[MarkusRMD]

Alan Wake PC Support FAQ and Known Issues FAQ


IF YOU HAVE PROBLEMS
We would love our games to work for everyone, and have done our best to test the game well, but the amount of PC configurations makes this a difficult goal to accomplish. We will do our best to help solve problems, but have limited capacity for direct e-mail support.

The following steps have been known to solve most problems (listed in order of complexity):

Verify your Steam cache
- Open up your Steam library
- Right-click on Alan Wake and choose Properties
- Go to the Local Files tab and choose "Verify integrity of game cache".

Update DirectX
Ensure your copy of DirectX is updated to the latest version:
Download Link

Other easy steps...
Particularly if you have problems launching the game, or get errors like DEVICE_CREATE_ERROR - Invalid Call.

1. Delete resolution.xml from c:\users\<userid>\documents\Remedy\AlanWake and try again
2. Test if the game runs in a window. Enter -w1280 -h720 -window to Steam's Alan Wake Properties->Set Launch Options
3. Try starting the game with -nosound parameter

Grass looks "solid" and blocky and not transparent

Please ensure you have AA set to "application controlled" and for AMD Radeon users please go to Catalyst Control Center and change your Anti Aliasing mode to Adaptive Multi-sampling AA.

Overclocked and "Factory overclocked" graphics cards

We've heard many reports of "occasional black screens", random crashes or computers shutting down that have been traced to overclocking or GPU overheating issues. Alan Wake does not cause computers to shut down or reboot - these are typically hard system failures and system shuts down to protect the components.

These issues have been solved in the end by down-clocking the graphics card. We recommend users try this first, this can typically be done in the graphics card drivers' control panel.

Another common issue causing weird graphics problems or computer behavior can be a power supply that's not powerful enough or beginning to fail.

Update your graphics card drivers
AMD Driver download
NVIDIA Driver Download
We have tested extensively with AMD Catalyst 12.1 and Nvidia 285.62 drivers.
Be sure to uninstall the old graphics card drivers before installing new versions. Utilising a 3rd party program, such as Driver Sweeper, completely cleans the remnants of old drivers from your system (use these programs at your own risk).

1. Please read this FAQ to see if your problem has been solved already. You can also try to search this forum for solutions.
   
2. Please post a forum thread to the Alan Wake Help and Issues board - we have an active community that likes to help, and have Remedy staff in hand to answer and help as well. Remember to add your computer information or attach a dxdiag text file with the forum post.

GENERAL

Command Line options

The game supports a few command line options meant mainly for troubleshooting. Warning: for advanced users only. Many of these options can be selected from in-game menus and we recommend doing that instead.

You can enter them by right clicking on Alan Wake in the Steam Library and choosing Properties. From there go to "Set launch options".

-w screen width (e.g. -w1280)
-h screen height (e.g. -h720)
-window force windowed
-novsync disables v-sync
-showfps shows a frame rate counter on screen
-forcesurround forces 5.1 speaker mode
-forcestereo forces stereo (2 channel) speaker mode
-nosound disables sound
-cleancloud deletes your save games and settings for Alan Wake from Steam Cloud
-noblur disables the in-game vector blur
-rigidcamera enables a "more stiff" mouse control/camera mode with camera centered behind Wake.
-directaiming enables a 1:1 mouse control mode (obsolete, recommend using menu option instead)
-sensscale (e.g. -sensscale=0.2) changes the mouse sensitivity scale slider in-game. Useful for some high DPI mice that feel way too sensitive even with the in-game menu set to low.
-freecamera allows toggling between normal and a gamepad controlled free camera by pressing right thumb stick (overrides the camera side toggling). This was added as many fans said they want to see the whole world that we have built. Use at your own risk, do not report any bugs or oddities with the game if this is enabled. Gamepad required!
-locale=xx forces a selected locale. This should not be needed as you can change it from the Game Properties in Steam. Note that you have to have the locale files downloaded from Steam and that happens only when you choose the language you want to play in from Steam.

Enabling Latin-American Spanish Localization

Steam doesn't unfortunately support this language dialect natively in the client, so it doesn't work exactly like the other languages. However, here's a guide how to get it running:

1. Download the language pack from Steam. There's a link in Steam's Alan Wake store page. The package size is about 200MB. The direct download link should be: https://store.steampowered.com/login...se?subid=13685
2. Add a command line option in the Steam UI ( "Alan Wake / Properties / General / Set Launch Options" ): -locale=esm

GRAPHICS

Intel Integrated Graphics

Intel Integrated graphics is not currently officially supported. However, we have checked the game to work visually OK with the latest Intel-provided graphics drivers. If you have visual artefacts (water rendering for example), please upgrade your drivers. In most parts of the game it works "OK", but the performance is not very good. Running the game in a lower resolution (using e.g. -w800 -h600 command line parameters) can help. We also recommend using the VERY LOW graphics setting that was added in 1.06 update.

SLI & Crossfire Support

AMD has made Crossfile profile for Alan Wake that enables 65-75% performance boost, available from their driver download page (link above).

We know that a Radeon 7970 Crossfire configuration can crash/blue screen - this crash happens inside AMD driver and has been verified to be a driver issue. This should be fixed by updating to Catalyst 12.4 or later. Other Radeon cards should work fine with the profile.

Update 1.04 contains support for NVIDIA SLI configurations. It requires an SLI profile update from NVIDIA.

In any case, if you have problems running the game, one of the first troubleshooting suggestions would be to disable multi-GPU mode from your graphics card drivers' control panel.

Multi-screen support

The game supports 3x1 EyeFinity configurations. 5x1 and 3x2 configurations are not supported.

On Windows XP, we recommend disabling NVIDIA nView Span mode as the game may not start. Recommend using Windows's built in "extend desktop" feature instead. If you wish to keep Span on, you can play the game in window by using command line parameters as described above.

Stereoscopic 3D

While there are still some visual artifacts, Update 1.04 contains numerous fixes to make Stereoscopic 3D work rather well. Remedy has only tested the game on NVISION2 3D. To run smoothly we recommend a fast graphics card. Remedy has not been able to test/confirm if we run on AMD HD3D.

3rd party on-screen displays such as MSI Afterburner, Raptr, XFire

We have reports that the game can crash on WinXP when MSI Afterburner with On Screen Display is enabled.

If you have problems, we recommend disabling the applications before running Alan Wake.

AUDIO
Windows XP - IDT audio on Windows XP does not work correctly

It's possible sound is not heard from all speakers. It was noticed during testing that if the IDT control panel is used, it resets Windows speaker configuration to 7.1 - making the game think you have 7.1 speakers. This may make the sounds work incorrectly. This is a driver issue rather than a bug in the game. You can use "-forcesurround" or "-forcestereo" command line options if needed.

CHEATS
Use -developermenu parameter if you really want to cheat, or play in Nightmare difficulty without playing the game through once.


SAVE GAMES and SAVE DATA
Alan Wake saves data to your "My Documents" folder (e.g. C:\Users\<username>\Documents) under Remedy\AlanWake. This contains resolution.xml and if enabled possibly some debugging information. Game regenerates these if not found. Your save game is stored under your Steam profile, and mirrored into Steam Cloud if that option is enabled.

Alan Wake does not store anything in your computers' registry. Steam uses registry to keep track of first time installation information and such issues.


THANKS FOR READING!
Please refer to the General Alan Wake FAQ for generic game information.

This post will be updated from time to time when new information becomes known.

[MarkusRMD]

See http://forum.alanwake.com/showthread.php?t=7978 for update roadmap and update release notes.

Below are FAQ entries that are obsolete due to updates fixing the issues.

Game not proceeding (e.g. after Rope Bridge and Clay Steward in "Nightmare")
This is a bug that can happen after any cinematic, and the most common cause would be if "Sprint" has been bound to Space or Enter, and the player sprints in to a Cinematic.

NVIDIA: Trees flickers after "alt-tab" to desktop and back to game
We are trying to track this down. It seems it's limited to NVIDIA and daytime scenes.

Visual Glitch in The Signal - small black boxes

When entering the bathroom in the beginning of The Signal, after picking up the flashlight, you may see a "line" of small black boxes looking like large pixels. This lasts for a few seconds. It's a known issue that we haven't seen or heard happening anywhere else in the game, and you can safely ignore it.

[MarkusRMD]

Updated LatAm instructions and added info on "No World Loaded" case.

[MarkusRMD]

Added note about overclocked graphics cards and intel integrated graphics.

[MarkusRMD]

added notes about v1.04

[MarkusRMD]

updated faq on multi-gpu - added link to Ati Driver to fix 7900 CF issue.

[MarkusRMD]

updated faq to match 1.06

[Morry]

Updated the content to place more common fixes at the top of the thread.