Force a game to top

[Shakti]

I am running a dual-monitor setup, and my thought is to have a game running on the main monitor and then a webbrowser or something like that on the other monitor. Problem is that when i go to the browser to do something the game minimizes, so i wondered if there is any way to force an application to run on top. Note that the game is running fullscreen.

Even if i must write my own launcher for the game i am ready to do so.

Edit: running the game in windowed mode is not an option since the fps drops too much.

[CornedBee]

Many games automatically minimize when they lose focus. This is because otherwise they'd block the screen they are on, without any way of getting rid of it. I consider that a good thing.

You can probably forcefully maximize it again, but as Raymond Chen says, getting applications into a situation they don't expect is a good way to crash them. In your case, the application, on receiving a killfocus notification, mimizes, probably pauses and perhaps even discards the graphics context. Then you maximize it again - what do you think will happen. (Answer: no idea. It's most definitely undefined behaviour.) On receiving focus, the application will maximize, recreate the GC and unpause. This is the method it should be reactivated, and no other.

You're actually quite lucky that the game doesn't crash simply from losing focus. I know far too many games that do that or something similar. (Myst 3, for example, fails to reacquire the mouse, rendering it inactive.)

As I said, you can experiment. Try installing a system-wide hook watching for the window being minimized and immediately maximize it again. Just don't expect it to work.

[Shakti]

Ok, Ill see what i do then but thnx for the input.