Taskbar visible while running fullscreen

#1 I have had this problem several times with a number of products and is a real pain. To be completely honest, I'm not sure exactly why it happens but it only happens under Windows XP for me and normally on my laptop.

The taskbar always disappears normally though if I click on the app window. Are you saying it's permanently stuck there? Wierd.

Even with the TaskBar set to "Always on top", it should go when in fullscreen mode.

I'll search the T3D forums to see if there is a known problem/resolution.

I always find Yahoo Messenger popping-up, even in full-screen mode quite distracting.

- Melv.

#2 Okay,

Quick results are that potentially, nVidias nView could be the culprit.

Quote from ThinkTank forums:-

Quote:@Just - first make sure you have nView and any other dual monitor support turned off like Joe seggests. We seen task bar issues on systems running dual monitors, but not otherwise. However, in the link Conny provided there do seem to be some people experiencing the same problem you are experiencing with other Torque games with nView disabled, so it may be an issue we just haven't seen before. We'll keep looking into it.

I'm not sure if you're a T3D SDK owner but here's the link that quote references.

EDIT: There's also discussion of WinAmp and nView doing something strange to the TaskBar, unconfirmed though.

EDIT:

Quote:Think I've been able to find the best solution.

First, don't change anything in winWindow.cc
Second, apply the following to winOGLVideo.cc

line 847
else if ( !newWindow )
replace with
else if ( newWindow )

line 850
if ( !SetWindowPos( winState.appWindow, 0, 0, 0, newRes.w, newRes.h, SWP_NOZORDER ) )
replace with
if ( !SetWindowPos( winState.appWindow, HWND_TOPMOST, 0, 0, newRes.w, newRes.h, 0 ) )

This should fix both the taskbar/ontop issue aswell as the three pixel see-through fields to the right and bottom when in fullscreen.
Would be good if someone could test and confirm this.

I'll need to check whether this was already folded into the platform. I believe the "three pixel see-through field" mentioned was fixed sometime ago so maybe.

- Melv.

#3

Quote:I'm not sure if you're a T3D SDK

Nope. No t3d sdk and got t2d a few days ago.

Nview is disabled, still the same problem:

But even with nview enabled, WoW and other titles never had a problem.
I'm normally coding using allegro, and that doesn't produce the bug. If I run Nehe's tuts in fullscreen, I don't have the problem regardless of nView.

#4 Is your taskbar set as "always on top" and/or auto-hide? My first guess would be that TGE (which underlies T2D) simply does what it is supposed to do (obey OS level windows layering), instead of breaking the rules by ignoring the OS layering requirements like many other (non-windowed) applications do.

#5 Even if I disable nview, windowblinds and winamp agent the taskbar still pops in. if there is any further information I can provide you with to help solving that problem, just let me know.

Also, OGRE's fullscreen code seems to work fine, maybe you can have a peek at it and see if they do something in a different way?

#6 Could you turn on auto-hide and turn off "always on top" and see if the issue goes away? That might help Melv know where to look.

Thanks!

#7

Quote:Could you turn on auto-hide and turn off "always on top" and see if the issue goes away? That might help Melv know where to look.

If I do that, I get a 2 pixel gray line at the position where the bar is ( but this also be the 2 pixel border problem... not sure if it really is the bar).
Then the bar pops out highlighting the torque application. On the next mouse click inside of the t2d app, the bar disappears.

#8 Lennart,

Thank you for reporting this bug. As Melv has said, we will investigate it. If anything, this is a problem with Torque's core platform, which Melv had nothing to do with. Of course, this is a very rare problem, as Torque is used successfully full-screen for thousands and thousands of people. So, it'll probably take a good amount of digging to figure out what's going on.

edit: I cleaned up this thread so it just discusses the bug... personal junk, no matter who does or doesn't start it, will not be tolerated on this board.

#9 I'm running a full ObjectDesktop setup and have no problems. No NVidia card in this machine, though. I've never had the problem. Of coruse, the accessibility features may be overriding some options and XP likes to turn them on if it thinks you're holding down a key too long.

#10 Lennart -

The bug you mention WAS traced back to the nVidia drivers / nview controls. No other video card / drivers have experianced the bug.

I was one of the people who DID trace the bug and did find that turning off the 90% useless nVidia tools caused the taskbar to be hidden as expected.

#11 @Melv-

I think the code you posted above will not fix the problem. I just posted an update in the link you cited above describing my experiences with the issue...

#12

Quote:The bug you mention WAS traced back to the nVidia drivers / nview controls. No other video card / drivers have experianced the bug.

Um.. you realize that the problem still exists if I disable nview?
You also realize that other engines don't have the problem even if nView is running?

Ok.. so: WoW / Q3, the Nehe Tuts /WC3, Ogre etc. don't have a problem. Torque has the problem. You can either blame nVidea or do whatever WoW, Q3 and Ogre do and don't have the problem. It's up to you. You can also ignore it, since only about 50% of the gamers use NVidea cards.

#13 Thanks Clark/Harold.

I've put this on my rather extensive list of things to do. Either way, I'll report back here if I can find any solution and send you a courtesy reply as well.

Again, thanks for the update.

@Lennart: *hug* Let's just make games. If there's anything further you can provide on the problem then I'd appreciate any more info, if not, then give me some time and I'll see what I can track down. Clark/Harold seem to have experience with this problem so I'll chat with them offline to see what the problem or more than likely problems are.

- Melv.

#14 @Melv May: *hug*

Quote:if there's anything further you can provide on the problem then I'd appreciate any more info

Mr. Grace posted his demo on another board as well and got mixed reports there. I'll PM those who had problems and see if I can get more info. Interestingly one other user had the same problem I had (don't know the gfx card yet), another nVidea user (same card I have) didn't have any problems.

A third user reported a crash:

Quote:
It crashes at startup here. This is a PIII@733 with a voodoo3 gfx card. So I'll try it when arrive home.

[edit]
After a second run it worked. But all ships appear as white boxes.

But of course I can't say whether this is a t2d problem or an issue with the demo game

#15 I must admit that I'm not actually sure how good the voodoo support is. Maybe someone else here could comment on that. The support is primarily for voodoo2, not sure how it'd perform generally though.

I think we got our wires crossed somewhere along the way here though, hopefully we can get untangled. I had a quick search and I think the problem is two-fold. I get the same problem with the old TGE demo but I don't get it with T2D which is strange although there's quite a bit of difference when you get down to the window level at that point. One thing I did try was turning-off nView, didn't solve it though. I turned-off clone-mode and the damn taskbar disappeared! I turned-it back on and it comes back, so on and so forth.

This doesn't necessarily mean it's a problem with nView, it's more than likely triggering a succeptability. One thing I did find on the net was lots of references to the same problem. Lots of mainstream games have suffered from it and have issued patches that are described as "getting around the nVidia problem". This particular one was Max Payne.

I've checked the code and there's nothing obviously wrong, that's not to say there isn't.

I'd be very interested if you hear of the same problem on a non-nVidia system. Just thought as well, can you try this in OpenGL and D3D to see if there's a different response. I tried this on my laptop but it makes no difference.

- Melv.

#16

Quote:Just thought as well, can you try this in OpenGL and D3D to see if there's a different response. I tried this on my laptop but it makes no difference.

Torque2D doesn't give me an option to switch to D3D. The only Display Driver listed is OpenGL, so I can't test it right now.

I've PMed the person having the taskbar problem, didn't get a reply so far.

#17 If you have the TGE demo there are some .dll files named:

opengl2d3d.dll
glu2d3d.dll

Copy those into your T2D folder (the one where the .exe is

These handle the OpenGL to DirectX conversion, they will be included in the updated Demo downloads.

#18 I'll try applying Clark's patch to Cloudburst v1.01 then, and see if this makes a difference. I too, sometimes get the taskbar when I switch to fullscreen (in CB or in the T2D/Torque demos), but if I just click on the screen anywhere, it seems to be switch that window back to full-screen exclusive and the task bar goes away.

I can confirm I've seen this with some other OpenGL games, too, though -- It's not just limited to Torque.

Lennart, I dunno who you are but you are obviously an Allegro user as that's the only other board I've posted this too. Welcome to the GG forums. :)

#19

Quote:Lennart, I dunno who you are

On most forums, I post as "spellcaster".

Quote:If you have the TGE demo there are some .dll files named:

I don#t have the demo, but I might download it and give it a try.

#20 The other person with the taskbar problem had also nview enabled.