Matrix Games Forums

In the future could you PLEASE make games either capable of being windowed or when forced out of game the game can be continued when you return?

This game freezes up if forced out to desktop and I do not see an option to play in windowed mode.

I am just an ordinary user, but I am alt-tabing in and out of the game with no problems.

There is no option to play in Windowed mode.  For what it's worth, I spent about a week trying to convert the engine to support Windowed mode, but it turned out to be a much more significant task than I'd first imagined (and I had imagined that it would be a significant task).  Presently it uses DirectX's full screen mode, which is supposed to maximize drawing speeds; the full screen mode, however, is significantly different enough from the Windowed mode to make it nontrivial to make the graphics routines we're using compatible with both.

It should be alt-tabbing OK.  During testing we had some problems when users had sub-screens open (such as the Military advisor, or, say, a weapons purchase screen) and then he alt-tabbed: sometimes those screens would be minimized to the bottom left hand corner of the FOF main screen, and when one returned to the game one had to click on the minimized screen bar to restore it.  I believe I had fixed all such cases of this, but things like this in Windows can vary from system to system and are not the easiest things for which to verify fixes.  So, if you notice that the game is freezing up when you alt-tab in and out, and you notice that this happens when you have a particular sub-screen open, please let me know which one it was and I can review the resume game / minimize game code for that sub-screen.

Generally, for ALT-TAB you need sufficient RAM too.

I have 1GB of Ram, what happened was my fricking virus protection decided to update and punted me to the desktop. When I reentered the game was all greyed out ( no colors, just grey shades and I couldnt click on anything ( the pointer did move around though but no map scroll)

I solved that problem, I got rid of that Virus protection.

My graphics card is 128 MB and my machine is 2.1 gig ( pentium 4) It is a year plus old so nothing is new on it, but it clearly meets the requirements.

I have 2GB of ram and I have had a couple of instances of ALT-TABbing requiring closing the game...that said, there were also a couple of times where I Alt-Tab back...and no game...but if I right click the icon on the task bar, THEN ALT-TAB, it works...or some such steps like that...so it may not be haning....simply a bit "awkward" to get back to.

I am certainly experiencing difficulties ALT-TABbing.

In fact, after reading your post, Gil...

During testing we had some problems when users had sub-screens open (such as the Military advisor, or, say, a weapons purchase screen) and then he alt-tabbed: sometimes those screens would be minimized to the bottom left hand corner of the FOF main screen, and when one returned to the game one had to click on the minimized screen bar to restore it

It is this I have suffered from, me thinks.

I do a lot of ALT-TABbing when preparing those PBEM AAR's, since I have to go to Paint and MS Word, and I know what you mean about how sometimes the game isn't there in the ALT-TAB box, but the icon on the task bar always brings it back. This is probably a Windows issue over which we have no control. (Eric will contradict me if that's wrong.)

I use 1280x1024 as my desktop resolution. Alt-Tabbing works fine, but of course my desktop is then set to 1024x768. If I switch it manually to the original 1280x1024 and return to the game, then the game is stuck in the top left corner of the screen, with the desktop visible on the bottom and right. The game responds fine, though.


I am a bit disappointed that 1280x1024 as resolution (native for most TFT screens out there) isn't supported by the game. IMHO it would be a great help as it would allow to show more of the map at once (I feel the current map view is a bit constricted and requires loads of scrolling - while the global overview map allows only, well, overview, but no interaction).

ORIGINAL: Twotribes

I have 1GB of Ram, what happened was my fricking virus protection decided to update and punted me to the desktop...

Why the hell do you keep and internet connection and anti-virus software enabled? Especially anti-virus software is a resource hog while playing ANY game.