Advertisement In the year 2012, software developers should not even be considering creating user interfaces that don’t allow for the utmost level of control from us, the user. The most painful and taboo of this sin is the fullscreen application. For those of us who consider ourselves to be productive (or ADD), being forced to run a program in fullscreen mode is a complete cramp on our style. Most glaringly, this occurs in. I’m sure many games look their absolute best when viewed at a fullscreen resolution, but it shouldn’t be on anyone but the user to determine what sort of experience they want to get from the game. If you want to casually play a game in a windowed mode where you can watch other things and talk to friends through email or IMs, you should be able to.
Certain games (most often, ones made years ago) won’t allow us to do that. I’ll try to fix that problem for you and open you up to two different ways that you can manipulate your games (and other programs) into allowing you to run them windowed. DXWnd simply allows you to run DirectX applications, that don’t support a windowed mode through their interface, in windowed mode. DirectX and OpenGL are the two major engines you’re going to run into when playing a PC game, and DirectX is the more common of the two. Upon downloading and unzipping the archive, you’ll already notice a default entry set up.
DXWND for forcing windowed mode Trinus Forum › Forums › Games › DXWND for forcing windowed mode This topic contains 0 replies, has 1 voice, and was last updated by Blyss Sarania 4 years, 8 months ago. Find the shortcut for the computer game you want to play in windowed mode instead of full screen. Right click on the shortcut and select Properties. In the Target field, add -window at the end. Alternatively, press Alt+Enter while in game. If running Windows 7, right-click on the game shortcut and run it as administrator.
Apparently, Michael enjoys MapleStory. That second entry (Final Fantasy VIII) is one I’ve set up on my own. All you’ve got to do is go into the Edit menu and click Add. There’s a lot that you can configure here, but none of it is required (or recommended). If you know the application runs in 256 colors, just enable that option. If you are aware that DirectInput is hooked, tick that box. I’d recommend allowing DXWnd to automatically detect the version of DirectX to hook.
It does a good job. From there, you can just double click the path of the application back in the main window, or go to Edit then Execute. If all went well, your color scheme may change a bit or your screen might flicker, as DirectX adjusts, and then your application should launch. Not only am I finally able to play FF8 in a window on the PC, but the smaller resolution of the window actually makes the game look a whole lot better. D3DWindower, originally the, has been translated to the English language. It differs very sparingly from DXWnd, and I only recommend trying D3DWindower if DXWnd didn’t work for you. The process is really the exact same.
You’ll want to click the plus sign, which will bring up a prompt to browse for the EXE you want to emulate through D3DWindower. Navigate to it, select it, and it’ll be added to the list. From there, just select the application in the window and hit the start button. The settings in D3DWinodwer are a little deeper than DXWnd, but you won’t need to bother with most of them. The translations aren’t perfect in this program, but there’s enough English so that you’ll be able to navigate around without going crazy. Know of a tool that will allow us to run OpenGL applications as windowed?
Share that with us in the comments! If you need any assistance with these two programs or have anything else to ask or contribute, drop me a comment below and I’ll be sure to get back to you.
EDIT SUMMARY OF SOLUTION/PROBLEM: So it turned out that my somewhat old screen performs better with even older cables! I went into my hardware shack and picked up a few VGA and DVI cables, DP-cables sadly don't work on my pc (as of yet). In a nutshell: VGA cables allow me to minimize MapleSaga. I believe this is related to VGA allowing 60Hertz whereas DVI does not, additionally VGA allows for many more resolutions than DVI. DVI for example does not allow my monitor screen to go all the way down to 800x600. Whichever the cause, the effect is clear: TLDR: VGA-cable allows me to minimize MapleSaga, DVI does not - On the Dell 2208WFP Screen.
From the Frying pan into the Fire? However, this DOES come with another problem: VGA does not allow full-screen maple, it stops recognizing my PC entirely. So my screen basically just goes into sleep-mode, UNTIL I press alt-enter, force the game to minimize and then my screen recognizes my PC again. I believe the problem is defintely located at my screen itself, the shifting gears-thing seems to be messing things up.
Windowed Mode Key
So my screen is still doing something wrong, but it is hard to find what. As of now, I would say the problem is solved (this part was added to the initial post, if you are interested in the chronological order; read on) Original Post My Problem My problem is that in-game I cannot switch to Windowed game mode. By selecting it in the Menu, neither by using Alt+Enter. However, I came across this post about changing my screen's refresh rate to 60Hz.
In fact, I've even spoken to the original author of that comment but changing the refresh rate did NOT work. Hence my seperate post, because it seems to be a different issue.
Problem Specifics Furthermore my problem seems a little different from what I've read on the forums here, because I have NO error sound whatsoever, the game simply does NOT respond. There is no reaction at all when I press alt+Enter, and when I manually select windowed mode, press OK, nothing happens and when I open the menu, surprisingly, neither options are checked. But things get even more confusing, when I add that in a different private server -which I've played on this same computer, same screen, same patch, less than a week before Saga- windowed mode worked. I am playing for about 1 or 2 weeks now and windowed mode did not work from the start. I am totally clueless. Might be completely unrelated, but when I press alt-enter all that I see is this little list of stats in the top-right corner of my screen.
Dxwnd Windowed Mode Games
Such as this: Tech Specifics Im using a screen with a 1920x1280 resolution if that influences anything, and I am running on Windows 8. I kinda doubt posting a whole DxDiag would be useful but, let me know if so. Something peculiar is that my screen does not like switching to Saga's screen. When alt-tabbing, the screen goes black and it shows the DVI-plug image in the top left of the screen.
Cannot make a screenshot of this for whatever reason but it looks like that: Hence that is also the plug that I use for my screen towards my PC. Not sure if using DVI, VGA or HDMI has any influence on this at all. The screen I use is the -rather old- Dell 2208WFP.
EDIT This sign on the top-left of my screen along with wacky alt-tabbing was ALSO the case in the other private server, yet there windowed mode worked. Making it quite puzzling. Attempted Solutions So thus far I've tried the following things: - Changing screen's refresh rate to 60hz - Changing graphics card refresh rate to 60hz - Making 100% sure I'm running it in compatability mode #JustWindows8Things - Running it in Windows 97/2000 mode (and tried 95 too) - Full re-installation. EDIT - Made MapleSage.exe & the folder no longer 'Read Only' EDIT - Changing Screen resolution to 1920x1080 (and others) EDIT - In MapleSaga.exe's Shortcut properties I selected; Run: Minimized. EDIT - Updated my drivers once again EDIT - Attempting to use DxWnd to bypass the problem or point to a cause. EDIT - VGA-cable allows me to minimize MapleSaga, DVI does not - On the Dell 2208WFP Screen. Status: Resolved.
Any more suggestions/questions? Cheers, Aedrys. Click to expand.Thanks for yet another attempt, here we go; DxWnd Usage Now it takes an interesting turn once more; Here's what it looked like when I used DxWnd succesfully: (Yes, Mass Effect 2 is an awesome game) Yet when I try this with MapleSaga, which you see in the list there. It smacks the full-screen into my face, even though it works perfectly fine with something like Mass Effect 2. DxWnd forces ME2 upon launch into that windowed mode. But for whatever reason this does not work with MapleSaga. Attempted to change the DirextX settings within DxWnd; Dx8, Dx9, etc.
Neither worked. Another solution according to DxWnd's solutions, is that I would have to clear all the compatability settings from MapleSaga.exe. Now this is a little problematic, because unchecking the compatability results in an error when used with DxWnd: Only direct difference I could find between the executables of these two games (MapleSaga.exe & ME2.exe) is that ME2's.exe-file was running on a different compatability mode (Windows Vista for whatever reason), but no matter which compatability mode I used; result was the same. With some I get an error code for MapleSaga, with some Saga 'works'. But with all of them ME2 was forced into windowed mode, and Saga wasn't.
I am thinking of attempting to use DxWnd with another game that forces my resolution to switch, but I am not certain which one does this as well. Thanks for the ideas thus far, Status: Unresolved. Heyhey, Sad to hear none if the suggestions worked so far. I am pretty much depleted of suggestions, but one. But it is also the most drastic one, yet it will work 100% guaranteed. It is the horror we know as a Virtual Machine Basically it lets you run a computer, on your computer, and since you can customize most options, you can just give it a 800x600 screen, and run maplestory fullscreen Even better, some Virtual Machine applications let you drag-to-resize the window, which may be usefull when you have some insanely large screen where an 800x600 window just is too small.
So, I will attempt the Virtual Machine emulating truly as a last resort. Thanks for that one. Progress: 1) Bit of backwards, but alas.
As of now, I noticed that my screen refresh rate did not change at all, eventhough my Nvidia configuration panel was saying it was running on 60 Hz, my screen locked itself on 59 Hz. Even when selecting the option to use 60, it would just revert itself to 59, while showing me that I´ve changed it.
So only by going back into the setting I would see that it is actually still 59 on my monitor (even though my graphics card supports up to way higher). So I actually had to disable Nvidia's SLI-setting, allowing me to customize my monitor's settings (disregarding its lifetime). So I enhanced to limit to 61 Hz, and then the option 61 Hz shows up in my monitor settings and actually works when selected. Whereas 60 Hz is still being automatically reverted. So on 61 Hz (Monitor & Graphics card) windowed still does not work, on 60 Hz I apparently did not test yet.
2) Thursday I am gonna test swapping my DVI-cable for a VGA-cable, seeing if that works. Apparently this can influence my Hz-settings of my monitor and may allow me to truly test it on 60Hz and to deny the possibility that my cable is physically influencing this problem. 3) Additionally, I did find a post on a forum of a different private server with someone describing EXACTLY my problem; from the settings being unchecked in maplestory's settings all the way to the little screen stats showing up in the corner. However, for this person DxWnd DID solve the issue, which is very puzzling to me. I am still suspecting some compatability issues to be skewing the results, but I am not certain.
I am getting the feeling that more than just one problem is playing a part here and they are interacting which each other, disabling the usual fixes. I'll keep my progress up to date here. More Progress: Problem found? Okay so I think I am getting close to atleast isolating the issue. DxWnd was a great help because it showed me which games would be able to go windowed and which wouldn't. Switching Gears: DVI As shown in the pictures, ME2 was fine in DxWnd's windowed more, without even having to touch almost any of the settings.
Yet I finally found what I was looking for; another game that makes my screen switch gears. With switch gears I mean what I illustrated in my original post where my screen goes black when I open up MapleSaga (or alt-tab it) and shows the little DVI-symbol in the left-top corner of my screen. For future refference I call this switching gears. So I found another game that makes my screen switch gears upon opening it; ESO (Elder Scrolls Online). Upon launch the screen goes black for a second, shows the DVI-symbol and then starts the game normally; my screen switches gears so to speak. And guess what, this programm ALSO did not work with DxWnd. Most likely this means that the games that make my screen switch gears, are the games that don't work in windowed mode for DxWnd Currently I am testing all sorts of things to modify ESO within DxWnd, and change settings to see if I can isolate which problem is making my screen switch gears in the first place.
Resolved So it turned out that my somewhat old screen performs better with even older cables! I went into my hardware shack and picked up a few VGA and DVI cables, DP-cables sadly don't work on my pc (as of yet). In a nutshell: VGA cables allow me to minimize MapleSaga. I believe this is related to VGA allowing 60Hertz whereas DVI does not, additionally VGA allows for many more resolutions than DVI. DVI for example does not allow my monitor screen to go all the way down to 800x600.
Whichever the cause, the effect is clear: TLDR: VGA-cable allows me to minimize MapleSaga, DVI does not - On the Dell 2208WFP Screen. From the Frying pan into the Fire? However, this DOES come with another problem: VGA does not allow full-screen maple, it stops recognizing my PC entirely.
So my screen basically just goes into sleep-mode, UNTIL I press alt-enter, force the game to minimize and then my screen recognizes my PC again. I believe the problem is defintely located at my screen itself, the shifting gears-thing seems to be messing things up. So my screen is still doing something wrong, but it is hard to find what.
As of now, I would say the problem is solved (I leave this post here in case people want to see the chronological order of posts. I will also add this to the main post).