Need Help Can't Minimize/Click on Other Apps, then come back to play the game

[Pieter Boelen]

I'm continuing here from the PM where it started, because this seems to be more a technical support issue which might as well be in public:

...fix the "can't minimize/click on other apps, then try to come back to play the game" that New Horizon has, since that alone has a lot of negative impact on streaming and recording which would likely result in a noticable boon to the community if it was fixed and basically made more friendly to content creators. If we could get more attention, it will bring in more people who would likely be willing to help. Of course, besides the obvious fix of being able to keep the game open and come back to it after doing something else instead of having to reload the game everytime.

This would indeed be nice to see fixed.
Though excuse me if I am wrong, if you set the game to windowed, shouldn't you be able to just pause, do something else and then come back to it. This is more of a workaround than a fix though.
I did a small bit of recording a while ago and it seemed to work fine. But I am not frequently doing this, so I may be missing something.

Not for mine. I have it set to a window mode, but it never allows me to move my mouse out of the application unless I do a ctrl-alt-del and pull up task manager. And once I do that, if I try to come back it just freezes, although you can continue to hear the game go.

I just did this and it worked normally for me.
The game pauses by itself while it is not the active window, once I go back to it I can continue right from where I left off.
Goes to show how everyones setup is different.

Are you sure the "windowed" setting is taking effect properly?
What you describe sounds like what I would expect with fullscreen; except then the game would go completely black when you get back in.

"Windows Vista (Service Pack 2)" compatibility mode has been known to help with windowed mode issues.
And be sure you don't have the game in Program Files; that could potentially prevent settings from taking hold (and other weirdness).

I did a small video on what my application basically looks like when I open it up around 3:40. Maybe one of the recent bug patches might have fixed this issue in the past year since I haven't updated my game since last year, but I do recall having skimmed the recent bug patch txt file, and don't recall any changes that would have effected this. If you happen to know of this, and of a way I can change it so it's a bit more friendly, that would be great, but if not then just chalk that up as another potential avenue to go down in the future.

What exactly happens at 4:40? The entire screen goes completely black.
That shouldn't be PotC doing that; because PotC can only render inside its little box.

Can you upload the .log files from your main game folder after this happens?
I suspect there might be something in system.log about "device renderer lost" or something.

That shouldn't happen with regular Alt+Tab in and out of the game;
but there could be situations outside the game that cause it.

 

[The Nameless Pirate]

What exactly happens at 4:40? The entire screen goes completely black.
That shouldn't be PotC doing that; because PotC can only render inside its little box.

Because it isn't PotC that's doing that.
@xXSB101Xx probably pressed "Ctrl-Alt-Delete" to open the task manager.
I also did it while recording, and a black screen shows up in the recording, but it's only there. The actual user can see the menu normally.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

@xXSB101Xx probably pressed "Ctrl-Alt-Delete" to open the task manager.

Ah!
I think Ctrl+Alt+Del might be heavy enough to cause a "device render lost" problem.
And after that, indeed you wouldn't be able to get back into the game.

But regular Alt+Tab shouldn't do that...

 

[The Nameless Pirate]

I think Ctrl+Alt+Del might be heavy enough to cause a "device render lost" problem.
And after that, indeed you wouldn't be able to get back into the game.

Either that, or OBS just can't record it.
As for getting back in the game I can even after Ctrl+Alt+Del.
But since you mentioned performance, what are your specs @xXSB101Xx?
Perhaps if you had more RAM the game would continue working?

Edit:

 

[Levis]

I haven't been able to read everything, but if you want to alt+tab in and out of the game it's often better to play in borderless windowed mode instead of fullscreen .

 

[xXSB101Xx]

Either that, or OBS just can't record it.
As for getting back in the game I can even after Ctrl+Alt+Del.
But since you mentioned performance, what are your specs @xXSB101Xx?
Perhaps if you had more RAM the game would continue working?

Edit:

First off yes, I was ctrl alt deleting in order to get out since that's my go to method in getting out of programs that aren't simple minimizers.
Second, thanks for letting me know about alt tab, I wasn't aware that was a control you can do to get out of the game. Just tested it and it works on my comp, so my issue is solved as far as I'm concerned. Would be nice though to perhaps publicize that a bit more since I wasn't aware of it until now, so I have no doubt that there's others who are unaware of it as well.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Just tested it and it works on my comp, so my issue is solved as far as I'm concerned.

Awesome!
Glad to hear we figured out a simple solution in the end.

Would be nice though to perhaps publicize that a bit more since I wasn't aware of it until now, so I have no doubt that there's others who are unaware of it as well.

Do you have any suggestions where and how to do that?
Communication things to players can be quite the challenge...

Also, does this mean you're able to capture videos now? Do you want to?
Do you know about enabling FREE_CAMERA at the bottom of PROGRAM\InternalSettings.h?
Then pressing regular Tab can switch you to a mode where you can just fly around, finding nicely cinematic photo/video angles.

And truth be told, we COULD very much use someone to make some new gameplay videos.
Maybe even a new trailer, for someone feeling particularly creative. The last one was YEARS ago!
There's been SO much cool new content that we never got round to showing on good 'ol YouTube.

 

[xXSB101Xx]

Awesome!
Glad to hear we figured out a simple solution in the end.


Do you have any suggestions where and how to do that?
Communication things to players can be quite the challenge...

Also, does this mean you're able to capture videos now? Do you want to?
Do you know about enabling FREE_CAMERA at the bottom of PROGRAM\InternalSettings.h?
Then pressing regular Tab can switch you to a mode where you can just fly around, finding nicely cinematic photo/video angles.

And truth be told, we COULD very much use someone to make some new gameplay videos.
Maybe even a new trailer, for someone feeling particularly creative. The last one was YEARS ago!
There's been SO much cool new content that we never got round to showing on good 'ol YouTube.

Maybe a forum pin, or a notice in the controls in the game itself. Could just put something along the lines of "Press Alt-Tab to be able to switch out of the game to other applications". As for capturing video, I was able to do it before, but it was basically like turning on OBS before, or during the game booting up, and then just playing until I'm done and then exiting out of the game before I could turn off OBS (though there's probably a hotkey I could do to automatically turn it off or on). Now this just means I can easily tab to OBS without closing the game. The main benefit is that this means streamers can tab out of the game to interact with their chat/moderators if needed. As for video editing, I basically have zero experience in that department, so the quality will be a bit low. Maybe in the future when I have more free time I would be open to that, but for now I wouldn't be able to put in a lot of time editing videos, or making a trailer so to speak. Honestly sounds like a Fiver thing, probably should see if you can find some cheap labor to pay a few bucks to make a nice trailer if no one in the community has the ability to make one themselves.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Maybe a forum pin, or a notice in the controls in the game itself. Could just put something along the lines of "Press Alt-Tab to be able to switch out of the game to other applications".

@Grey Roger; how about it?

As for capturing video, I was able to do it before, but it was basically like turning on OBS before, or during the game booting up, and then just playing until I'm done and then exiting out of the game before I could turn off OBS (though there's probably a hotkey I could do to automatically turn it off or on). Now this just means I can easily tab to OBS without closing the game. The main benefit is that this means streamers can tab out of the game to interact with their chat/moderators if needed.

As for video editing, I basically have zero experience in that department, so the quality will be a bit low. Maybe in the future when I have more free time I would be open to that, but for now I wouldn't be able to put in a lot of time editing videos, or making a trailer so to speak.

At this point, anything is better than nothing.

Honestly sounds like a Fiver thing, probably should see if you can find some cheap labor to pay a few bucks to make a nice trailer if no one in the community has the ability to make one themselves.

"Fiver"?

I doubt paying for it is going to do much good.
If a person's heart isn't in it, the outcome will likely be dodgy at best...

I have edited a trailer one time myself; based on video material other people made.
So perhaps if we all work together, we can make something decent without it being too much work for any one person.