Age of Pirates 2 COAS and GOF - JLB version

[ChezJfrey]

Ta da! Ropes now too.

 

[kb31]

Very cool, @ChezJfrey!

I always enabled Alt+Tabbing by using windowed mode, which works relatively well.
But it indeed isn't a 100% solution; for one thing, because the brightness controls don't work in windowed mode.
So congratulations.

Some actions will freeze engine regardless of windowed mode. Storm 2.5+ will crash. Try win+l, ctr+alt+del, switching screens etc.

 

[ChezJfrey]

Very cool, @ChezJfrey!

I always enabled Alt+Tabbing by using windowed mode, which works relatively well.
But it indeed isn't a 100% solution; for one thing, because the brightness controls don't work in windowed mode.
So congratulations.

Yeah, everyone plays windowed mode for that. But, every once in a very great while, my video driver hiccups, which actually prompts the very same response in DirectX, known as a 'lost device'; this is a flaw in my HP, but fortunately this bug is quite rare occurance. This 'lost device' is the exact same situation that presents when playing full screen and alt-tabbing/switching window contexts. And of course when this happens to me due to the bug in my driver, the game stalls/crashes. So, I thought why not fix the problem and actually allow the game to play either way, like a normal app should...you know, not break for normal PC use while in full screen if one is allowed to launch it that way.

There is a technique to 'reset' the device and put things back, and in fact the developers had attempted to do some of the restoration, but failed. I fixed what they did wrong, added a bunch of restoration points they missed, and voila!