Windowed(Fullscreen). Possible or no?

[Dhalin]

I didn't see it listed anywhere in the options, but is it possible to utilize what many games have today, that is displaying the game in "Fullscreen" that's actually a window which allows you to alt-tab without minimizing the game to a taskbar button?

I experimented with this using another game and I've heard praises spoken about it but I never knew just how awesome it is until I tried it.

Is it possible to do this in Istaria somehow?

EDIT: BTW, anytime I attempt to resize or move the window, Istaria CTD's immediately. If there was a way to tell Istaria where and how big to display the window before booting it up, that'd probably work better than attempting to drag the window around. Some reason anytime I attempt to start windowed mode, it starts halfway down and halfway right putting most of the game's window off-screen... and then it crashes if I try moving it.

Update: Tried setting the Main Window coords to 0,0 and set the size of the window to 1440x900 ... the window "border" appears (which pushes the whole thing down) and the start button/taskbar covers up a good portion of the screen... so apparently that won't work lol. Also noticed the text was distorted for some odd reason.

[Steelclaw]

I didn't see it listed anywhere in the options, but is it possible to utilize what many games have today, that is displaying the game in "Fullscreen" that's actually a window which allows you to alt-tab without minimizing the game to a taskbar button?

Sure. Start in windowed mode, hit the maximize button. Is that what you're talking about?

EDIT: BTW, anytime I attempt to resize or move the window, Istaria CTD's immediately. ... Some reason anytime I attempt to start windowed mode, it starts halfway down and halfway right putting most of the game's window off-screen... and then it crashes if I try moving it.

Okay. That's not fun. Do you wait until the client has settled before you try to change the window size or position? I know that you can crash the client and possibly corrupt parts of the world cache in the process if you resize or drag the window around while it's loading terrain or loading characters.

The "show window contents while dragging" Windows visual effects option might be a factor as well. I turn that off when starting a fresh Windows install. FWIW, I can move and resize the client window without crashing, so it's possible, though I don't know why some people can and some cannot without crashing.

In any case, if your client crashes when you resize or move its window, it's probably going to crash when you alt-tab to/away from it.

[Dhalin]

Can you still alt+tab without the window going to a taskbar button if you click the maximize button?

And I did some more tests, alt+tabbing does not crash the game if it is in windowed mode. resizing/moving it does and yeah I waited until it loaded up.

Fullscreen, I can alt+tab out of the game just fine.

When I click the button to restore it, the screen flickers black for a split second and then poof. CTD, no error message nothing. The game just disappears, the taskbar button is gone, and I don't even get the "Closing game..." screen. Same thing happens if I click the "Fullscreen" checkbox while in Windowed mode and hit Apply in the game's graphics settings.

BTW, this has happened on 6 different computers I've owned. Some had ATI cards, some have had Nvidia cards, some had WinXP 32-bit, one of them had Vista 32, and also three Windows7 64-bit systems, with various versions of DirectX. they all did the exact same thing.

[Malicore]

i run up to 3 copies, and i can do this on any of my 4 computers. no crashing. even with 3 copies running i can resize any or all of them one by one. there's no need to alt+tab if running windowed, since you just need to click the tab on the taskbar. if you click the one that on top, it will minimize. but click one of the other 2 and switches leaving all others open. so alt+tab should do the same thing.

you need to figure out why you're crashing on resize. another way to try and make your screen larger would be to run windowed at xxxx resolution. if you stay below your full screen resolution, you should be able to customize your window through the ingame menu. there's another thread about how to custom set resolution to xxxx

[Guaran]

You can run in Windowed mode, and re-size it to any size including the size of the entire screen. Wait to re-size (drag a corner) until it is all the way loaded.

Alt-Enter toggles between fullscreen and windowed if I remember right. I've been playing in windowed (uncheck "fullscreen" in video options) for many years.

[Tondargaet_Glit]

Like Guaran (and, others), I'm running in re-sized Windowed mode...started it off using Full-Screen, 1920x1080, then turned off Full-Screen and re-sized the window (dragging a corner), then hit the "Maximiz/Restore Down" button (next to the Red X) to get it to fit perfectly, so I can see and use the Task Bar. Other than the usual (at least, so I'm told) occasional CTD or non-response, haven't had a bit of trouble in the week I've been in-game.

[Steelclaw]

When I click the button to restore it, the screen flickers black for a split second and then poof. CTD, ... Same thing happens if I click the "Fullscreen" checkbox while in Windowed mode and hit Apply in the game's graphics settings.

BTW, this has happened on 6 different computers I've owned... they all did the exact same thing.

Can you check out your windows effects? I'm starting to wonder if there's some eye-candy setting that precipitates the CTD. (Stuff like fading menus, show window contents when dragging and resizing...)

Also, how long do you leave the client minimized and how long do you wait for it to settle? It'll blow up as you describe if it starts compositing textures without an active d3d surface.