It would be nice if Pontifex would disable the windows screensaver... Every time I leave the room or pick up the phone while playing, I have to make sure to exit out of Pontifex, because bad things happen when the screen saver tries to kick in. Win2K is not able to turn on the screen saver, it just turns the screen black, then when I move the mouse Pontifex freezes, forcing me to Ctrl-Alt-Del and end it from the task manager, obviously losing any changes I had made to the bridge I was looking at.
It shouldn't be too hard... I've seen some simple C++ examples to do it.
I agree, I need to use alt tab every time I want to change to a new program
Why don't you disable it yourself? A screen saver isn't that important to have come on after 1 or even 15 minutes. If Plamsa Burn worries you that much, just turn off your monitor whenever you leave the room. That way, your programs will still run, even though you can't see them.
I usually run pontifex windowed, it has no trouble switching or assigning input correctly, the screensaver knows to stay away (no wonder if it's windowed), and it does not crash.
The problem for a small shop like ChronicLogic is that they don't have the resources to do testing on a lot of platforms in a reasonable time. I agree they should soon patch these problems which have surfaced.
Why don't I turn off the screen saver myself? I do, now. That doesn't change the fact that it would be a good "next version idea" to have Pontifex do this automatically. All other software I use either properly allows the screen saver to function or else disables it. This is a legitimate flaw in Pontifex.
I guess one smart-ass answer deserves another, so...
Yes, I can disable the screen saver myself and turn off my monitor, but I can't help but think it would be nice if Pontifex didn't crash and lose all my work if I didn't.
You don't really need to test a program on multiple platforms. Just do your development in Windows NT or Win2k, and if it works there, it'll work in any other environment.
My answer wasn't ever intended to be "smart-ass" as you put it. I'm sorry if it came off that way.
I think it would be great to have a disable screen saver option and I think all of us have such a veriaty of different computers we could just post the results of the patch on the forum
My computer automatically turns the screen saver off when a full-screen program launches!
Klei, if you told us which OS you were using or if that was done by a special program or OS extension (service pack etc.) that information would actually be useful.
Acctually, I don't know why it does that.
I'm using Win98 SE, with Voodoo3, no special programs, maybe it's my Direct3D Version...
Also some of us are so stupid we don't know how to turn off our screen saver :o . However I do so don't bother telling me:)
In response to Klei, BridgeBuilder uses OpenGL, so I don't know if your D3D settings would still have any effect. Regardless of that workaround, it is a perfectly valid request to have several things happen when an OpenGL or DirectX program is running. They are as follows:
1) Disable the Screensaver if the program is fullscreened and active
2) Don't switch to new windows when the program is active (this causes a great deal of problems with point 3)
3) Ignore all user input (keyboard, mouse) when program is inactive
4) If the program has the option of windowed mode vs. fullscreen, you should be able to work in other windows without the windowed mode OGL program crashing.
This is something that I think needs to be fixed as soon as possible.
(Edited by beaujob at 8:16 am on Oct. 28, 2001)