Question for Alienware owners.

So while visiting a family member, I installed SotA and played my character on their PC. Well, as I was playing, and showing the game to family, they noticed that the colors of their case LED's were changing as I moved from activity to activity, or if I got too injured or died.

Said person is OCD about color and was furious with me, thinking I was intentionally messing with their system settings.

Now, while I thought this was a pretty neat effect myself. I have 2 questions.

1: Were we just imagining it or does SotA actually take control of case LEDs like that?
2: if so, is there a way to disable that?

 

See if unchecking "Peripheral Lighting" (under Options/Video) stops the visuals...

 

That is actually a pretty interesting feature. My Keyboard does something similar in some games.

 

I am an Alienware owner (x51R2).

It is not that SotA is "taking control" of the case LEDs - it's that *Alienware* is doing it because they have partnered with SotA. There are likely other games that, if the owner of that machine played those games, they would discover that the lights change if they played those other games. i.e. it's a "feature"

That being said, if they are freaked out and wish to turn it off, I believe that you can do that. I've never done that myself because:
(a) I also have an Alienware TactX keyboard and when my keys start going red, I know it's time to run, lol, and
(b) as soon as you exit the game everything goes back to whatever colors the machine is set for.

But if someone wanted to turn that off, they should be able to go into whatever they are using to set up their lights and override it. On my machine, I guess that would be Alienware AlienFX. Hope that helps.

 

To turn off the color change, or to reprogram it to react to different game states, start up the program "Alien Commander" which comes with the system. Choose "Alien FX", and make adjustments there.

 

I have an alienware.

You can't hack them because you would need to cut off my thumb so good luck hackers, your ski masks are too weak here.

Anyway if any girls want to group it's cool, I have an alienware.

 

Wait. Your family member owns a alienware rig and wasn't aware that this might happen in different games?
That's, I am sorry, hilarious funny.
It's not like it would be announced on the aw webpage and stuff.
But non the less: No need to worry. It will switch back to normal after quitting the game and he/she can turn of this kind of effects in the alien FX sub menu.

 

I think I disabled the SotA-specific lighting effects back when I started playing, presume so anyway as now I just have my default colours. And as others have mentioned, I understand it's not specific to SotA or Alienware, there are games and there are backlit keyboards some of which will automatically work together unless told not to.