Switching between windows while playing WZ on Fullscreen

[JDW]

Hi folks,

Some of the WZ gamers on Ubuntu(Gnome) and MacOS platforms are experiencing an issue of not being able to switch between applications while playing WZ fullscreen. And when MP games sometime get hung, they have no option but to hard boot the system.

If any of you would happen to know the best solution on how to switch between applications whilst having WZ playable in fullscreen, that would be very helpful, and I would be sure to pass on the info to whoever would want to know it.

Thank you Warzoners,
JDW.

[Verin]

Yes, I frequently host ans as a host freezing can become a problem at times. I don't think there is a cctrl alt delete function on mac, so perhaps a windowed mode that fills the screen would work. The closest i get is about 5/6 the screen, so when scrolling with the mouse it "falls" off the game and stops. This is a major annoyance along with the inability to view the IRC while in game.

I have tried different resolutions, but all of them either don't fill the screen, or the button are WAY too small. Im not sure if it has to do with me using a wider screen than usual, not as box like.

I use the iMac with a 17ish wide by 12ish tall HD screen (I measured it with a 8 1/2 x 11 piece of paper) So that throws off resolutions in the menu a bit.

[Buginator]

There never is a need to hard reset.
For linux, drop down to a terminal and kill -9 the task. (ctrl+f1 or alt+f1 or ctrl+alt+f1 depending on which distro)
For mac.. dunno.
For windows, ctrl-alt-del or alt-tab ot ctrl+shift+esc and kill the warzone task.

[Verin]

There never is a need to hard reset.
For linux, drop down to a terminal and kill -9 the task. (ctrl+f1 or alt+f1 or ctrl+alt+f1 depending on which distro)
For mac.. dunno.
For windows, ctrl-alt-del or alt-tab ot ctrl+shift+esc and kill the warzone task.

...

[Per]

This has been fixed in our Qt branch, which we will hopefully have ready some time in the future.

[Zarel]

Getting out of a frozen fullscreen application in OS X involves using Force Quit: Option+Cmd+Esc. If that doesn't work, a hard reset is your only option. This is true of any "true" fullscreen application, not just Warzone 2100. Blame Apple, not us.

[JDW]

There never is a need to hard reset.
For linux, drop down to a terminal and kill -9 the task. (ctrl+f1 or alt+f1 or ctrl+alt+f1 depending on which distro)

You're right. But that's not the issue at hand, I should have made it more clearer, my fault.

In Linux (KDE), if you run the game in Fullscreen graphics mode instead of Windowed, then you can't Alt-Tab between applications or even switch between workspaces. To solve this problem for KDE, I changed the Graphics Mode to Windowed, and then in the KDE window settings, I enable the options "Keep Above Others" and "No Borders". This displays the game in Fullscreen. I do this at every launch of the game. This was to make it possible for me to switch between Workspaces (where I have the IRC client running as well). And this also allows me to switch to a console so that I may kill a hung game (Ctrl+Alt+F1 works for killing, but I need to switch between workspaces as well).

Ubuntu Gnome guys have been having a similar problem. So what I was looking for is whether anyone has set WZ to launch on Windowed mode and then managed to change any Gnome window settings to make the game playable as Fullscreen, and if it allowed them to Alt-Tab switching between applications, or at least switch to another workspace.

EDIT: After some searching, I came across a few interesting things,

Is the developer's comment on this page still valid? http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/2205/

And this was actually what I was talking about https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+sour ... bug/537137

[Anarchist]

In GNOME, the ability to switch in and out of full screen is one that's in there by default, the developers of GNOME in their great wisdom just decided to not assign any of the key combinations to it.

If you run the GNOME configuration tool (you can download a GUI version) it's quite possible to just go into keys, then apps, then metacity (the window manager in GNOME) then window related binds and you can then set it.

[Zarel]

Is the developer's comment on this page still valid? http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/2205/

I don't see any developer comment on that page.

And this was actually what I was talking about https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+sour ... bug/537137

We know this.

In case it's unclear, this is a bug somewhere between SDL and your windowing manager. By default, you can't switch out of any "true-fullscreen" application in OS X or Linux (whether or not this is a bug is left as an exercise for the reader), and Warzone fullscreen is SDL fullscreen, which is true fullscreen.

The other option is to use windowed-fullscreen, which allows usage of all normal windowing manager functionality. That's what Qt uses.

A brief overview of the differences:

- Windowed-fullscreen has the same performance as windowed, which is significantly slower than true fullscreen
- You can't adjust screen resolution in windowed-fullscreen
- In windowed-fullscreen, the game is treated as just a normal window, but it fills the whole screen and has no borders
- In windowed-fullscreen, normal WM functionality stays, like activating various commands when moving the mouse to the edge of the screen, which can be annoying in Warzone
- In windowed-fullscreen, other windows can go on top of the game, while in true fullscreen, other windows cannot be seen at all, except in Windows, where they sometimes force the fullscreen app to minimize.

[JDW]

Is the developer's comment on this page still valid? http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/2205/

I don't see any developer comment on that page.

It's displayed between the Rationale and Solution section,

It is not the wm's (neither metacity nor compiz) responsibility to offer workarounds for fullscreen-apps that do not cleanly integrate with the desktop environment they're are ported to. I'm only talking about native games. OpenSource games have to be fixed upstream to cleanly integrate with the platform they are intended to run on. ClosedSource/commercial games... well we're out of luck and only can kindly ask the developing company to improve their integration with the GNOME-desktop. As much as I recommend the "it just works"-way, I draw the line at the point where users demand workarounds to be added to games work. With that approach the game-developer will never be forced to fix the bugs in their own code-base.

I think this is mainly communicating with upstream game-developers to (either OpenSource or ClosedSource) improve their integration with the GNOME desktop and help them doing so with advice or code-contribution, than for Ubuntu developers to add workarounds to metacity or compiz to make games work cleanly.

And this was actually what I was talking about https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+sour ... bug/537137

We know this.

That's good to know. I posted that link just to make myself clearer to Buginator. But thanks anyway for your reply.

[Per]

- Windowed-fullscreen has the same performance as windowed, which is significantly slower than true fullscreen
- You can't adjust screen resolution in windowed-fullscreen
- In windowed-fullscreen, normal WM functionality stays, like activating various commands when moving the mouse to the edge of the screen, which can be annoying in Warzone

None of these are necessarily true, and I would love to see some data to back them up. The first does not hold for any modern setups I've tested recently. As for the second, it is true that Qt does not have support for changing screen resolution, but I'm working on code to do that. It is not a problem with the fullscreen mode as such. I do not really have any idea what you are referring to with the third point, as I have never seen that issue anywhere.

[cybersphinx]

- Windowed-fullscreen has the same performance as windowed, which is significantly slower than true fullscreen
- You can't adjust screen resolution in windowed-fullscreen
- In windowed-fullscreen, normal WM functionality stays, like activating various commands when moving the mouse to the edge of the screen, which can be annoying in Warzone

None of these are necessarily true, and I would love to see some data to back them up. The first does not hold for any modern setups I've tested recently.

I guess that's mostly the case with broken compositors. Apart from that, "real" fullscreen could make the blitting step a bit faster (draw to the frame buffer directly instead of copying window contents). But that's just a on-card memory copy that should be fast anyway.

I do not really have any idea what you are referring to with the third point, as I have never seen that issue anywhere.

Try running fvwm with

Code: Select all

DeskTopSize 3x3
EdgeScroll 100 100

for example (with qt-warzone on the middle screen), and I think some of the fancy modern Gnome stuff or something does stuff when you move your mouse into corners.

[Zarel]

None of these are necessarily true, and I would love to see some data to back them up. The first does not hold for any modern setups I've tested recently. As for the second, it is true that Qt does not have support for changing screen resolution, but I'm working on code to do that. It is not a problem with the fullscreen mode as such. I do not really have any idea what you are referring to with the third point, as I have never seen that issue anywhere.

Yeah, I was talking about OS X and Windows, in which it is definitely true.

As performance differences, perhaps it's not as noticeable in Linux, but it's non-negligible in Windows: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3046 ... creen-mode

As for adjusting screen resolution, that can screw with desktop icon locations, and I'm uncomfortable with the idea of adjusting someone's desktop screen resolution when they only wanted to adjust the resolution of a single game (StarCraft 2, for instance, refuses to adjust resolution if it's in windowed-fullscreen, and I'm sure they have a good reason for that).

As for screen-edge functionality, cybersphinx has an example that should work in Linux. In OS X, screen edge behavior can be customized in System Preferences, and in Windows, many IM clients can be set to hide/unhide themselves when the mouse is close to a screen edge.

[yminus]

To solve this problem for KDE, I changed the Graphics Mode to Windowed, and then in the KDE window settings, I enable the options "Keep Above Others" and "No Borders". This displays the game in Fullscreen. I do this at every launch of the game.

You don't have to do this each time you launch the game, instead you can tell KDE to remember your settings:

• Start the game in window mode with the full resolution of your screen (in my case 1280x800)

  Code: Select all

  warzone2100 --window --resolution 1280x800

• Then right click the window bar on top to open its context menu (or hit Alt+F3).
• Navigate to (sry. my desktop is in German, maybe someone with English desktop can add the official English terms.) "Erweitert..." (Eng. = more/expanded settings) -> "Spezielle Einstellungen für dieses Fenster" (Eng. = special/custom settings for this window).
• Choose the tab "Geometrie" (Eng. = geometry).
• tick "Vollbild"/"Full Screen" and choose the value "Bei Initialisierung anwenden" (Eng.= apply initially) and check also the tick at the end of the line
• Choose the tab "Persönliche Einstellungen" (Eng. = personal/custom settings).
• tick "Ohne Umrandung"/"No Borders" and choose the value "Erzwingen" (Eng.= force) and check also the tick at the end of the line

KDE Desktop also provides actions when moving the mouse to the edges of the screen (e.g. I get an overview of all open windows when pointing the mouse to the upper left corner). However this can be deactivated in the KDE settings (sry. German again) "Verhalten der Arbeitsfläche" (Eng.= desktop behavior (?)) -> "Bildschirmränder" (Eng.= screen edges).

Btw, I don't experience any performance penalties compared to real full screen mode.

[milo christiansen]

As for adjusting screen resolution, that can screw with desktop icon locations

Quite a few games can do that, but I use fences so I don't notice it any more

As for screen-edge functionality

That explains why object dock acts funky with warzone (and a few other games)

One thing: quite a few games do odd things when run full screen on the primary monitor of a multi monitor computer. Is this because of the true full screen thing?