[Crash][.802] The game does not works in window mode.

"/w"

from Elemental Forums

I tend to play everything in window mode. Beta 1 worked in window fine.

After Beta 2 downloaded and installed itself, I launched it, skipped intro and went straight to menu, unchecking "full screen" and setting 1280x960 resolution (my favorite with 1280x1024 monitor, does not cover taskbar, allowing me to perform other activities). Then I quit and re-launched.

The game started, but... it was only active somewhere in background. I am using Windows 7 64 bit, and I saw it on my taskbar. When I hovered my mouse cursor over "Elemental" task, smallish preview window appeared, and yellow awesome intro movie ran inside, with magnificient music and all that stuff. Yet, no matter how I tried, I wasn't able to "enter" the game, to expand this small preview window to full, normal game window. And of course I restarted, rebooted and tried all standard procedures, known to common decent user.

After that, I manually edited .ini file to enable fullscreen mode, and game launched fine. Didn't played much, had some crashes at pretty random occurences, will report new crashes later.

My PC is pretty decent. Not latest tech, but definitely is powerful enough.
System specs: Windows 7 64-bit, Core2Duo 2.00, 2 Gb RAM, NVIDIA GeForce 8600 GT. DxDiag.

TL;DR: Please make it possible to play in window mode.

Update: Tried "/w", didn't helped. Will continue battle for window mode, because it seems to work for other people. Still, smells like buggy feature.

2,557 views 6 replies
Reply #1 from Elemental Forums Top

Windowed mode works for me:

Win7, Core2Duo 2.33, 6.0 Gigs RAM, NVidia 8800 GTS

List your system specs / link your DXDiag to give them a better idea of what the problem could be.

Reply #2 from Elemental Forums Top

Windowed mode works for me too - also Win7 64 bit, Intel Core i7, 8G RAM, dual ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4870.

SoundPackager - Customize the Windows sound scheme
Reply #3 from Elemental Forums Top

Windowed mode works for me - Win7 64 bit, 8GB, dual monitors (video playing in other monitor), Nvidia GTX 295.

Driver version: 197.13

 

However, I am unable to move the window around. Can someone else test this after the game has been played for a bit?

Reply #4 from Elemental Forums Top

After Beta 2 downloaded and installed itself, I launched it, skipped intro and went straight to menu, unchecking "full screen" and setting 1280x960 resolution (my favorite with 1280x1024 monitor, does not cover taskbar, allowing me to perform other activities). Then I quit and re-launched.
End of quote

I am experiencing the same problem on my 5 year old XP computer with my 1280x1024 monitor. But I am able to play if I choose a lower resolution like 1152*864

Reply #5 from Elemental Forums Top

However, I am unable to move the window around. Can someone else test this after the game has been played for a bit
End of quote

Try setting the resolution lower than your native resolution.  This makes the title bar visible, and you can move it around.  I think it's a bug with the windowed setting that doesn't take into account the title bar (which ends up off the screen in native resolution).  Figured that out while trying to reproduce the other problem.


The game started, but... it was only active somewhere in background. I am using Windows 7 64 bit, and I saw it on my taskbar. When I hovered my mouse cursor over "Elemental" task, smallish preview window appeared, and yellow awesome intro movie ran inside, with magnificient music and all that stuff. Yet, no matter how I tried, I wasn't able to "enter" the game, to expand this small preview window to full, normal game window. And of course I restarted, rebooted and tried all standard procedures, known to common decent user.
End of quote

I can reproduce this on my 1366x768 laptop when I try to run it at 1024x768 using these settings in Prefs.in (with and without /w):

DisplayWidth=1024
DisplayHeight=768
Fullscreen=0

Note: I'm editing Prefs.ini because the options menus are uneditable due to game issues with my GeForce 310M card.

See if you get the same result?:

  1. Dock task bar to right side of screen.
  2. Make sure your task bar is transparent (e.g. Aero).
  3. Reset to the problem 1280x960 + windowed settings.
  4. Click on the Elemental task bar icon that appears to do nothing.  You should hear the opening sounds.
  5. If you look under the task bar, you'll see the opening window scrolling.  The game window is pushed off the right side of the screen (but is visible because of the task bar).
  6. If you re-dock the task bar to the bottom, the game window moves partway back across the screen and you can move it (assuming the title bar is visible).

You might have to try #1 with other sides.  It happens on the right side for me.

1280x960 produced the same problem just now.  I'm pretty sure it worked when I tried it earlier (?).

Note: If the problem happens once, it seems to recur (regardless of Prefs.ini resolution changes) until you revert to native resolution and reopen the game (this must reset something).

I can't reproduce this on my 1680x1050 desktop (nvidia gtx 260).  Both are running Win 7 64-bit.  So it might be a bug when you window to a resolution that changes only 1 dimension (there aren't any equivalents for 1680x1050), or it might be linked to the other problems the game has with some video cards (like the GeForce 310M on my laptop above).

EDIT: I forgot to mention that the problem only occurred in specific resolutions.  So a temporary workaround is to use a different (smaller) resolution than 1280x960 for now.

Reply #6 from Elemental Forums Top

I was able to reproduce this problem and fix it.  It was a bug in the code that allows you to force Elemental to start in a secondary monitor.