PLEASE include windowed mode.

It pisses the living crap out of me whenever I buy a new game ('indie' or not) and it doesn't support windowed mode.

I (and many others) can't play games while doing other stuff, even if it is just for a 5 minutes crunch because lets face it, almost every game that allows you to alt+tab doesn't work very well afterwards. Sometimes when doing a full rebuild of the code base, I want to play something (they usually take between 4-20 minutes, depending on the dependencies) and I end up resorting to FreeCell since 4 minutes is almost the time it takes for any game to start and take you into a playable state. If windowed mode I could just switch focus on applications. Another thing is in games that are real time but sometimes more time is spent letting the computer build more units, or your citizens to move into your city, i have to watch a screen for minutes without doing anything, rather boring, while I could be surfing the internet or something more useful.

Please, please.... put this in your games, Just bought 2 new games I can't play at work because of this :( don't make me ask for a refund on your next game ! ;p

I never play games in window if they are available in full screen mode, and majority of games I played can survive alt-tab without any problems. Questions of personal taste.

But yet interesting question how many people prefer windowed mode over full screen.

I prefer fullscreen, don't get me wrong, but for 5-10 minutes games (like the small breaks at work) fullscreen isn't really an option...

And the new set of games, most survive Alt+tab (tho many get gfx corruption but still play (with pink trees and all)), some older ones don't at all..

I will include windowed mode in my in-progress game, but I will only do so through manual editing of a configuration file. Why? To be more user-friendly of course!

Most people do not want to even know about fullscreen\windowed, so I'd be wasting their time by even asking them. Just imagine a very novice PC user being asked "Do you wish to run this application in windowed mode or in full-screen". A person very insecure about computers might have no clue what the difference between windowed and fullscreen is. Another person that do know the difference, might still wonder whether one choice is better than the other, or if there are some performance implications in the choice.

I will mention in a FAQ or somewhere similar that there is an easily and well commented config file to edit, but for everyone else, one click starts the fun! :)

But oh, sure, supporting windowed mode is GOOD!

you can always default it to fullscreen and then put it as an ingame option, heck I would even bet most ppl here use windowed mode for development (due to debugging) so why not just add that little extra effort, huh guys ?? you know you want it... ;p

my game is currently full-screen only, but you raise a good point and i've been thinking about making a windowed mode in the options menu at some point.

Having never made a fullscreen game...I always hope that my *next* project will be fullscreen...to have that much control over the display and layout...

On the other hand, we hear from a lot of players that they really appreciate that Artifact (http://www.samugames.com/artifact/) runs like a normal Windows application. It allows them to log in and play while at work, and to do other things while also playing the game.

-David

I HATE full-screen games...they don't work with windowblinds more often than not. And who wants a flickering edge on the screen? Anyway, if there is an option I always change it...too many games crash when a program like trillian forces taking focus and causes the full screen game to minimize.

Its not hard to do. I think all of my games except asteroid miner support it, and StarLines certainly works well windowed and by alt+tabbing.
Makes taking screenshots easier too.

I prefer windowed mode as well, as I do other things at the same time.

One of the registration incentives for Dope Farmer was the ability to use windowed mode...

Also by keeping full screen in the demo mode, I can control what the user sees and make sure he understands all of the incentives to registering.

Alex

I'm behind you 100% Akura. I recently decided to add windowed mode to the game I'm currently finishing up because I decided it would be more office-friendly that way. For some games it makes sense to only have a full-screen mode, but for casual games it seems like leaving money on the table if you don't offer a windowed mode.

No chance from us I'm afraid :( I hate windowed mode, and it confuses non-technical users. When I play a game I don't like to be reminded there's an operating system going on somewhere. I like my PC to behave like a console, and immerse me fully in what I'm doing. And it means we can't do frame syncing so we have to resort to busy-spinning on the hires timer which tends to churn up your CPU anyway if you're trying to do something in the background.

Besides there's almost nothing you can do that won't screw the animation up on a normal system. Unless you've got dual processors. But that'd make you rare and therefore unimportant in the grand scheme of things :P


Cas :)

princec,

You don't have to like an option to make it available to your players.

-David

It's not much use in an action game, is it? In the case of AF, I'd say that if it creates problems to put windowed mode in, don't bother. If it's easy, sure, make it an option, options are good... but I think the game would suffer in windowed mode. Issues with mouse control, damage to overall atmospheric effectiveness, lag/disorientation if you try to return to the action after switching apps or moving the window...

Puzzle games, particularly ones that you can pause or aren't timed in general, definitely need to support easy switching.

Originally posted by Pyabo
How do you handle the problem of multiple bit-depths?

Say all my graphics (and full screen mode) are in 24-bit... am I going to have to account for this when a user wants to play on his 16-bit desktop? Or will DirectX handle this automagically?


Yeah, you have to deal with that kind of stuff if you're using Direct X. You can find out the bit depth and pixel format of the user's screen and initialize your graphics accordingly. I don't know how other packages (MMF, Blitz3D, etc) handle these issues.

How do you handle the problem of multiple bit-depths?

Say all my graphics (and full screen mode) are in 24-bit... am I going to have to account for this when a user wants to play on his 16-bit desktop? Or will DirectX handle this automagically?

Boy, I sound like a complete newb...!

Well allegro is based on DirectDraw 7.0, and I know when some machines don't have an 8bit mode, running it exclusive (fullscreen) fails miserably, but running windowed mode works just fine. It seems to convert the graphics to the desktop color depth.

However this is not true of D3D stuff. My editor still uses d3d, and if the desktop is in 24bit, it wont work. It has to be 16 or 32 bit.

Pyabo, you'll have to account for the bit depth of the users screen and convert your gfx when you load them. DX won't, unfortunately, handle the conversions for you.

Although OpenGL will.

Cas :)

If i remember correctly from my "c" days ;-) although windowed or fulls wasn't that hard to program, switching between them was a pain in the butt in direct-x, because you had to destroy and recreate the dx object to switch from one to another. I personally dislike windowed mode, and switch to fulls whenever i can, however, since blitz makes it so darn easy, I guess I could add some switching :-)

Actually that depends, i may just leave my games in windowed.
Since that's how I program them. I do still have to reload my graphics if I switch between fullscreen and windowed, but it's not a total pain like with c/c++ and direct-x was

Keith

Supporting windowed mode can also be helpful during development (depending on your environment) since it can make accessing the debugger easier...as well as using external utilities. For example, I use Zoomin a lot to make sure a new graphic is lined-up perfectly.

Also, when you're working on something that is requiring you to run and exit the app a bunch, it can be nice not to have to wait for the mode switch to finish on start and exit.

If you're using DDraw, you will need to re-create your surfaces and support converting your source image data to various target bit-depths (e.g., 16 (5-5-5), 16 (5-6-5), 24 and 32...and even 8 if you're really adventurous). It's usually not too hard to add since you probably already have a system in place for handling surface restoration.

Since this thread started with a request, I'll add a couple of related requests. :) I really like it when games support the semi-MS standard of Alt+Enter being the hot key to toggle between windowed and full-screen. I also now really like it when windowed games have a maximize button on the caption bar and clicking it goes to full-screen (assuming your window is not resizeable).
-Scorpio