Hide desktop background doesn't hide the taskbar
Window hooker to run fullscreen programs in window and much more...
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I've been experimenting with DxWnd to upscale old games with perfect 2-by-2 pixel scaling but I'm experiencing a problem when using the "Hide desktop background" option. My current setup is the following:
What I get is a window that's centered (there's a black bar at the top of the screen), 1280x960 in size with perfect scaling but I can still see the windows taskbar at the bottom. I'm I doing something wrong? From the manual description it was my understanding that "Hide desktop background" should be creating black bars both on top and on the bottom of my window to completely hide my desktop but it doesn't appear to be the case. I'm using version 2.03.27. If needed I can provide a screenshot and my .dxw file.
You're not doing anything wrong, this is simply the way "Hide desktop" is supposed to work: masking all but the taskbar.
I just thought that this was a good compromise between the need of a good gameplay "immersion" and keeping an eye on what's going on on your taskbar (notification icons, messages and so on).
But covering the whole desktop would simply require some adjustement in the calculations for the masking black window positions, so if you really need this behaviour, I may add a dedicated flag to get it.
Thanks for your reply and for clearing up how this works. This is actually consistent with the name of the flag, I just hadn't thought about that. I would enjoy being able to hide the taskbar which I currently achieve by making the actual game window overlap it (for example by using a starting Y position that forces it on top of the statusbar).
Hi again.
I made a very quick attempt to produce the wanted effect in next (just published) release v2.03.28 but, apparently and with some disappointment, lowering the y coordinate is not enough: the taskbar overlaps my masking window ...
So it can be done, but it will require some more thinking. Stay tuned....
Thanks, I will! I'll also give a spin to the latest version ASAP.
Today's news: hiding the taskbar is easy. The same doesn't hold to reverting the change and make it reappear. After a few attempts, each one followed by a kill to explorer.exe and its manual restart, I decided to take a break. But we're getting closer .... ;)
Last edit: gho 2015-07-06
Today's news again.
I never dreamt that such a simple request could turn out as a complex issue. Thank you so much for the challenge and fun.
First of all, hiding the taskbar means hiding two different things, the real taskbar and the "Start" button, that are two different objects.
Second problem, the "Start" button is handled differently in WinXP and Win7. Hopefully Win8 won't be different again!
These problems were managed, so now DxWnd is able to hide the taskbar and start button to leave the whole desktop area free for the game.
Now the problems:
When the game terminates, the taskbar has to reappear. If you fail doing this, the only chance to have a working desktop is to kill and restart the explorer.exe process and, believe me, it's not funny.
Unfortunately the game has many different ways to terminate itself, some graceful, some not (whenever there's a crash, for instance), so I'm looking for a reliable way to detect the program termination to ensure the recovery of the taskbar. One last but tough step!
Thanks for the news, I didn't imagine it would be so hard :-)
Hi.
I attached the logic to show the taskbar again to the main window close events, and this seems to work pretty well (but I tested it with 2 games only!).
To avoid problems in case of game crash, I also added commands to hide / show the taskbar to the DxWnd interface (see screenshot), just to provide a recovery tool.
The preview is in the attached archive: mind that I still have to add the flag to turn the facility on / off, so this patched release ALWAYS makes the taskbar disappear and (hopefully) reappear.
I also made no tests at all on Win8. If you could do that, it would be appreciated.
So, enjoy the release and please provide a feedback: if positive, this will soon become part of next official release.
Just one last question:
A' Gabriele: ma perche' mai non ci parliamo nella nostra lingua madre?
Oh, I always forget: for the sake of our international audience!
Cheers ;)
GHO
Last edit: gho 2015-07-09
Let's be optimistic and assume you like it: this new one has the "Hide taskbar" flag in the video options to let you turn this facility on or off according to your whish.
In effect, whenever you kill the application with the DxWnd interface (that simulates pretty well a game crash) you'll have to recover the taskbar by using the menu commands!
Enjoy!
Last edit: gho 2015-07-09
The experimental release was merged into last release 02.03.29, together with a useful fix for D3D7 hooking.
I made a few tests, and I must admit that the "hide taskbar" feature is not at all mature: there are games that whenever switch the video mode or main window get the taskbar visible again, and other games that even if gracefully terminated don't recover the taskbar.
@Gabriele: any feedback will be appreciated....
I'm going to give it a spin tonight if I find some free time, thanks.
(e io che credevo fossi giapponese ;-) )
>> if I find some free time, thanks.
A common problem, sic!
>> e io che credevo fossi giapponese
No, ma un poco poco .... http://www.figlidigaucci.eu/