people have gotten the game working again on the testing branch with these instructions, so please review and follow them carefully (beginning to end) and look throughout the comments for anything that catches your eye in regards to what you're experiencing:

https://steamcommunity.com/app/611790/d ... 789/?ctp=2

At this time we don't have a solid ID on what the issue is, or if it's even something we "did" or can fix. I go into details about why that is in the link above, and in my comment in this thread regarding a request for a "patch fix" here (right now the testing branch IS our patch fix):

https://steamcommunity.com/app/611790/d ... 742948916/
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