Taskbar and Gameplay

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[katmandu2]

  Is it possible to play a game but still have the taskbar show?  If so, how to you accomplish this?

Kat

[City Builder]

Only if the game supports being played in a window.  For example SimCity 4 supports playing it in a window (which I use now exclusively) but Imperium Romanum doesn't appear to support being played in a window.

One thing to consider when playing a game that supports being played in a window is that it might have it's performance degrade, some games when played in a window are very laggy feeling, others are not.

[katmandu2]

   Thanks for the info CB...

How do you know if your game supports it? Does it appear in the games' option menu?

Kat

[City Builder]

Sometimes it appears in the games options panel, other times it's a silent switch  (usually -w) that you append to the shortcut link to the program (the one you click to start up the game), and some developers are nice enough to enclose it in the documentation somewhere.  I'd guess that the vast majority of games do not support a windowed mode though.  The first thing I do in a game if it's not documented is to try it on the shortcut and put a -w at the end of the link to see if it starts up in a window, no harm if it doesn't then it's just ignored.

For my Simcity 4 game the shortcut link looks like: "D:\SimCity 4\Apps\SimCity 4.exe" -w  -CustomResolution:enabled -r1680x1050 -f -intro:off

You'll notice the -w in there to indicate to play the game in a window.  Also note that I've put it outside of the quote marks, if you were to put it inside of the quote marks in any game you would get an error message from windows telling you it can't find the file you are looking for.

[katmandu2]

  As usual CB, I've learned alot from your post.   Thanks again for the info.
 
Kat

[MaxBeta]

    Good to share these little nuances that can be used to make things more convenient.  I use the "no intro" switch on all the games that will allow it.. even then you can go further an edit the setup config so it bypasses those sometimes annoying NVidia ADs  hehe