On 27-May-04, at 10:16 AM, Nick Lockwood wrote:
BTW, when I say it seems to have crashed, I mean from the OS's point
of view, rather than the user's.
Ah, I see. I'm not sure the OS particularly cares, though.
Well it does if the app gets put in the background or you try to move
the window since it can't do anything with it. I guess that is a bit
of a transferred epithet - obviously the OS doesn't care, but the user
cares if the OS can't interoperate with an app because it thinks it's
frozen. Or something.
I capture the mouse while the game is windowed (and running in a tight
loop) to avoid click-throughs to over applications. Hitting escape
pauses the app and releases the mouse, breaking out of the loop until
it's resumed. Another thing you can do on Mac OS is use a plugin or
declare that queries the process manager from inside the tight loop to
make sure your app is still in front, then take appropriate actions if
the user managed to switch out.
Less of an issue for fullscreen apps, granted, but they still do weird
shit if you command-tab to another application. I know that can be
switched off too with declares, but at that point I think the user
might really start to get pissed off, especially if your app gets
stuck in its infinite loop and you can't quit out except by
restarting.
I watch for command-tab/H/Q in my tight loop and pause/break out of
fullscreen when appropriate. At the same time, I provide preference
settings that allow you to disable those key combinations. Before I got
my Nostromo n50, I routinely used the Q and Command keys in FPS games,
and found it very frustrating when certain games would suddenly quit on
the off chance I pressed them simultaneously.
Frank.
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