[Freeorion-programmers] [ freeorion-Bugs-3034075 ] Game does not start up full screen

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Bugs item #3034075, was opened at 2010-07-24 18:01
Message generated for change (Comment added) made by nickshanks
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Category: None
Group: v0.3.14
Status: Open
Resolution: None
Priority: 5
Private: No
Submitted By: Nicholas Shanks (nickshanks)
Assigned to: Nobody/Anonymous (nobody)
Summary: Game does not start up full screen

Initial Comment:
When you launch FreeOrion, it starts up in a teeny tiny window. I immediately clicked Options to look for a "make it go full screen" button, or better yet, an "always start in full screen" checkbox. Instead what I found was a pair of pop up menus which offer resolutions for full screen and windowed modes, followed by the unhelpful text "restart in full screen to take effect".

Now, you may not have noticed this, but the user is not presented with any way to choose whether to run in windowed or in full screen when they double click on the application icon! Quitting and relaunching the app after changing the fullscreen resolution pop up value does not help. It still launches windowed.

Firstly, the game should run in full screen by default.
Secondly, there should be a checkbox in the Video Options to switch to windowed mode for future launches.
Thirdly, there should be a menu item, button and command key available to toggle between windowed and fullscreen mode. I humbly suggest ⌘F.

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>Comment By: Nicholas Shanks (nickshanks)
Date: 2010-07-24 22:58

Message:
Somebody who is a competent command line user, such as myself, could do
that (now that I know how: pass a flag—I had tried double clicking while
holding down all sorts of key combos to see if that would do it, but alas
not), however there is no way on Mac OS X to do pass flags to .app bundles
easily as you can to a Windows .exe by creating a shortcut and editing the
shortcut properties. People who are only comfortable double-clicking things
won't be able to run it fullscreen at present.

The developers could ship with two binaries as you suggest (with the
additional flag specified one of the two property lists), but it would
require twice as much disk/download space, as all media would need to be
duplicated as well, just for a minor change in the Info.plist file.

A good way would be as I had tried: look for a modifier key held down
during app launch. (Shift, Control, Option or Command—Option/alt would be
best as the other three can interfere with a double-click). This could
simply do an "override current options setting" so that people who normally
start in fullscreen can easily start windowed if they need to.


As for not starting in fullscreen for safety reasons, as long as you do
not gobble all key presses, and you do not override Command–H (hide
application) nor Command-Tab (switch application), then you can't lock the
user out of the system on OS X. When your application is sent to the
background, then if you have captured the display (CGCaptureDisplay) it
gets released by the OS on your behalf, or if you instead just display a
fullscreen window, hide the menu bar and dock, and blank the other screens
yourself, then you can set a boolean on creating the window which says
"only display this window when the app is in the foreground" (tool palettes
often use this) and the window manager will not blit your window's backing
buffer to the screen. Similarly, the mouse will be re-associated if your
app disassociated it using the
CGAssociateMouseAndMouseCursorPosition(false) system call.

"Switching between windowed and fullscreen while the program is running
is
not possible at this time."
I would have no objections to that holding true during a game, but before
loading a game, when you're at the menu, it does seems a bit harsh. I hope
it is on the TO DO list :-)

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Comment By: Geoff Topping (geoffthemedio)
Date: 2010-07-24 18:47

Message:
To start in fullscreen, run "freeorion -f"

I don't know how things work on MacOSX, but presumably you can access a
console window or edit the application icon.  On Win32, there are separate
shortcut links for windowed and fullscreen modes.  I don't know if doing
something similar (ie. multiple launcher icons for multiple modes) would be
suitable for the OSX GUI, but if so, it could be.

The game is quite deliberately NOT started in fullscreen by default,
because doing so would mean that if there is a crash or hang, the entire
system could become unusable.  In windowed mode, if the game hangs, then
the window can be easily closed as the rest of the OS GUI remains
accessible.

This is also why there isn't a toggle in the GUI to start in fullscreen
mode on future launches.  If something in the configuration was messed up
such that the game hung immediately after starting, but it was stuck
launching in fullscreen mode, the user would be unable to recover without
editing a config file as they would be unable to get into the options GUI
to uncheck the fullscreen toggle.

Switching between windowed and fullscreen while the program is running is
not possible at this time.  Hence the instruction to restart in fullscreen.

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