Forge version 1.5.3

[Chris H.]

Tentative target release date: Friday October 18.

[drdev]

So after fixing Forge to not cover the taskbar when maximized, I went about adding support for true full screen mode.

Although I found a way to do that (see here), I'm finding the rendering performance drops off significantly when full screen on my home PC. I found this web page explaining a workaround for this issue, which is to disable Direct3D. Is that something we can do? I don't think we do anything but 2D rendering anywhere, right? If we can disable it, how exactly do we alter the command line arguments in a way that works both when debugging and when releasing Forge?

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/8380323/why-does-my-java-application-run-so-slowly-in-full-screen-mode-and-fine-when-w

EDIT: Finally figured it out. Just have to call this in Main.java:

System.setProperty("sun.java2d.d3d", "false");

Sure enough that fixed the problem. I wonder if it will also improve card rendering elsewhere signficantly. At any rate, I committed this optimization in r23418. Let me know if there's any concerns with doing this.

[drdev]

Per feedback from a few people, I've committed several changes to the Forge frame stuff I've been working on:

- Added true Full Screen support, toggled by F11, Forge > Layout > Full Screen, and a new button in the titlebar between Minimize and Maximize. This support should now work outside of Windows.
- Forge no longer covers up the taskbar when maximized
- Instead of View > Title Bar allowing title bar visibility to be toggled, the title bar will now always be shown outside of Full Screen mode, and while in Full Screen mode, a Lock/Unlock Title Bar button will control whether it's always visible vs. only being revealed when moving the mouse to the top of the screen.
- Overlays no longer cover up the titlebar, nor prevent revealing the titlebar when its hidden
- Removed Status Bar completely, instead using tooltips for menu hints (the clock will be in the title bar when Full Screen)

Let me know if you have any questions or concerns. Also, if somebody with a Mac could test out the Minimize button (which was crashing but may now be fixed) and the Full Screen button to see if they work there, that would be great.

Here are a couple screenshots of what Forge looks like now:

Normal:

Full Screen:

Thanks.
-Dan

[Agetian]

Overall the new full screen mode looks great, thanks for adding it!
I have only one concern about it for now: I'm not sure if this behavior is unique to my system or not, but when in full screen mode, if a message box pops up asking me to do something (such as a choice box or a yes/no box), the main area of the Forge (the battlefield, everything) disappears as if minimized, so I only see my desktop and the choice box / message box on the screen. I have to manually click on Forge in the taskbar to restore it.

- Agetian

[drdev]

Overall the new full screen mode looks great, thanks for adding it!
I have only one concern about it for now: I'm not sure if this behavior is unique to my system or not, but when in full screen mode, if a message box pops up asking me to do something (such as a choice box or a yes/no box), the main area of the Forge (the battlefield, everything) disappears as if minimized, so I only see my desktop and the choice box / message box on the screen. I have to manually click on Forge in the taskbar to restore it.

- Agetian

This is a known issue that I'm going to tackle next. The plan is to migrate all dialogs to the new FFrame style (minus the Forge button and Full Screen support of course) and make sure they always appear on top of the main Forge window.

[Chris H.]

Launched the newest snapshot build which is buili at rev 23426 on my Macintosh computer.

The Restore Down/Maximize button works OK. At the biggest size the bottom of the window extends past the top of the dock at the bottom of the screen. Other apps will end their bottom edge above the dock icons.

Windowed at maximum size:

The Full Screen button is working OK. When I move my mouse pointer to the top of the screen the title/menu bar will appear and this is a nice touch. When I went from Full Screen to Window mode the smallest sized window appeared rather than being at the previous maximize window size. When at Full Screen the tool tips for the buttons on the title/menu bar do not appear.

Full Screen:

The minimize button no longer creates a crash report and will now place the forge app in the dock with the forge icon being visible.

Dock with forge app:

I am very impressed with your work at this stage and I am happy that I see minimal problems. My biggest concern is with the names of some of the buttons as they seem to be tied to the Windows OS and Mac people may not understand these buttons until they actually use them.

[drdev]

Chris, thank you for the complement and for testing this out on Mac and providing feedback. Here are my responses in order:

- I can look into making Maximize not extend behind the icons, though that looks kind of cool actually.
EDIT: I'm pretty sure this should be fixed by r23435. Could somebody please confirm? Thanks.

- I'm not sure what's causing the tooltips not to work in Full Screen. I'm pretty sure they worked in Windows when Full Screen. As for it not resuming maximize when exiting Full Screen, that's also odd as I'm pretty sure that's working on Windows. I'll investigate both issues.

- Glad to hear the minimize button is fixed.

- If there's an easy way to detect the OS, I'd be happy to alter the tooltips for the buttons when on Mac. What should they be? Are the icons ok as is?

[drdev]

Navigation tabs should be ready to go for 1.5.3 (r23447).

[Chris H.]

- I can look into making Maximize not extend behind the icons, though that looks kind of cool actually.
EDIT: I'm pretty sure this should be fixed by r23435. Could somebody please confirm? Thanks.

 
This is now fixed on my Mac. There may have been a view or two that would have had data displayed at the bottom of the window, deck editor for example.