Dual monitor glitch, plus a suggestion

Not major problem, just annoying

from GalCiv2 Forums
Hey, playing around with a new dual monitor setup, and noticed a slight bug:

My primary monitor is full 1600x1200, but my secondary monitor is running at a measly 800x600 (but that's fine for most of the stuff I do).

Well, GalCiv2 warned me that it doesn't support 800x600. It did, however, load fine at full resolution on my primary monitor. There probably needs to be something to make sure it's checking the resolution of the right monitor when there's a dual monitor setup.


And now, for the weirdest suggestion you've probably ever heard: Some sort of windowed full screen mode.

This is totally useless outside a dual monitor context, but WoW has it, and I like it. The concept is that there's a mode where the game appears to be full screen, but it's really a window without all of the border decorations.

So, why is it useful? Well, it has to do with the mouse. With a truly full screen application, the screen is literally "taken over" by the application, and as a result, the mouse can't leave the application to the other monitor. You still have to alt+tab to get to other applications, even though they're visible on the second monitor.

With a windowed application, however, I can move the mouse outside the application as I please. I can do something like, say, chat with another person in a chat client or look up game information on a web site while I'm in the game playing it.

So having a windowed application fill the screen allows me to have a "full screen" game where the mouse can leave the screen to another application without all of the fuss of alt+tabbing out of the game.

I know it's the weirdest suggestion ever, and that dual monitors is still quite rare. But something to consider?

And oh, yeah - don't forget that bug.
9,692 views 10 replies
Reply #1 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I run dual monitors at different resolutions, but never get an error message.
But, my secondary monitor runs at 1280x1024, so...

And you can run the game in windowed mode at your full desktop resolution. There will be no borders or title bars, but it will likely minimize and pause the game if you click outside the game's window.
Reply #2 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I've tried it - but it seems to act just like a full screen application: The mouse stops on the border and I have to alt+tab to leave the window.
Galactic Civilizations IV
Reply #3 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Ya, windowed mode is funny with GalCiv2.
I never saw the use of it, because of how it acts. Something just isn't right with it.
Reply #4 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I run similar a setup with slightly different resolutions(1440x900,1280x1024) and have no problem mousing out the right side into the other monitor from full screen windowed mode. This is running XP in dual view mode. A long while back I tried other modes and had some problems, but the dual-view was the way to go with the game at my primary monitor's resolution in windowed mode.
Reply #5 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I run dual monitors at different resolutions, but never get an error message.But, my secondary monitor runs at 1280x1024, so...And you can run the game in windowed mode at your full desktop resolution. There will be no borders or title bars, but it will likely minimize and pause the game if you click outside the game's window.
End of quote


I bolded the text that ends up being true. It won't minimize the game, but the game will stop thinking as soon as you click outside of the game window (off that monitor).

I also run dual screens and it would be nice for a true windowed-full screen as in WoW/EVE but I've just learned to accept a smidgen of screen leftover for galciv2. It's nice to have the game windowed to multi task...but unfortunately it pauses once you leave it so it's not like you can check your march madness bracket while the AI is doing it's turns.
Reply #6 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I've tried it - but it seems to act just like a full screen application: The mouse stops on the border and I have to alt+tab to leave the window.
End of quote


Then you weren't running in windowed mode. If you do set the game to windowed at full resolution, it will behave very similarly to WoW like you requested.
Reply #7 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Did some playing around - and it's not GalCiv2.

It's Xfire.

Somehow, when Xfire is doing its overlay thing, it forces GalCiv2 to become full screen rather than a window :(. Or it just forces the mouse to stay in the window. Either way, it's Xfire that is causing problems.
Reply #8 from GalCiv2 Forums Top

I have a very similar problem. I have a notebook that overheats a lot so i have to put it on a fan when ever i play games. So i hook my laptop to my external monitor. but for some reason, the game crashes every time i try to play. My laptop display is 1366 X 768 and is a 16:9. My External monitor is 1280 X 1024 but is a 4:3. In order to play the game on my external, i have to uninstall and then reinstall using my external monitor. Is there any way to fix this?

Reply #9 from GalCiv2 Forums Top

Delete or manually edit the resolution in the prefs.ini file when you change displays.

Reply #10 from GalCiv2 Forums Top

I had a similar problem where, when I went to windowed mode the menus would become unresponsive.  I unistalled and reinstalled 3 times tried using different directories but it was saving that setting somewhere even after I deleted the directory.  Been wanting to play this game so bad over the last week or so.  This thread helped me fix the problem thanks.